Voicemail

Q: Is it illegal or unethical for a customer to transfer a voicemail from you to another person in his office and that person plays it to your boss? --J.G., Los Angeles A: No. By its very nature, voicemail is a recording that can be played back at a later date. When you send a voicemail, you need to recognize that your words may come back to haunt you.

In an interview with Katie Couric on Thursday, a few voicemails that Manti Te'o's "girlfriend" left him were played on the air. The voice of Kekua reportedly belongs to Ronaiah Tuiasosopo , who apparently disguised his voice. After the first message was played, Te'o said: "It sounds like a girl, doesn't it?" "It does," Couric said. Tuiasosopo apparently masterminded the hoax against Te'o by creating a fake online profile for a made-up woman named Kekua. Tuiasosopo then apparently talked to Te'o over the phone while pretending to be Kekua.

Italcable U.S.A., a subsidiary of Italcable SpA, which is half-owned by the Italian government, has acquired 1.4 million shares, or 29.4%, of Voicemail International Inc., the Santa Clara, Calif., maker of voice-forwarding systems. The acquisition was in the form of $2 million worth of Voicemail's 9% convertible subordinated debentures due July 13, 1994, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Italcable SpA is half-owned by the Italian government.

NetZero in Westlake Village, which offers free Internet access services, has reached an agreement with ThinkLink to provide free voicemail to NetZero's 4 million registered users. The deal with San Francisco-based ThinkLink will give NetZero's customers a Web-based messaging and communications center including voicemail, e-mail, fax, paging and 5-cents-a-minute calls anywhere in the continental United States.

The Pasadena Unified Board of Education on Tuesday approved a recommendation to allow schools to begin using computerized voice-mail systems like those used by businesses. A voice-mail system at John Muir High School will be permanently extended free to its four feeder elementary schools--Longfellow, Cleveland, Willard and Jackson. The service will be donated by QuickNet, a Van Nuys telecommunications firm that hopes to get a contract for the whole district, said owner Jerry Chien.

To improve the ability to receive and send telephone messages, the Police Department is getting a $7,900 voice-mail system. The City Council recently unanimously approved the purchase. The money is to come from assets seized by police during drug raids and arrests. Capt. Bob Krauss said the new system would save time of both residents and police. "It'll keep us from endlessly playing phone tag," Krauss said.

Pacific Bell said Monday that it is beginning to offer voice-mail messaging service to its medium-to-large business telephone customers--and will soon test a similar service for small businesses and residential customers in San Pedro and the Silicon Valley town of Milpitas. The new business service will initially be available only to the company's business customers served by Centrex switching equipment.

Behind every great daytime queen, there's a great executive producer. Helping to ensure Oprah Winfrey's place on the throne is Sheri Salata. Fans have come to know Salata from her occasional appearances on the talk show, whether it be a cut to her in the production booth or a cameo onstage. But these days Salata, who in addition to being executive producer of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" is also president of Harpo Studios, is getting more onscreen time via OWN's "Season 25: Oprah Behind the Scenes.

An Irvine school is the first in California to apply new-age technology to an age-old problem: getting children to do their homework every night. With the installation several weeks ago of a voice-mail system, Los Naranjos Elementary School allows parents with touch-tone telephones to call in, enter a numerical code and hear their children's teachers tell what was taught in class that day, what parents can do to reinforce the lessons and what homework students are expected to complete.