Dump your lover directly on voice mail
New phone service makes it easier to get through life's awkward moments

NEW YORK - The old song had it right: Breaking up is hard to do. But a free new phone service called Slydial might make it easier to get through that and other awkward moments — without actually having to talk to anyone.

Slydial lets you connect directly with another person's cell phone voice mail, bypassing the traditional ringing process that often results — sometimes disastrously — with someone picking up on the other end.

Users call (267) SLY-DIAL from either a cell phone or a landline, and are prompted to enter another person's cell phone number.

After playing a short advertisement — unless users pay a subscription fee or 15 cents per call to skip ads — Slydial puts callers directly into their target's voice mail.

Recipients should then get a voice mail notification, and sometimes they will see a caller's number show up as a missed call, too.

Gavin Macomber, co-founder of MobileSphere Ltd., the Boston-based communications company behind Slydial, said there were currently some technological limits. It can only be used in the U.S. right now, and generally won't work with prepaid cell phones.

Also, sly dialers must have the caller ID feature activated on their phones, which Macomber said is meant, in part, to prevent people from using it to harass people undetected.

Macomber thinks it can be useful not only in the dating scene, but also in the hectic business world.

"Everybody has gone through the scenario where they've called somebody and just hoped they got voice mail so they didn't have to have a conversation," he said.

Nora Rubinoff, 45, who runs an administrative support company, At Your Service Cincinnati Ltd., has found Slydial helpful both for business and personal situations. She has left reminder messages for people one of her clients intends to interview. And when her husband travels to a different time zone for work, she can leave him a Slydial message without disturbing him at an odd time of day, she said.

"It's been really handy," she said.

Macomber said the idea for Slydial came up while MobileSphere developed the voice mail routing component of a service meant to lower the cost of international roaming on cell phones.

The company rolled out a private test phase of Slydial in March, and has added about 5,000 users since then. The service opened to the general public in a "beta" testing phase on Monday.

The ability to call straight into someone's voice mail is not new. Most major cell phone carriers offer subscribers the option of sending voice messages to other people, but usually only to customers of the same wireless company. What's different here is that Slydial makes it possible to do it with any major wireless carrier's customer.

This shit lacks cojones.

In Ireland, all you hafta do is dial the mobile prefix (eg 086) then put a 5, then the rest of the number, and it takes you straight to the voice mail. Too fucking easy compared to that thing.

The best time to break up is when you've just finished the sex.

happened to me once; about thirty minutes after

sad thing is, he wasn't even good in bed

guess he wasn't really into it since he wanted to leave you anyway

i think it had more to do with a small dick, inexperience and a sick attachment to his mommy.....but thanks for playing you're obviously very perceptive and have a high self regard

*considers to go on playing by saying that I understand that he was put off by your small dick, inexperience and sick attachment to his mommy*

He wasn't exactly well hung anyways,....

But did he have magic fingers? That's the pertinent question, if you're a woman.

This shit lacks class.