A couple more free services for your cell phone

6 June 2008

I love David Pogue, the technology columnist for the New York Times. Sometimes what he writes is over my head, but often I get great nuggets of information. I share his love of the MacBook, so I feel warm and fuzzy toward him.

When I read his article in Wednesday’s paper, I started to feel a little superior. He was writing about free easy-to-use services for your cell phone. When I saw the first was GOOG-411, I thought to myself, “I blogged about that months ago!” He also mentioned Jott.com, which I’ve written about here several times.

But there were two services that were new to me, so I thought I’d pass them on to you. One is ChaCha, where you can ask a question—any question—and get an answer sent via text message to your phone. You can call in your question by calling 1-800-2CHA-CHA from a cell phone or texting to CHACHA (242242). Your question is sent to an actual human, who researches the answer and sends it to you via text message.

You can ask anything, from trivia (my first question, just because I wanted a verifiable answer, was “Who was the 17th president of the United States? It’s Andrew Johnson, btw) to the weather forecast to television scheduling to definitions. What a great way to settle a bet!

The other service mentioned in Pogue’s article is ReQall. Like Jott, ReQall transcribes your voice message and emails it to you. It’s all about reminders and it calls itself a “memory tool”. I haven’t had a chance to check out its various functions, but it purports to understand simple English, so that you when you, for example, say “Buy milk,” it automatically puts that item on your shopping list. Worth checking out. Once I test it, I’ll report back here if I like it.

The best part of all these services is that they’re free. In my view, they boost the value of my (admittedly underutilized) cell phone. They save me time and perhaps even my sanity. My aging brain does not remember like it used to. Thanks to some of these services, the consequences of my failing memory aren’t so dire.

Tagged with: david pogue, jott, productivity, technology, time management

Comments

I do love the GooG… what did we do before google?

Megan @ Disorder2Order June 6, 2008 06:43 PM

I know! I use GOOG 411 all the time. Speaking of Google, I haven’t read it yet, but the cover story of the new Atlantic magazine is Is Google Making Us Stoopid? It’s interesting to think how Google has affected our access to information and our patience for researching.

Janine Adams June 7, 2008 06:05 AM

Pogue wrote, "I’d have said the MacBook Pro, but I find those 15- and 17-inch models too big for convenient portability; I know this is a matter of personal choice, but I always feel like I’m carrying around a serving tray.”

That’s what he said!

I love my serving tray.

Geralin Thomas, CPO-CD June 8, 2008 01:40 PM