Web Tips

Amazing Phone Services

2007-05-19T16:10:00.000-05:00

The year 2007 has seen some really neat phone services that save average consumers money on long distance calls, provide anonymity and in some cases provide useful functionality at no charge. This post is an attempt to document these services for your pleasure. List of services after the jump.

Last Updated: June 12, 2007

Anonymize Yourself:

CallDigits

This service allows you to get a local phone number that rings to your cell or any phone for $4.99/month. It also includes voicemail and caller ID. They do have a free option but you dont have any control over the area code. On the website CallDigits is promoting their service for business, dating and privacy.

CraigsNumber

This service allows you to get a free anonymous number that expires after a pre determined amount of time. Lets say you have a craigslist ad and you don't want people to call you on your real number. Just get a number from CraigsNumber and post it on your ad. You can get a number for an hour, day, week or month. The number will have an extension e.g (504) 208 2333 x 627. You will tell CraigsNumber where to forward your calls. The whole process takes less than 2 minutes. When somebody dials the number you get an option to accept or decline the call.

Find Information:

Free411

Don't want to pay those pesky 411 charges? Call 1800Free411 and get your information for free. The catch? Once they find a result you have to listen to a small ad. The ad is well worth the money you save.

Frucall

For the frugal amongst us Frucall is one of the better services around to do comparison shopping. While standing at Barnes and Nobles you no longer have to worry about overpaying. Simply call 888-DO-FRUCALL (1-888-363-7822) and enter the books barcode using your keypad. If Frucall recognizes the product it will give you various prices for the product including shipping. If you're a registered user, you will have the option to order the item immediately or bookmark it for later reference.

Tellme

Call 1-800-555-TELL (8355) and find information on businesses, news, sports, stocks, horoscopes, driving directions and weather. You can also get information texted to your phone.

Useful Services:

Bringo

Bringos motto is "Stop Talking to Machines and Talk to a Real Human". Bringo accomplishes this by allowing you to find the company you'd like to call by category (credit cards, mortgages, loans, health care). After selecting the company enter your phone number. Wait a few seconds while Bringo navigates the phone tree. Once Bringo is done it will call you back with a human being on the other side. No more phone trees.

EFax

If you are a light fax user then EFax is the perfect solution to receive faxes as it wont cost you a single dime. They provide you with a fax number and when someone calls the number you get the fax as an email attachment. They do have paid accounts for heavy fax users who need to send and receive faxes. If you want to send faxes for free check out FaxZero below.

FaxZero

FaxZero allows you to send a free fax in USA and Canada. The free service comes with an ad on the cover page and the document cannot be more than 3 pages long. You can only send two faxes per day. In order to remove these restrictions you need to pay $1.99 per fax. The user is notified via email once the fax is delivered.

Foonz

Foonz can come in handy when you want to do a group call or leave a group message. This free service allows you to register your contacts. When you need to do a conference call dial the special Foonz number and choose the friends you need to hook up with. Foonz will IM or text your friends with a call in number. As soon as they dial the number they will be connected to you.

FreeConference

Want to have a conference call for zero cost? Thats where Freeconference comes into the picture. They allow 150 people to yak for 3 hours for free. Freeconference also provides you with a toll free number for your meeting participants at a cost. I've been using this service successfully for quite some time and am extremely happy with it.

Gaboogie

Gaboogie is conference calling for the 21st century. Rather than setting up a conference call and hoping all the attendants show up on time, Gaboogie does all the boring stuff for you. This service will auto dial all the participants at the appropriate time and give them an option of joining, declining or snoozing. The moderator can see the status of all the participants on the site. This service is not free but has many different pricing options. Plus its got a nice name!

GrandCentral

GrandCentral has a lot of tricks up its sleeve. It allows you to have one number for life that can be forwarded to any phone number of your choice. You can create customized greetings for different people. GrandCentral allows you to record your calls and have centralized voicemail. Currently it is in beta and is free. They claim that there will always be a free version.

