DigitalFanGirl

I hate checking voicemail. Maybe as much as I hate going to the ATM or stopping to get gas. One of the things I hate about checking voicemail is the whole surprise factor. I never know who the heck I’m going to have to listen ramble on. Call me crazy, but it’s just one of the simple tasks I just truly hate to do. In my mind I’ve been wanting visual voicemail since I acquired my very first cell phone. I also wish I had this feature at work. Checking my work voicemail is the WORST – it’s like daggers in the eyes… (hint hint to all capable developers – this would be AWESOME)..

In one of my many web surfing journeys I ran across a service called YouMail. YouMail is a FREE visual voicemail service and they say they intend on keeping this basic service free (you go YouMail creators). So I’ve been using it for one week now and I really like it. Here are some of the YouMail features.

1. You sign up for YouMail (very easy process) and the calls you don’t answer get forwarded to your YouMail account instead of your wireless carrier voicemail system. It’s honestly that simple.

2. You can retrieve your email via dialing the voicemail number, or by going online to youmail.com or via your smartphone. You can also have your voicemails sent to you via email and/or text message. I have my voicemails sent via email and I click on the play message button (certain numbers of my mom’s mobile number have been oranged out).

3. You can even share your voicemail, which I think is pretty cool.

4. They have a feature called “Ditchmail”, which ditches unwanted callers. Ditchmail hangs up on unwanted callers before they can even leave a voicemail (I LOVE IT!!!). I think we’ve all had the experience of giving our number to someone (an ex- boyfriend, old friend, sales rep, etc) we truly wish we hadn’t. I recently did. I made the stupid stupid stupid mistake of giving my mobile number to a car dealership, but thanks to Ditchmail; I no longer have to be bothered by their unwanted phone calls (in your face Infinity of Tysons).

5. You can also set up different greetings for different callers. So your friends can hear a different greeting than your family and your boss and/or clients can also have their own greeting.

For this to be a FREE service, I think you get a lot AND if you hate the checking voicemail task as much as I do; you’ll find YouMail to be a pleasant relief to that daunting task.

I’ve tried a many screenshot capture programs in the past. For the longest time I used Snap n’ drag, but they had a lot of limitations in the free version, so there was only so much I could do with it. When I ran across Skitch last year, I was thrilled. It’s really a great little program – very impressive.

Skitch has so much to offer. It really goes beyond just taking a screenshot of a webpage and YES it does that beautifully. Skitch pretty much allows you to take a a snapshot of anything on your computer and annotate it with the drawing tools inside the Skitch window. I also like how you can save the snapshot to your Skitch history, email the snapshot, paste it into a page and I really love how you can upload your Skitch snapshot directly to your .mac account, FTP, SFTP, photobucket, flickr or your facebook account.

You can even take a screenshot of your webcam photo.

Right now Skitch is free and I have no idea if they will charge in the future, but if they do I am totally paying for it. It’s worth it. I use Skitch on a regular basis and it has now become a consistent part of my workflow on a personal and professional level.

If you’re a big note taker like me; you’re going to love Evernote. I’ve been using Evernote for a few months now and I am hooked on it. I take notes all the time and not always when I am at my computer. I’ve also been looking for a note taking service I can access from my BlackBerry because many times I get an idea or thought I need to jot down right away (before I lose it).

Usually I jot down my notes in memopad on my BlackBerry, but once it’s there that’s where it stays. Evernote mobile is clean and intuitive. When I use Evernote mobile that note or notes are then synced to the Evernote web version and the Evernote desktop app (once you power on your computer and open up the app it will begin to sync). How much more convenient can you get? Talk about making it a no-brainer for the user.

Evernote gives me (you) three ways to take notes;

on my desktop using the Evernote app

on the web

from my BlackBerry (this photo was taken in the desktop Evernote app using the isight note taking feature)

So no matter which way I take a note, it all syncs together – very convenient and very handy indeed. A lot of times you take notes on scrap paper or in a memo style type app on your computer, but if you’re away from your computer or on someone else’s; you don’t have access to your notes. With Evernote it doesn’t matter which medium you use to take notes because it all syncs up anyway so all your notes are consistent.

I’ve taken a bazillion notes and have not had to upgrade my service, but when it gets to that point I won’t hesitate to upgrade my Evernote plan; it’s only $45 a year.

Thanks EVERNOTE for making this note taker a very happy user……

It appears as though there is yet another twitter like service on the web and it’s called Plurk. Twitter was down Sunday night; actually it was down pretty much all day and night. I got wind of Plurk and went on over there to check this thing out and it was kinda fun hanging out over there.



It looks completely different from twitter, pownce and jaiku, which is kinda refreshing. But all-in-all, it’s the same concept. However, there are a couple things that stand out for me in Plurk that I really like. 1) the way you respond to someone’s plurk is nice because you can respond to a plurk and see the trail of responses just by clicking on the initial plurk.



2) Plurk allows you to share photos and videos, but the cool thing about sharing the photo is when you add the photo url to your plurk, other plurkers can click on that photo link and view the photo within the plurk timeline.


