Sunday, April 29, 2007

spend less phoning more people (and more...)

im gonna put down few lines about a bunch of new startups have been joining the tlc industry with such a disruptive set of technologies that make them powerful and sort of call 2.0

  1. Let's start with a smaller one Callwave, that is, just a little widget for Google homepage, yahoo!, vista and apple. It's just works! it's fast and easy: first time need a small registration procedure with a code delivered to your phone, then your msg from callwave will look like coming from your usual number, but i sent a msg with max char allowed by callwave but has been splitted up into 3 sms. they have a free plan  up to 5 sms a day but a still struggle for more... meanwhile the people at Callwave are working on a premium version able to send more sms.

  2. https://zyb.com/  plays  a role in the syncing thing, making possible store remotely all contacts, calendar and messages from most Nokia phones. It's useful the ability to add contacts from the web interface and import your Google calendar into Zyb, then sync it with your phone to have your gcal events show up in the standard calendar application in Nokia's phone. U can even send your SMS to a back up service number which take care of all your data and stores everything in your account. Just a complain is the lack of SMS editing and export function, that is, could be useful put down text through the web interface, export and send by the phone; then export as plain text locally as personal archive, but the overall concept and design has been made easy to use and reliable.
  3. When talking about international calls here I found out many services, some weird, some just to difficult to keep up with, but most of them still require a phone and a computer with network in the nearby the get working; the basic is making international calls cost as local ones. Jajah simply asks u to put in the web interface your number and friend number, click call and wait ringing your phone: still need a computer with network in the nearby. Rebtel instead assign a rebtel number to your contacts, thus using these numbers to call friends and let apply just local fares.
  4. Next for Skype lovers here a way to stay in touch with your contact there on the run: an interesting app for smart phones named soonr, that by the way sync hard disk content creating an access through mobile client. With Soonr the home computer acts as private phone operator forwarding calls on skype, so needs a computer running skype; pay to phone your skype account from the mobile.


emails, what do they offer?

Beside the wonderful daily service being provided by Gmail, there are some interesting things making email a real complete system of messaging. Anyway ill stick a bit at Gmail cos even that system could be tweaked a lot thanks to Google API. the main sources of customizations are userscripts.org and userstyles.org/ where lots of JS code is hosted; the only requirements are Firefox and the Greasemonkey add-ons.

here a list of JS for Gmail:

  1. Gmail Macros
  2. Gmail Colorizer
  3. Gmail Filter Assistant
  4. Gmail Header,Navigation and Ads Switcher
  5. Gmail Customize
All the JS listed above come from userscripts.org cos I haven't dug enough into userstyles.org where it's more likely find CSS layout as well.



Next im gonna talk about anonymous remailer as an option for private anonymous communications; the tools needed are a PGP crypto utility and a public key from a remailer service. First type in your msg and add a header with destination address and encrypt this text with remail public key; then send this encrypted text to the remailer which will take over the email decrypting and sending without any tracks in the header. This way there's lack of replying ability but is the safer method. Otherwise there're Pseudonymous remailer which simply takes away the email address of the sender, gives a pseudonym to

the sender and sends the message to the intended recipient (that can be

answered via that remailer). (source: wikipedia)



next there are not so useful tools but still worth of mention like mailboxes without any password required, that is, public mailboxes handy when not want to put your email in a registration form but still have the ability to check and register. plus it's a smart way to gives away 'your' email to people you don't fully trust, can even think a nick in the very moment you write it down for someone!



Last, whenever wants to keep secrets, as not spreading your mail to not intended fellows, a tool comes in aid: ever heard about Mission:Impossible? hehehe yeah self-destructive email! U set up time count-down like 30 sec then the email when opened by recipient lasts after 30 seconds! firing up through an animated GIF! it works converting text into a GIF hosted by bigstring servers which triggers as u set up. people at bigstring.com offers a way to keep editing ability even on sent emails.