* Website Review: JFAX.COM

How to receive faxes via e-mail.

By Erik J. Heels and Richard P. Klau

First published 7/6/1998; LegalResearcher.com; publisher: New York Law Publishing Company

WestLaw and Lexis are now available via the Web, so online legal research is getting easier. But for everybody who considers communication (including e-mail, voice mail, and faxes) from colleagues an integral part of legal research will want to consider running – not walking – to sign up for unified messaging service from JFAX.COM (http://www.jfax.com/).

When you sign up for service at JFAX.COM, you get a phone number (most likely in your own area code) for receiving faxes and voice mail messages. You can then configure your JFAX.COM account (https://webaccess.jfax.com/webaccess) to send your voice mail and fax messages as attachment to the e-mail account of your choosing. And if you choose a Web-based e-mail account such as Yahoo E-mail (http://mail.yahoo.com/), then you can have Web-based access to your e-mail, faxes, and voice mail.

Voice mail messages can be sent in WAV or AU format (for easy reading with Netscape, for example), or you can use JFAX.COM’s own formats that can be read with JFAX.COM’s software (http://download.jfax.com/download). And all of this costs less than $20/month.

We know a good service when we see one, and this is one of those. And we were already using a similar service from another provider. It takes a lot for us to switch services, but JFAX.COM has a lot to offer and made the decision easy.