Other than that, it’s your standard 140 character messaging service, but it is a nice alternative when twitter is on that downtime madness.

P.S. Twitter – I still love you, but when you abandon me with that downtime, I need something else to get my quick fix of 140 character messaging. Still friends????

P.S.S. Plurk Me!

I stumbled across a service called ‘Tweet Cube’ and decided to give a test run. What is tweet Cube you ask??

By geekycybermom at 2008-05-20

TweetCube is a 100% free file sharing service for Twitter. You can upload as many images, archives, videos and songs as you want and share them on Twitter with your followers.

This is kind of cool, but it does make me think about Pownce, which I rarely use. Not that I don’t like Pownce, but majority of the people I connect with are on twitter. But Pownce does allows you to send out 140 character messages (like twitter) along with media such as files, photos and music. So all these other twitter services coming out that allow you to treat your twitter account like a Pownce account makes me wonder if the developers of twitter will add Pownce like features at some point.

I recently heard of a site called WhyGoSolo. I think someone mentioned it on twitter. Any-who, me being the geek that I am; I went on over to this site and to my surprise it was something I’d always wondered why it didn’t exist. A lot of times you sign up for events, conferences, workshops, seminars and sometimes you get tired of going to all these things alone. It’s nice to see a familiar face when you go to some of these events.

So why use WhyGoSolo?

WhyGoSolo is perfect for all the things you love to do but you don’t have the right person to do the activities with. WhyGoSolo is splendid for those occasions when you’re on the road traveling, left behind by your friends, stuck with cancelled plans or just relocated to a new area. WhyGoSolo is also ideal for those moments when you feel spontaneous and find yourself with an afternoon or day off or you want to try something new and meet someone new.

Needless to say I signed up. Not quite sure how long WhyGoSolo has been around and if there are a ton of users, but I believe it is worth signing up. Right now WhyGoSolo is free, but they are working on building partnerships with other venues, vendors and organizations to give WhyGoSolo membership holders discounts and benefits with these partners. I’m actually excited to see what partnerships they build.

Since this is the first version of WhyGoSolo if you Upgrade now you will receive a lifetime membership for the cost of the yearly membership fee.

Knowing this, I will most likely upgrade now. I think it’s an excellent offer. If you decided to sign up for WhyGoSolo; look me up and friend me. I’m on there as GeekyCyberMom of course….

The GlobalGrind Facebook app is pretty sweet I must admit. Essentially, what this app does is make it super easy for a GlobalGrind user with a Facebook account to access and utilize GlobalGrind within the Facebook framework. Adding the GlobalGrind Facebook app was simple and took no time at all. When you are logged in your facebook account and click on the Global Grind app, it looks just like the website for the most part. You see the latest popular photos, stories and videos, which you can choose to ‘grind’ or ‘trash’; as well as photos of new users of the week. Users can also submit a link to Global Grind, invite friends or take the Global Grind trivia challenge. Read the rest of this entry »

I am a contributing writer at Black Web 2.0. Check out my latest post on Free Project Manager.

I heard Adobe was going to release a free limited version of Photoshop. I signed up for it to take a peak to see what is has to offer. I’d first like to say that the layout for Photoshop Express is very attractive; actually it’s kinda sexy. Anyway, I started test driving Photoshop Express and the first RED FLAG I found was the fact that I could NOT upload psd, gif, png, or tiff files; only jpg files. This did not please me, but I went ahead and uploaded a jpg file and moved on.

The next thing I wanted to test was the resizing and cropping features. Second RED FLAG: when you choose to resize the image using one of the set sizing aspects, it chops off the dang image. Whereas in Photoshop, if you change the image size settings; the image remains in tact, it does not get chopped off. This sort of annoyed me. This is a simple task. Resizing an image should not be rocket science.

I didn’t try anything else within Photoshop Express. I glanced a the effects they have to offer and what not, but Photoshop Express is clearly not the product for me. I’m a Photoshop professional girl and I and need the full Photoshop package; the layers, filters, effects, various file type compatiblities, etc, etc. But I guess, it’s a good start. Photoshop Express is a heck of a first try though. I’ll give Adobe that much. It could turn out to be an excellent photo editing tool for the complete novice. We shall see.

How many times have you looked for jobs and wanted to have the ability to contact someone who works for or has worked for companies you are applying for jobs with? I know I have wished for this. You apply for jobs and you go on an interview and you then you get the job offer, but you have no inside track on how it really is to work for this company. Sometimes you just want to hear some opinions from employees who actually work there or have worked there in the past.

Criticat is a site that allows you to rate the company you work for and companies you have worked for in the past and share your work experiences. This sounds like it could be a really useful tool. Especially if Criticat really catches on and people use it and are truly honest with their ratings. I could really see the value in something like this. There are some places I’ve worked for that were horrible and if only I’d been given a heads up to the culture of that particular work environment I would have been better equipped; mentally, to deal with it or maybe I would have turned down the job altogether or maybe I could have asked more probing questions durung the interview. Too many ‘maybes’ to list. I’d like to see Criticat blossom because I can see how having the ability to go to a site to get an inside glimpse on a particular company could prove to be beneficial to someone to better prepare them for interviews and make better decisions on accepting job offers. So, I’m definitely going to keep my eye on Criticat. I’m curious to see if other people will take the time to participate in leaving their rating and work experiences.

