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Filed under: Fun, Productivity, Social Software

Sleep.fm: building a better alarm clock?

Sleep.fm is a personalized alarm service for your computer, phone, or Internet-enabled alarm clock that lets you and your friends leave each other personalized wake-up messages. While I agree that waking up to the radio, the standard alarm clock beep, or some obnoxious fake birds is less than ideal, I'm not sure I'm 100% sold on the utility of Sleep.fm.

I started to get the picture a little more clearly after checking out a video on the Sleep.fm FAQ page. In this little demo, a woman who had missed her Japanese studies the day before wakes up to a teasing message from a friend, in Japanese. I think that says a lot about what Sleep.fm is trying to do: turn the wake-up alarm into another useful way to communicate. I wouldn't object to waking up to a message that all of my meetings for the day were cancelled, for example, or finding out about a change of lunch plans with a friend.

Isn't that what we have voicemail, email, text messages and Twitter for, though? I agree with the Sleep.fm theory that waking up is personal, but for me that means just wanting to be left alone. If you're the kind of person who likes to jump right into the day with new information, someone who checks email and rss feeds before even getting out of bed, this might be a good new tool in your arsenal. The site is taking signups now for its upcoming relaunch.

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, E-mail, Mozilla, Freeware, Open Source

Thunderbird: auto delete duplicate messages

Thunderbird: auto delete duplicate messagesIt's a problem we've all faced before: We venture away from web based email programs to try those cool-looking desktop email clients everyone's raving about. After getting through the hassle of making sure everything syncs properly, one of the problems many seem to face is duplicate messages. Well, open source Thunderbird users don't stand around letting problems be; They face them with Thunderbird customizations like the Remove Duplicate Messages add-on.

Released by Thorsten W. Schmidt on the Mozilla site, the add-on searches a given folder for duplicate messages and automatically deletes them by tagging all duplicates with a delete flag and one message with the keep flag. To use it, first install it from the Mozilla site. Once installed, open Thunderbird and right click on a folder. Click "Remove Duplicate Messages" and that's it.

The add-on also lets you configure what fields you want to compare such as sender, message, etc. It also checks sub-folders, and can analyze about 1000 messages per second. Finally, you can choose to keep the
the bigger, smaller, unread, first found, or last found Message if you have a preference.

[via ghacks]

Filed under: Business, Fun, Internet, Blogging, E-mail

Spinvox puts a new spin on your mobile phone

In principle Spinvox is very similar to Jott: it allows you to blog from your mobile phone and send messages to yourself and others, as well as convert your voicemail into a text message you can read on the spot. Here's a rundown of Spinvox's features:

Voicemail: From a caller's standpoint, nothing changes about your voicemail process. After someone leaves a voicemail, however, Spinvox will convert the message into text and automatically send you a text message and email with the transcript of the message. This can be great for messages left while you're in a meeting and can't pick up the phone, or phone calls that come while you're in an area too loud to answer.

Memos: Need to remember to pick up some milk on the way home? The memo option allows you to call and leave a message for yourself that will be sent to your email inbox.

Email: The email option, called "broadcast" by Spinvox, allows you to send the same message to a large group of your contacts at the same time. While Jott sends mass emails or text messages, Broadcast on Spinvox is limited to text messaging contacts.

Blog: The blog client allows you to post blog posts directly from your phone to Blogger, Vox, and LiveJournal blogs. If you have several different users on your blog you can give them all the blog number and allow everyone to post via mobile phone.

Spinvox works with any cell phone or carrier in and can be test driven for free with later pricing based on your usage of the service.

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, Productivity, Web services

Leave a message on your Backpack with voiceNote

voiceNote for Backpack
Ever wish you could call your Backpack account and leave a voicemail? Me neither, but now that someone thought of the idea and cranked out voiceNote for Backpack (beta, of course) - I can't wait to start dialing! To sign up, you simply have to enter your name, email, Backpack URL, the email address of the Backpack page you want these voice messages sent to and up to three phone numbers from which you'll be calling. You then simply dial a specific number to make your call and leave your message. celltell, this service's provider, lists about 7 U.S. numbers in major cities you can call to use this service, but I would imagine that if you have long distance dialing, it shouldn't be a problem no matter where you are in the country. The voiceNotes are added to your specified Backpack page "a few minutes" after your call as small Flash players, complete with export-ability to an MP3 file.

This looks like a fantastic (and unexpected) addition to an already stellar online PIM. If you try it out, feel free to let us know what you think in the comments.

Filed under: Audio, Fun, Text, Blogging, Web services

Group SMS your friends with Twttr

twittr sms friendsTwttr is an online service that recently launched, and allows you to send group sms messages to a friends list. The service is free, and allows you to text to one number, and have it hit all of your desired individuals.

Conversations and messages are stored online in an archive, and current status messages can be placed on websites to serve as a notification if the user is currently online.

Twttr is built by the makers of Odeo, the podcast search engine that lets you record and share audio.

Filed under: Google

New Google Gmail features on their way

Some new features are rumored to be on their way into Google's Gmail web mail application.

Garett Rogers checked out the source, only to find that the code for them is present, but the variables are set to false.

The new features in question are:

Deleting all spam messages - no need to select>all, then delete.
Apply filter to - creating and applying filters to messages, helping to keep mail organized

There is no news as to the release date of these new features, but there have been rumored sightings of individuals who have been getting the "delete all spam" button.

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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