A Little Bit of Fun with "Just the Computer Essentials"

Hi everyone! I just wanted to point out that I've added something fun to the http://www.booksbyjim.com/ website. Head over to the website and then click on "Fun" along the top. You'll then be taken to every piece of Just the Computer Essentials fun merchandise you can possibly imagine - t-shirts, sweatshirts, boxers, baby clothes, coffee mugs, baseball caps, and more!

Everything is done through a very reputable company (CafePress). I ordered a few different kinds of shirts already and was really impressed with the quality. I just wore them out on the town this weekend and actually had some great conversations with a number of people.

So, take a look and I hope you find something you like! Here a direct link as well:
http://www.cafepress.com/booksbyjim

Guess what friends and family are getting for Christmas this year!!! ;)

-- Jim
Author of Just the Computer Essentials
http://www.booksbyjim.com/

A Couple Great Free Services (Part 2)

Hi everyone! In the last article A Couple Great Free Services (Part 1), I talked about what a great service Jott is. Today, I want to talk about another great service...

GrandCentral


Recently acquired by Google, GrandCentral is an amazing and innovative idea. And best of all, they come through on what they want to accomplish. Here's the gist of how it works...

You go to GrandCentral website (http://www.grandcentral.com/) to reserve a phone number you'd like to have and sign up with your name and email. Right now there's a waiting list, so you need to get on that. Once you get your invite, you can then log into your account and get started with the good stuff.

The phone number you selected initially will now be your number that you give out to friends and family. Within GrandCentral, you can add the phone numbers of other phones you want to include - maybe your cell phone, work number, and possibly your home number. You can also import your address book from other email programs (Yahoo!, Gmail, Outlook, Outlook Express, etc.)

So, with the default settings, here's what now happens...

• Someone calls your phone number (the main GrandCentral number).
  
• All the phones you have under that umbrella ring (your Caller ID will still show the person calling like it normally does).
  
• You pick up one of the phones ringing and you now have a few options:
• Accept the call just like a normal call and start talking.
• Send the caller directly to voicemail.
• Send the caller to voicemail, but listen while they are leaving their message, in case you want to pick it up (how cool is that - like an answering machine at home!)
• Accept the call and record the conversation (the caller does get alerted to this and even so, keep in mind that this is not legal in some states)

Well, Jim, it's pretty cool that this number is now a permanent number and no one needs to remember or even know any of your other numbers, but can't it do anything else?

I am glad you asked! How about this:

• Joe calls you and you've answered your phone at the office, but you need to get on the road. Before GrandCentral, you could interrupt Joe's story and tell him you'll call him back from your cell phone. With GrandCentral, however, you just press the asterisk key (*) on your phone and all your phones will ring again. You pick up on your cell phone and Joe continues his story (blah, blah, blah...). That's one of my favorite features.
  
• In the middle of a call, Kevin is about to give you directions to get to the party you're heading to in about an hour. Just press four (4) on your phone and the conversation starts to be recorded. When you're done with the directions, just press 4 again (or hang up) to stop recording. You can now access the recording just like a voicemail when you've made a wrong turn on Albuquerque and need to figure out where you went wrong.
  
• Block callers as spam, just as easily if you can with email.
  
• This one I think is really cool... you can create different voicemail messages for different people or different groups of people. Imagine everyone calling and getting one voicemail message but when Dawn and Lisa call, they get a different voicemail letting them know that your cell phone doesn't work well where you're at and to just meet you at the bar.

There's a bunch of other features as well, but I'll let you go check those out yourself.

The GrandCentral website is a straight-forward, simple, yet elegant dashboard to manage everything. You can quickly setup a "quick rule" to just send all calls to voicemail or just send all calls to a temporary forwarding number. You can play your voicemails and even something called Click2Call that lets you click on a phone number of someone to easily call them (GrandCentral calls you first and then connects to the number you clicked to call).

The potential for GrandCentral is amazing. And they've recently been acquired by Google which helps to ensure the stability of their network. GrandCentral is still in beta and they are currently looking at keeping the service free, while making some of the features available at an affordable cost. While in beta, all the features are free.

I am really impressed with GrandCentral and definitely would recommend this to anyone looking for some fun, cutting-edge technology that can actually make you more productive. GrandCentral can be found at http://www.grandcentral.com/.

If you get an opportunity, check out both services - GrandCentral and Jott (from Part 1). I hope I was able to provide some good info on both of these for you. Have a great week!

-- Jim
http://www.booksbyjim.com/

A Couple Great Free Services (Part 1)

Hi everyone... sorry it's been so long since my last post! I thought I'd go a little off topic today to talk about a couple services that I've been messing around with lately that I think are going to turn out to be something great. And best of all - they're free! Keep in mind though that they are both in beta (released for testing purposes and not ready for full release because they may still be buggy). Once they are ready for full release, things may change - certain features may be charged for, etc.

Here's the first of these invaluable services...

Jott

Jott is already becoming one of my best friends. The concept is simple, but great. Once you sign up, you can register your phone/email address and configure any desired options. Now, the fun begins!

Have you ever been driving and you think of something you need to do or a song comes on the radio that you want to jot down? But you either don't have a pen or piece of paper handy or don't want to kill yourself trying to write while driving. Now all you need to do is call Jott's toll free number from the phone you registered. Jott recognizes that it's you without you needing to do anything and asks who you want to Jott. On it's simplest level, you say "myself," Jott says "OK, Jott yourself," and then lets you record a short message. Then you hang up.

You might be thinking - "Wonderful, they invented voicemail." Not so fast, grasshopper! There's a wonderful little extra in this that makes it great. Once you've left your message, Jott then transcribes your message into text and sends it to wherever you've told it to send it to. So those items you need to pick up at the grocery store gets sent to you as a text message. You get to the grocery store and check the text message to see what you probably would have otherwise forgotten. Simple, yet effective.

I have both my phone and email setup to receive the messages. Now if I Jott myself, I get both the transcribed message sent as a text message to my phone (text message charges with your carrier do apply) and I also get it in an email. In addition, the email message lets you play your actual message you left. So if it wasn't transcribed perfectly and you can't figure out what it says (sometimes the transcriptions aren't perfect!), you can just listen to the message yourself.

Now, even though that's the feature that I love about this whole service, Jotting yourself to get a text message or email is only part of what you can do. Jott lets you import your address book so you can Jott friends and family just as easily. Instead of saying "myself" when asked who you want to Jott, you can now say the name of someone in your Jott address book and send them a message just as easily.

I always seem to think of everything on my quiet drive to work early in the morning and sometimes try to remember everything by the time I get to work (I always seem to forget though!). Or, I never have anything ready to write on while driving (probably not the safest thing to do anyway). So for me, this has definitely been a lifesaver.

Hopefully when the service comes out of beta, it continues to be free, but if it isn't, it is still something that I've already found quite useful and would consider subscribing to (if the price is right!).

Jott's website is www.jott.com and I hope it will prove as useful for you as it does for me.


In the next post, I'll talk about another service that I've just started to get involved with and am already fascinated with the possibilities it has to offer!

See you soon!

-- Jim White
www.booksbyjim.com