Jangl

Jangl allows you to call anyone with an email address. Mind boggling right? Once you enter the email address of the person you need to connect with, Jangl provides a phone number for you to leave a voicemail. The voicemail is delivered to the recipient via email and the recipient gets a number with which to return your initial call. The Jangl phone numbers allow you to hide your real number. There are some hoops to jump through but this is the best solution Ive seen so far to connect with people simply based on their email. Jangl works in 31 countries.

Jott

Jott will transcribe your voicemails into an email. Call 1 877 568 8486 and leave a voicemail aka jott for yourself, an individual or for a group. Jott will convert the voicemail into an email and send it out to all the recipients.

Pinger

Pinger is similar to Jott. Pinger claims to be text messaging for your voice. With Pinger, you can reach out to your entire basketball team, extended family, fraternity or office with one call. Everyone in the group can reply right from your message, either to you or to the whole group. A Pinger notification comes as a text message.

Rminder

Rminder allows you to create reminders on their website which get delivered to your phone via text or voice. It also synchronizes your events from Google calendar, Yahoo Calendar and Outlook. They have a free version with limited functionality. To get more functionality you can get a paid subscription.

Yak4Ever

Want to make free international phone calls from your cellphone or any phone for that matter? Yak4Ever allows you to register 10 of your friends. You dial a special number and can make calls to these friends using a shortcut. Obviously you cant call people in certain countries but the list of countries you can call is pretty impressive. I had to send an email to the owner to get my account up and running. After that it was smooth sailing. I have started talking to people in Europe and the voice quality was surprisingly good.

YouMail

YouMail allows you to record customized greetings for different callers. So you could have one voicemail message for your wife and another one for your sister. Just be careful not to mix up the two. YouMails standard service is free.

Useful Gmail Tools

2007-05-11T22:21:00.000-05:00

Gmail: Gmail is Googles webmail. Google has put in some nifty features like keeping conversations in emails together to close integration with calendar. Gmail has become an integral part of many peoples lives and lots of people have come up with tools to make Gmail even better. List of tools after the jump.

Find information on the official gmail notifier for windows and mac here and the mobile app here.

Last Updated: May 11, 2007

Linux:

GmailFS uses your Gmail account as its storage medium

KCheckGmail a Gmail notifier for KDE.

Mac:

Address Book to CSV Exporter allows you to export your contacts to a CSV for easy import into Gmail.

gDisk is a software that turns your Gmail account into a portable hard drive so you can always have your important files accessible accross the Internet.

Gee is a notifier for the Gmail Atom Feed that sits in your menubar.

Plugins (Firefox):

Gmail Manager is a Firefox extension that allows you to keep an eye on multiple Gmail accounts.

GSpace is a Firefox extension that converts Gmail into online storage space. You get a ftp style interface to move files between your computer and Gmail.

Plugins (Other):

Apperture2Gmail is a plugin for the Mac Apperture and allows you to email your pictures using Gmail.

Gmail + Growl makes the Mac Google Notifier show Growl notification bubbles whenever new email arrives in your Gmail inbox.

Gmail IM Logger plugin for Trillian Pro logs your IM conversations to Gmail.

iPhoto2Gmail is a plugin for the Mac iPhoto and allows you to email your pictures using Gmail.

Youve Got Gmail is a Gmail Notifier plugin for Trillian Pro.

Websites:

E-Mail Icon Generator for Gmail and other emails.

Widgets:

Google Mac Dashboard widget to check your gmail accounts.

Windows:

GmailDrive creates a virtual filesystem around your Google Gmail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your Gmail account directly from inside Windows Explorer

Gmail Loader loads your emails into Gmail. The application also works on linux

Notifier2 allows you to check on multiple Gmail accounts, Google Adsense, Gdrive amongst other things.

Twitter Tools

2007-04-15T18:05:00.041-05:00

Twitter: Twitter is a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web! In other words you get a page and update your status with nothing more than a cell phone. Your friends or the whole world can view your latest status when your cat does something funny. Popular blogs and businesses update their going-ons via twitter like techcrunch or woot. List of 200+ tools after the jump.

Find information on the official tools here. These include the flash badge, javascript badge and the friends timeline badge. The official mobile version is here.

