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Too Many Choices March 11, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.
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The whole “freedom of choice” concept may be over-rated in this new-fangled internet era.

I have a cell phone.  In spite of the innumerable choices available, I have been able to settle on a phone, a Samsung Epix running Windows Mobile 6.1.  Like any thoroughly modern phone, this phone does everything you could possible want, up to and including making and receiving phone calls.

In the course of doing everything except for making phone calls, I tend to accumulate data on my phone.  Text messages pile up.  Pictures, too.  Videos.  Ringtones.  Music.  Email messages.  Calendar entries.  Contacts. Todo lists.  Since my phone runs Windows and Office, even Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.  For the modern Mobile Compulsive, all this data must be managed, organized, and protected from sudden loss.  Since phones tend to get lost, break, or go suddenly autistic, having some sort of backup plan for your data is a Good Thing.

It turns out that lots of people think it’s a Good Thing, and they’ve all set out to capture this burgeoning market serving the Mobile Compulsive.  The concept is simple: back up all my mobile data, transparently, in real time.  I love this idea, and am anxious to find the solution.  Unfortunately, there are too many solutions, and they are all different.

Dashwire was one of the first of these services to emerge.  It provides a nice interface to your data on their web site, and dutifully tries to link to all your social networking sites.  It also lets you restore your data to a new phone, which is pretty nice.  Unfortunately, the phone client was a bit intrusive and flaky the last time I tried it.

Shozu has perfected the art of grabbing your photos and videos in real time.  It doesn’t back them up directly, but instead pushes them to any of dozens of photo and social networking sites.  It doesn’t handle any other files, and doesn’t  actually store anything on your behalf.

Microsoft’s Live Mesh started out as a PC-to-PC synchronization service, and recently extended the model to include mobile devices.  Live Mesh not only grabs stuff off your phone, it instantly pushes copies to and from any other device in your mesh.  It even provides a desktop view in the cloud, which is clever.

Most recently, Microsoft launched My Phone, which handles most of the data on your phone.  It even handles multiple phones, and collects the data on a nice web dashboard.  It has some of the trappings of Dashwire, but promises more features along the lines of Live Mesh.

Which do I want?  All of them!  Grab everything in real time.  Push it everywhere I want.  Keep a copy in the cloud.  Restore my phone when I lose it.  Provide a stable client with a near-zero footprint on my phone.

What am I using?  All of them!  But not at once.  Instead, I use Dashwire until I tire of the client oddities.  Then I use Shozu until I get too nervous about my non-media files.  I tried Live Mesh for a while, but it doesn’t handle contacts and such.  I’m now toying with My Phone, but am suddenly thinking that Dashwire had it right all along.

Life would be so much easier if there was just one choice, good or bad.  I’d spend a lot less time installing and configuring things, and I’d at least know what to expect from my phone on a regular basis.

It has been suggested that what I really need is a small dose of Xanax every day, and then I wouldn’t care what happened to my phone or its data.  Maybe.  But maybe I should try Paxil, or Zoloft.  Or maybe Cymbalta would be better.   Gaah!

State Your Name February 25, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.
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There are many unsung heroes in the history of technology.  Today, I’d like to salute Ted Paraskevakos, the inventor of Caller ID.  Ted started working on Caller ID back in 1968.  I cannot believe that 40 years have passed and we still have not erected a monument to him somewhere.  I would have settled for a Bud Light Real Men Of Genius salute, but even that has not come to pass.

Caller ID converted the phone from something controlled by the caller to something I control.  In olden days, you pretty much had to pick up the phone; you never know what lay at the other end.  Good news or bad, you took your chances, and you often got stuck with some interminable sales call.

With Caller ID, I get to choose my conversations.  Whether the goal is catching that important call or avoiding a bothersome caller, Caller ID puts us all in charge of our phones.  In the past, this luxury was reserved to those with full-time personal assistants.  Now, we are all in control of our phones.

Best of all, I can now completely avoid calls from people who insist on blocking their Caller ID information.  When the phone rings and the display shows “Unknown,” there is only one course of action: dump the call to voice mail.  Who in their right mind would take a call from someone who is intentionally hiding their identity prior to the call?  Most telling, the vast majority of these callers never leave a message.

Long-time readers know that I am a big fan of YouMail, the personalized voice mail service for your cell phone.  Among the many marvelous features of YouMail is the ability to detect and handle blocked Caller ID separately from your other calls.  In my case, callers get a message telling them that I do not accept blocked calls, and that they need to call back with the Caller ID information exposed.  The call is then dropped, without even giving the caller a chance to leave a message.

So, a word of advice to potential callers: show yourself.  If I have time, I’ll usually take the call.  But if you block your name, I guarantee that I will never take your call, at home, or work, on on my cell.

On the other hand, if “Ted Paraskevakos” ever shows up on my phone’s display, I will definitely take the call.