If anyone has already use Criticat, leave a comment and let me know how you participated and what your opinion of Criticat is. Would also like to know if you see any real value in a site like this.

If you’ve been looking for a service that can transfer your document to an interactive online publication, look no further – Issuu is here.

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Check out what Issuu can do:

I got an invite for BBMNATION back in January I think. So I signed up to see what it was all about. Bbmnation is a social networking tool that allows you to connect with the people around you using BlackBerry Pins. So I signed up and completed my profile and started trying to figure out how Bbmnation worked. Dang, I was and still am confused. When I initially started roaming around I honestly didn’t know what to do and I thought; maybe they’re still working everything out; I’ll check back in a month or so.

I checked back a month later and was no less confused. There is no razzamataz to this site and there is nothing from a design perspective that grabs me and makes me want to stick around. Maybe that’s done intentionally (IDK). When I think of a social network, I think of a site where members join and engage in conversation within that site. This is not how Bbmnation works. With Bbmnation, you add friends to your ‘network’ and then you carry on further communication by contacting them using their BlackBerry pin and you converse – BlackBerry to BlackBerry.

I am trying to understand this, but it seems so pointless; like an extra unnecessary step. When BlackBerry owners contact other BlackBerry owners using their pin; it is free. This is a great, but in all honesty I’ve had two BlackBerries and have never used a pin to communicate with other BlackBerry owners.

Besides, just because someone has a BlackBerry; it doesn’t mean that I want to ‘befriend’ them. Being a BlackBerry owner is not a prerequisite for becoming friends.

If you are a BlackBerry owner, go on over to Bbmnation and signup. I’d really like to know what your opinion of Bbmnation is. Maybe I am missing something or maybe it really is as pointless as it seems.

There are more and more services popping up that allow anyone to easily and seamlessly create a website. All of these servicesgive you the ability to create a website in a matter of minutes; no programming required. They actually have some pretty nice looking templates and have some great features. There are four services in particular that I’ve been looking at and have referred to people who have $0 budget, but need a simple website built (whether it be or personal or business use).

Weebly, Roxer, 350pages, and Webnodes. These services say any novice can build a site with ease and I have to say; they are telling the truth. They have designed it so that a child could use any of these services and set up a webpage. I am really impressed with their features as well, especially Weebly and Webnodes.

Snapshot of Weebly’s features:

* Create a website & blog
* Switch designs on the fly
* Drag and drop interface
* Buy a new domain instantly, or
* Host your existing domain for free
* Add content elements, such as videos, pictures, maps, and text

Snapshot of Webnodes features:

Features
* Web 2.0 technology
* Real-time interactive editing
* Drag-and-drop technology
* Gadgets and widgets
* Bookmark and tagging
* Multiple file upload
* On-line document editing
* Free hosting
* Use your own domain
* More than 40 free templates
* Import a custom template
* Automatic SEO

Tools
* Articles
* Polls
* Discussion forums
* FAQ
* Dynamic lists
* E-commerce
* Site map
* Photo galleries
* Full-text searching
* Website statistics
* Webmail
* RSS

Webnodes has some pretty awesome templates too; very modern and up-to-date. They seem to be the most cutting edge out of the group of free website building services.

All of these services are free. It will be interesting to see if they remain free and if these services can survive.

I got an invite for Socialthing last week and I accepted it and poked around to see what it was all about. I signed up for it a few months back and actually forgot about it; as I typically do with all new apps I sign up for. So, this week there was all this fuss about Socialthing and I am honestly trying to figure out WHY…

Before I got my invite to Socialthing, I had already received an invite for MessageDance and was also signed up for FriendFeed. I know about at least 15 social media aggregators and I gotta say, Socialthing is not one of my favorites. In all honesty, although I am signed up with Socialthing, MessageDance and FriendFeed; I am not using any of them.

So why this big buzz about Socialthing? Two weeks ago the big buzz was about FriendFeed. I think it’s cool to have one place to stream all of your online activity, but Socialthing only allows you to drag in profiles from twitter, Live Journal, Vimeo, Pownce and flickr while FriendFeed allows you to drag in profiles from 28 other services. Not bad aye….. That’s way more than Socialthing allows you to drag in, but I am more impressed with Profilactic, who supports 144 different social sites by default, but they say you can add as many custom sites in as you want. Now that is something to get excited about.

Yet in still, I am not using any of these feed sites. I’m not sure exactly; I think I am experiencing profile fatigue (I’ll be blogging about that soon). I don’t feel like setting up another profile.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t know what all the hoopla is about Socialthing when there are clearly more and better lifestreaming apps available….Just my $0.02 cents.