Last Updated: Mar 15, 2009

It boggles the mind how many services are going defunct.

Linux:

gTwitter allows you to read and write to twitter.

Vim script that allows to interact with twitter.

Mac:

Celly cute downloadable application that shows you the latest updates on twitter.

iTunes To Twitter apple script to publish your iTune playing song to twitter.

NatsuLion is a simple Twitter client for Mac OSX.

Tweet-r PC/Mac client for twitter to read and update tweets.

TwitterPod allows you to post to and read tweets. Also has search, growl, googlemaps integration.

TwitterPost allows you to post to and read from your Twitter feed.

Twitterrific is an application that lets you both read and publish posts or "tweets" to the Twitter community website.

Twittereeze is an extension to Twitterific. It allows you to set your iChat, Skype, Adium status to your twitter status.

Mobile:

Cellity allows you to update and receive tweets on your cell phone.

ceTwit is a windows mobile twitter client.

Fring allows you to do many things for free from your mobile phone including twittering.

~~GetMobio allows you to do many things from your mobile phone including twittering.~~

Jargong allows you to update and receive tweets.

Jitter Java twitter client for mobile phones.

JTwitter Another java twitter client for mobile phones.

Hahlo Twitter from your iPhone.

~~Mobio allows you to run many widgets on your phone. They have a Twitter widget to update and receive tweets.~~

Tiny Twitter Java twitter client to send and receive tweets for mobile phones and devices.

PocketTweets Twitter from your iPhone.

TreoTwit update Twitter from your Palm OS Treo or Palm OS PDA.

Twibble a GPS enabled twitter client for the Nokia N95.

Twidroid is an application for android (e.g. G1 - Google phone) mobiles.

Twinkle is an iPhone client that has location aware features.

Twittai is a Java program for your cellphone that allows you to tweet.

Twitteresce is a Java program that allows you to receive and send tweets.

TwitterBerry update and receive Tweets from your BlackBerry.

TwitterMail supplies you with a personal email address. If you send an email to that address it will be posted to Twitter.

Twobile is a Twitter client for users of Windows Mobile Pocket PCs.

~~Where GPS twitter widget for your mobile.~~

Plugins (Firefox):

BuyLater notifies you via twitter or email when a product of your choosing on amazon comes back in stock or the price changes..

Firefox Search Plugin - Part II that allows you to post to twitter from the search bar.

GoogleReader Firefox plugin allows you to share articles from GoogleReader to Twitter.

Power Twitter is a Firefox addition that enhances the twitter page with youtube videos, flickr etc.

Tweetbar firefox and flock sidebar that allows you to read and update your tweets.

TweetStalk is a firefox addon that allows you to stalk people without them knowing it.

Twitterbar is a Firefox/Flock extension that allows you to post twitter from the address bar.

Twitbin is a Firefox extension that allows you to post and receive tweets.

TwitterFox sits in the status bar of Firefox. Send updates and keep an eye on your friends.

TwitterLine is a Headline Toolbar for Firefox

TwittyTunes is a companion Firefox plugin for FoxyTunes. It allows you to post your currently playing songs to Twitter.

Plugins (Wordpress):

SimpleTwitter enables WordPress blog owners to easily add Twitter messages to their templates.

SimpleTwitter enables WordPress blog owners to easily add Twitter messages to their templates.

Twitter Sharts Shart your twitter status anywhere within your wordpress blog posts or pages??

Twitter Tools creates a 2 way street between twitter and blog. Publish on twitter or create blog posts from tweets.

Twitt-Twoo allows you to update your Twitter status right from your blog?s sidebar.

Twitter Updater automatically sends a Twitter status update to your Twitter account when you create, publish, or edit your WordPress post.

Twitter Wordpress Sidebar Widget lets you customize the number of tweets you want to see.

Plugins (Other):

Google Toolbar button allows you to see your friends tweets.

Maxthon sidebar Twitter plugin for Maxthon.

TikiTwit update your twitter status when you update your iChat status.

Twessenger windows messenger plugin that sets the status message to your latest twitter message.

Twitter Sync is a yahoo messenger plugin that syncs your status message with Twitter. You can also view tweets.

