Jan 16
PrivatePhone was/is a service from NetZero that provided you with a local telephone number that sent calls directly to a voicemail system that you could then listen to online or over the phone. They are now discontinuing the service as of February 19th 2008, and so since I used them I had to look around for some alternatives. They are offering to transfer your PrivatePhone number to another company, but the prices weren’t attractive to me.
So far I have come up with two. eVoice and Grand Central. Grand Central was bought by Google not too long ago, and I am currently using it. You need to signup for an account through their site because it is still in beta. I signed up to reserve a number and was notified almost immediately that they were offering me an account, so the wait time doesn’t seem to be too long (or wasn’t for me yesterday).
Grand Central gives you a local phone number that you can have ring any number of phone numbers. You are able to choose what town the number originates from (state, town) and then select one number from a list of a few they have available in that location. I chose a number that coincided with my PO Box. You can then have the number ring you at your leisure. The Grand Central website is very easy to use and makes it easy to figure out how to do what you want to do. Caller ID can either show the caller’s phone number or the Grand Central number. I chose the latter because then I know when a call is coming from the Grand Central service and I can choose to ignore it and let it go to voicemail. I don’t know how the service is but it’s from Google and so far it’s free.
Another company I found is eVoice but I haven’t used them and I wasn’t able to find any reviews on them. But it is from the same company who operates eFax, so how bad can it be?
If you have tried any of these services please comment with your impressions so that others may learn. Also, feel free to suggest alternatives for us all to try and document.
Jan 12
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Owners of analog TV sets can send off their application for a free converter box to prepare for the digital switch over that will happen in February 2009. Two coupons will be sent to each person who applies, worth $40 off a digital converter box each.
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Farmers in Nebraska and the Dakotas brought the U.S. closer to becoming a biofuel economy, planting huge tracts of land for the first time with switchgrass and proving that it can deliver more than five times more energy than it takes to grow it.
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TomTom, a maker of personal navigation devices, said Wednesday that customers can now use Google’s mapping service to find business addresses and then transfer them via a computer to a TomTom gadget.
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It has been reported that Microsoft wants to acquire computer peripherals maker Logitech for $8 billion. The firm’s co-founder doesn’t want to sell. He only owns 6% of shares, but the deal could still be a problem with antitrust regulators.
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Many sugar-free chewing gums contain a sweetener called sorbitol. Sorbitol is a laxative which is poorly absorbed by the small intestine. Two patients had chronic diarrhea, abdominal pain and dangerously excessive weight loss. They chewed too much gum.
Tags: Acquisitions, biofuel, Business, Energy, ethanol, fuel, Google, gps, green, Health, IT, logitech, Microsoft, Science, technology, Television, tomtom
Nov 30
I recently read a PC World article about a Google page that has a form where you can report a malicious website (a site with bad content like viruses and the like). It’s a new feature that Google unveiled (announcement). I found that Google will validate a url passed to it and insert it into the form. I thought this would be much better if you could click a bookmark in your browser and automatically pass the url of the current website to the Google form. So I created a bookmarklet (bookmark with javascript) and here it is.
Drag the bookmarklet link to the bookmark area of your browser. And when you click it a new window will be opened showing the Google form with the URL of the bad site filled in for you.
Bookmarklet: Report Malicious Site
Spread the word so everyone can help get rid of bad sites. Enjoy, from Jason of JasonBlogs.com.
Oct 27
Gmail now supports IMAP, in addition to POP3. So use it if you want it.
Source: Google Blog
Oct 25
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Would-be technologists are turned off by the tech crash of the early ’00s, the shift of jobs overseas to outsourcing providers, and an overall perception of IT as a go-nowhere, nuts-and-bolts profession, observers say. Good thing I love my job.
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Internet search leader Google is sharpening its focus on the television ad medium with demographic data from the Nielsen. Google will pay Nielsen an undisclosed amount to obtain detailed information about the kinds of people who watch specific TV shows.
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Microsoft is investing $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. The investment values Facebook at $15 billion. As part of the deal, Microsoft will sell the banner ads on Facebook outside of the United States, splitting the revenue with them.
Sep 15
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The SCO Group today filed for bankruptcy protection, weeks after losing key court rulings in its legal fight against Novell, IBM and others over Unix intellectual property. Is this an attempt to get out of their Monday court date?
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Carmakers lost a bid to block carbon-reduction rules in Vermont. The decision, if upheld, will bolster efforts by states to regulate carbon dioxide and gases linked to global warming in advance of federal regulations.
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Google will sponsor the newest contest by the X Prize Foundation. Teams will compete to land a privately funded robotic rover on the moon. $20 million will be awarded to the first team to do this no later than Dec. 31, 2012.
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Scientists have developed the first non-stick, biodegradable gum. In most situations, it doesn’t stick to pavements, clothes, shoes or hair - and tests by gum aficionados have confirmed it has the same texture, taste and chewiness as gum.
Aug 23
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Placing a film of silicon nanoparticles onto a silicon solar cell can boost power, reduce heat and prolong the cell’s life, researchers report. I love solar power news like this.
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One of Armadillo Aerospace’s vehicles crashed and burst into flames. The vehicle went up on its own and had to be shut down, and then crashed to the ground. Sounds like it was going well on its own, so it could be a success.
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YouTube is set to show advertising for the first time in videos. Not really news. And we’ll find out if it works well or not soon enough
Aug 20
If you’re like me then you get a lot of Russian spam in Gmail. There has been no way to filter it out, until now. I found that if you create a filter to search for emails that have the words “в OR и” you will filter out a lot of the Russian spam.
Though it would be nice to filter out all non-english emails, considering I don’t deal with anyone who doesn’t speak english. Though I imagine if I sold things on ebay that could be a small problem, but I don’t.
Source: Dr Nic (5th comment)
Aug 03
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Morgan Webb’s new video news blog.
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You are able to see all the content submitted to Slashdot: from RSS Feeds and user submissions, to journal entries and successful completed Slashdot stories. You can participate by voting on these entries. Reminds me of Digg.
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Google Inc. has developed a prototype cell phone that could reach markets within a year, and plans to offer consumers free subscriptions by bundling advertisements with its search engine, e-mail and Web browser software applications.
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Google, the Internet search giant that’s pulled in billions of dollars in online advertising, is looking to break into the market for mobile phone ads, according to one report Thursday.
Jun 01
Google has sealed the deal on a purchase of the popular FeedBurner service. I have loved FeedBurner for a while now, though I don’t really take advantage of all their features. It might be that great logo or their elegant and simple site design. I do use them to alleviate the stress of serving my site’s feed. I just hope that Google doesn’t ruin them. Google has a tendency of neglecting services they buy. They just became too big and unwieldy.
Source: Feedburner blog - It’s True-gle
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