Before the iPhone launch with all it's associated oh's and ah's including the much touted Visual Voicemail there was already a better way to deal with voicemail on your cellphone.

GotVoice is a free application which can connect to your cellphone providers voicemail system, download your messages and deliver them as MP3s to your email. It doesn't quite give you the same in-phone experience as offered by the iPhone experience but for some it would provide a very convenient platform. It would be very cool if it could include some smart metadata with the audio file to make it easier to call the person back or pass details on - a small Outlook plug-in to react to that data would be cool. As an extension a Windows Mobile or J2ME app that can also collect the message and let you listen / manage them on your smartphone would be a logical extension - especially if they can get it to market before the iPhone ships (network locked, so anything delivering this to customers of other networks will have a market).

Before that though Avaya had a product - also called Visual Voicemail that provides the same capabilities for your office voicemail on your cellphone.

Given that these technologies already exist in the marketplace I wonder how many of Apples 200 patent applications will be rejected as obvious or covered by prior art.

What I'd love to see if a truly integrated solution that takes what integrated communications does for me in the office today and through whatever combination of magic is required consolidates email, office phone, IM (Windows Live Messenger and Communicator) and my mobile and make sure I have access to what matters to me, where I need it, when I want it - without worrying about physically where the call came in or where the email was routed.

Not that I'm a communications addict ;)