Web Services/Mashups (Maps):

Atlas microsoft live maps and twitter.

GeoTwitter google maps and twitter.

Mibazaar google maps and twitter.

My Tweet Map google maps and twitter integration.

Twitt Earth is a fancy spinning globe that shows tweets.

TwitterEarth fancy microsoft live maps and twitter.

TwitterMaps google maps and twitter.

TwitterVision google maps and twitter.

Web Services/Mashups (Utilities):

AlphaTwitter is a tool to see what’s being shared by twitter users. Most popular links rise to the the top.

AnswerMe is a tool to help you track questions you ask on Twitter.

AutoPostr lets your Twitter friends know whenever you post a new photo to flickr.

~~AutoTwit automatically schedule updates to twitter. This site points out that its pointless.~~

Brabblr allows you to keep an eye on and update your Twitter and Jaiku accounts from a central place.

Chirrup allows you to collect Twitter comments for your site.

CommuterFeed lets you keep an eye on traffic incidents through twitter.

CrowdStatus allows you to organize your contacts into groups.

EmailTwitter interact with twitter via email. Save money on SMS messages.

FeedTweeter lets you send your plurks to Twitter.

Flix Pulse is real time movie reviews based on Tweets.

Gridjit allows you to see tweets by users rather than in chronological order.

GroupTweet allows you to send private Twitter messages to specific groups.

Hashtags allows realtime tracking of Twitter Hashtags (#).

LiveTwitting is a mechanism to cover conference sessions.

MoniTwitter keeps an eye on your servers and informs status using Twitter.

Mr. Tweet looks through your extended network to help you build effective relationships on Twitter.

PingTwitter ping Twitter when you update your blog.

Quotably makes a twitter conversation into a threaded conversation.

Splitweet allows multi account Twitter management.

Stocktwits lets you follow stocks on Twitter.

Timer is a Twitter bot that helps you set an alarm for things you need to remember.

TrackThis allows you to track your Fedex, UPS, USPS and DHL packages.

Twannabe lets you find out who your Twitter hero is following and you are not.

Tweetl a url shortening service for twitter posts that also allows you to post to twitter from their site.

Twitzu allows you to create an event and let your followers know about it.

TubeStatus Get London tube status delivered via Twitter.

Tweet2Tweet tracks the public Twitter timeline to collect data in order to view conversations between two users

Tweetahead schedule tweets in the future.

TweetAnswers allows you to ask questions, get answers.

TweetBurner lets you shorten, tweet and track the links on Twitter.

TweetParty allows for group messaging on Twitter.

TweetShots takes screen shots of your tweets that you can embed in tumblr or other pages.

Twemes follows tweets that have embedded tags that start with a # character.

Twerpscan allows you to identify and block spammers on your Twitter contact list.

Tweviews lets you describe your impression of a song or a movie, a book or an album through Twitter.

Twibler automatically posts your new eBay listings to your Twitter account.

Twictionary is a repository for all sorts of words used on Twitter.

Twiddeo is Twitter plus video.

Twiddict allows you to Twitter even if Twitter is down.

Twistori visualizes tweets through a pretty interface.

Twifter finds common friends for a list of twitter usernames.

Twimbler is a tumble blog that gets updated through Twitter.

Twitabit stores your tweets when Twitter is down and then delivers them when Twitter comes back up.

Twitbacks allows you to create free twitter backgrounds.

TwitSay lets you leave voice messages on Twitter.

TwitterCal use Twitter to post events to Google Calendar.

TwitterCounter allows you to display a badge that shows the number of your followers

TwitterFeed will take your rss feed and post it to Twitter.

TwitterFone converts your voice message into a tweet and lets you listen to a recording also.

TwitterPacks answers the question: If someone were joining Twitter today, who might they follow?

TwitThis a button for your blog so that visitors can twitter about it.

TwitterShare allows you to share files (less than 10 MB) while using Twitter. Mac client available also.

Wiiizzz lets you see what tracks people are sharing on Twitter. You can also play the songs.

Who Should I Follow gives suggestions on interesting people to follow.