Tools That Work: YouMail April 28, 2008

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Technology.
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Every so often, some enterprising firm delivers a new way of handling an old problem that is fun, easy, and clever.  YouMail is exactly that: fun, easy, clever voice mail for your cell phone that absolutely blows away any other personal voice mail service I’ve seen.

At the most basic level, YouMail is a free replacement for whatever voice mail your carrier provides for your cell phone.  Getting started is easy: go to www.youmail.com, register, provide your cell phone info (number, carrier, and model), and follow the easy online instructions to switch your phone to the service.  Fret not: if you really don’t like it, they’ll show you how to switch back.

After this two minute process, you’ll have a good replacement for your existing voice mail.  Now you can begin exploring all the neat features of YouMail:

  • Begin by adding your contacts to YouMail.  Record a custom personal greeting for each contact, using your phone or their web interface.  When that person calls, they get a personal greeting.  Set up specific greetings for your spouse, kids, coworkers, and boss.
  • Assign your contacts to groups.  Record a greeting for each group.  This is very effective: your business contacts get a formal business greeting, while your family and friends get a more casual greeting.
  • Don’t have the time to record all those greetings?  Turn on Smart Greetings, and YouMail will address each caller by their first name using a generic greeting.
  • Turn on text and email notifications.  By default, YouMail will continue to manage the voice mail indicator on your phone, notifying you when a message is waiting.  It can also send you an email or a text message.  Best of all: the email has the audio file attached to it, so you can listen to your messages through your email.  That’s right: Unified Messaging for free on your cell phone!
  • Turn on transcription.  If you wish, YouMail will include a transcription of the message in the email or text message.  This feature is in beta and either works really well or delivers hilariously wrong transcriptions.
  • Mark bothersome callers for “DitchMail:” YouMail intercepts their call, plays a message, and hangs up without allowing them to leave a message.
  • Use DitchMail for callers who block their caller ID.
  • Manage, review, and archive your voice mail through YouMail’s nicely-designed web site.  Forward voice mails to others via email and send text messages to callers for free from the YouMail web interface.
  • Use any of several thousand silly greetings for your callers.  Not particularly professional, but certainly amusing.  Hearkens back to the early 80s when people would buy “celebrity message” tapes to record on their answering machines at home.
  • Find out who called but didn’t leave a message when your phone was off.  YouMail reports every call you receive, even if the caller leaves no message or hangs up before they hear the beep.  Nips those “I tried to call but you weren’t there” excuses in the bud.

What doesn’t it do?  I have only one quibble with YouMail: you cannot bulk upload your contacts.  Typing in lots of contacts is simply too hard.  I started by loading in my most common contacts, and I add new callers the first time they show up in my call log.  In keeping with my request for better site integration, I’d like YouMail to grab all my contacts from Plaxo and keep them in sync.

YouMail is the perfect blend of useful fun, all for free.  You can use it to better manage your professional voice mail and still have fun with family and friends.  Take a moment to check it out; it will be five minutes well-invested.

Tools That Work: Jott February 22, 2008

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Technology.
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It’s time for another quick review of a tool that works.

Often, I find myself needing to add something to my To-Do list, which I manage through my Outlook Tasks.  If I’m in front of a computer, I can quickly pull up Outlook and add an item.  That item is synchronized immediately with my phone through ActiveSync, and with all my other computers and email clients through Plaxo.  Once in my phone, it is easy to review my tasks and check them off as I complete things.

If I’m not in front of my computer, adding an item to my task list is a real pain.  I can go to my tasks on my phone, of course, and create a new item, but that is tedious and time consuming.  Instead, I use Jott.

Jott is drop-dead simple to use.  Call Jott on your phone, tell it what you want, Jott transcribes the item, and emails it to you (or anyone you want).  Seconds later, it’s in your Inbox.  From there, you can turn it into a task, save it to a file, or whatever you want. Jott knows who you are from your phone’s caller ID information, so you don’t need to log in or explicitly authenticate when you call.  You can also create multiple Jotts with a single call, which is handy.

Jott uses speaker-independent voice recognition and does an amazing job of transcribing your words into accurate text.  Once you create your account on Jott, you can also create a contact list.  When you call, you can Jott yourself, or you can Jott anyone on your contact list by name.  It all just works, and works well.

Jott also lets you connect your Jott account to a broad range of web services.  You can send a Jott to Zillow and get a house price back via text message.  Jott Twitter or Jaiku to update your account.  Jott to a bunch of different task management services (30boxes, Remember The Milk, or Sandy).  You can even Jott your blog (WordPress, TypePad, or Blogger, but not Xanga!) or your Google calendar.

Once you start using it, you wonder how you did without it.  Best of all, it’s free, and all you have to do is add 1-866-JOTT123 to your phone’s contact list (and put it on a speed-dial, like I did).  Do yourself a favor: take 30 seconds to enroll with Jott and give it a try.

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