Web Services/Mashups (Other):

Bkkeepr Tracks the books you are reading.

Confess 2.0 confess your sins to Twitter.

Favrd lists interesting things on Twitter, based on the number of times an item has been declared a ‘favorite’.

Favotter collects a lot of favorites from many Twitter'ers.

~~FlickrMixr flickr and twitter integration.~~

Flussgeist integration of twitter and flickr.

InnerTwitter reconnects you to your original happiness by utilizing twitter.

Overheard It is a site that pulls in all the fun things people overhear on Twitter.

PoliTweets tracks conversations about US Presidential hopefuls.

Pulseofopensource follows heavyweights in the open source movement on Twitter.

Qwitter helps you quit smoking.

SnapTweet allows you to send your latest Flickr photo to Twitter.

Start4all a directory of important twitter pages.

Swotter read a book through twitter.

Tweet140 is a game. To win you need to maintain an average close to 140 characters per tweet.

Tweetgift is a simple way to send virtual gifts to your friends.

Twaction allows you to poke, slap, smile at your friends on Twitter.

~~Tweetweet tweets show up as conversation between two characters.~~

Tweetwire reformats tweets in a newspaper format.

Twit.io is a social database of categorized (jobs, events) tweets.

Twitdir allows you to search for friends (real or fake). Think of it as Twitter White Pages.

Twitku keep an eye on your Twitter and Jaiku messages.

TwitPic share your photos on Twitter.

Twitslikeme allows you to find other people who share your interests on twitter.

TwitterBlacklist is a list of known spammers of various kinds.

TwitterBrowser lets you browse ones friends graphically.

TwitCash a scheme to make money on twitter.

Twitterer second life and twitter mashup.

TwitterFountain allows tweets to be viewed real-time, big screen.

TwitterGram allows you to post audio messages to Twitter.

TwitLinks The latest links from the worlds top tech twitter users.

TwittPoll follow polls on twitter from twittpoll.

Twitterkarma allows you to see if you have a one way or two way relationship with your friends and followers.

Twitterku unintentional poetry pulled from the Twitter public stream.

TwitterLit publishes the first line of a book twice a day with a link to that book.

TwitterLocal allows you to find out whos Tweeting near you based on zip codes, states and locations.

TwitterMosaic mosaics created from Twitter user icons.

TwitterNotes allows you to check notes on Twitter. Notes start with a + sign

TwitterPlanetarium is a nice visualization for tweets. No options to speak of.

TwitterSnooze lets you disable your followers for a specified period of time.

TwitterTale track all the bad words being used on Twitter.

TwitSpy allows you to see all the incoming tweets in a fancy AJAXy way.

TwitterTube Based upon the latest Twitterings feed, this yahoo pipe creator gathers the matching youtube vids.

Twitterverse presents a tag cloud of all the twitters.

TwitterWatch lets you see all the latest tweets like a slide show.

TwitterWhere makes it easy to update Twitter with your current location.

Twubble searches your friend graph and picks out people who you may like to follow.

Visual Twitter allows you to send an image to your Twitter updates.

Wordy Birdie is a Twitter based word frequency quessing game.

Web Services/Mashups (Search):

Summize searches Twitter in realtime.

Terraminds is a search application for Twitter messages and users.

Tweetag allows you to browse tweets via tags.

TweetScan is a real-time search engine for Twitter posts.

~~Twitter.FM is a search engine that allows you to search what world's people are doing.~~

Twitterment fancy search engine with charts and comparison features.

Twittersearch allows you to search on Twitter Posts.

Twittersearch search the twitter conversations.

Twittersearch two flavors of custom Google Searches for Twitter. Find out who's favorited your tweets.

TwitterTroll the only real-time Twitter search engine!

Web Services/Mashups (Statistical/Analytical):

Intwition tracks what people are linking to and talking about on Twitter.

MobiFeedLive tracking, archiving and analyzing conversations on Twitter and Jaiku.

Monitter is a twitter monitor, it lets you "monitter" the twitter world for a set of 3 keywords and watch what people are saying.

TweeterBoard figures out who is influential by looking at who talks to you.

TweetClouds creates a cloud of the most frequently used words for a Twitter member's feed.

Tweetmeme tracks what’s hot on Twitter.

TweetStats graphs your Twitter stats including Tweets per hour, per month and Tweet timeline

TweetValue tells you how much your profile is worth in US dollars.

Twist allows you to see trends in Twitter

TwitBuzz is a content filtering service that tracks the latest popular links, conversations and people on Twitter.

TwitGraph measures your tweets and provides the data in colorful piecharts.

Twitigg is a listing of popular stories submitted on Twitter sorted by number of submitters.

TwitSpam keeps an eye on the top spammers at Twitter

TwitStat allows you to do real time Twitter analytics

TwitterBuzz see what links people are posting to twitter.

TwitterGrader measures the power of a profile.

Twitterholic keeps a tab on the twitter power users. Try to be #1.

TwitterLinkr is a service that aggregates public tweets.

TwitterMeter let's you query an index of words and plot the number of times that word was used over time.

TwitterPoster creates a mosaic that represents users with the most followers with bigger icons.

TwitterQuotient this site tries to answer if you a Twitter hero or zero by looking at your stats.

Twitterank is like page rank for your account. It tries to figure out how worthy you are in the twitterverse.

Twitturly is a service for tracking what URLs people are talking about on Twitter.

TweetVolume enter a few words and see how many times they appear on twitter.

Web Services/Twitter Integrations:

Facebook integration with Twitter.

Flix Wagon allows you to broadcast your life. Updates can be broadcast through Twitter.

Fuel Frog tracks your gas mileage so that you can see trends. Update your info through Twitter.

Moby Picture allows you to post pictures from your mobile phone directly to flickr and Twitter.

Mosio allows you to post questions from your mobile phone. You can post questions through Twitter also.

MultiMap Twitter Bot The Multimap twitter bot helps you get maps, directions and local information by sending messages to twitter.

Ping.fm is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap. Update Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Jaiku along with many more.

Polldaddy allows you to create a poll and post it to Twitter as your status.

Post like a pirate translates your message to pirate speak and allows you to send it to Twitter.

Remember The Milk allows you to manage your tasks. Send a message to the site via Twitter.

Splashcast media player allows you to interact with Twitter.

Squawk is a tool for second life, and allows you to connect your client up with services like Twitter.

Thingfo is an instant community for anything. Update Thingfo through Twitter.

Tupalo allows you to send a tweet through their website about the location (restaurant, bar) youre headed to.

Twee60 will automatically tweet your Xbox Live status to all your followers.

Wefi lets users receive notices of friends’ positions within the WeFi framework.

Widgets:

BeTwittered is a google widget for Twitter.

Google widget for the web that allows you to update and view your tweets.

Netvibes widget for the web that allows you to update your status.

Spinlet widget for the web that allows you to display tweets.

~~Twadget is a Google Gadget, update your status.~~

Twadget is a Windows Vista Gadget, track your friends Twitter status and update your own status.

Twidget is a Mac dashboard widget, update your own status.

Twitterlex is a Mac dashboard widget which allows you to follow friends and update your own status.

Yourminis is a widget by YourMinis for the web. Follow people and updates allowed.

Windows:

Flitter Screen saver with flickr and twitter mashup.

OutTwit update your Twitter status and follow your friends within Outlook.

Snitter PC/Mac client for twitter to read and update tweets.

TeleTwitter Windows client for twitter.

Twapp mini twitter browser and updater.

Tweet-r PC/Mac client for twitter to read and update tweets.

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air client for twitter that works on both PC and Macs.

TweetPad visualizes statistics on the source of the incoming messages.

Twhirl windows and mac client based on Adobe Air. Connects to multiple accounts.

TwitBox receive and send updates.

TwitterCamp is a desktop application that allows you to monitor tweets from your friends. Mac Compatible.

Twitterlicious allows you to receive updates.

Twitteroo update and receive tweets.

Twittit is a client to update your status.

Witty is a Vista client to manage your tweets.

XBox to Twitter checks your Xbox 360 Gamertag status every five minutes and then updates Twitter with your latest information.