Sending Text Message to Cellphone Regardless of Service Provider

From: LawTech Guru Blog by Jeff Beard:

Teleflip solves the problem of having to know all the different domain names for each wireless carrier's service. Regardless of which carrier your intended recipient is using, just send a text message or e-mail to the person's 10-digit phone number at teleflip.com, like this: 8005551234@teleflip.com Teleflip figures out who's on which service, and it gets there in a few seconds like magic. No registration required -- just send the message per above.

Per the site: "Teleflip^TM started when the founder became increasingly frustrated at his inability to send text messages to friends' cell phones from his PC. It was of course possible, but you had to know the cell phone provider, the correct domain name and the correct syntax for the email address. There had to be an easier way....Teleflip^TM was born."

When sending a text message -- called SMS (for short message system) -- keep the following limitations in mind:

• SMS messages are limited to 160 characters, including the To: and Subject: fields.  All characters after 160 are simply lost in transmission and join your lost socks in a parallel universe.
• No attachments will come through.

After-market Car GPS Units

After-market Car GPS Units

From: Tom's Hardware:

Knowing an exact geographic position and finding the way to another location always has been a challenge no matter at which time we look at. Over the past several thousand years, mankind has found countless innovative ways to master this task, leveraging geographical characteristics, constellation of planets and stars and later also tools such as sextants and compasses. Today, navigation is made easy with most people relying on detailed maps and road atlases. For a few years, many of us learned to value the usability of online services such as Mapquest that simplify navigation tasks and help us find street routes.

However, Global Positioning System (GPS) continues to revolutionize how we get from A to B. Interactive maps and real-time satellite tracking have the potential to automate virtually all of our navigation needs. Whether it is simple navigation for weekend hiking or sophisticated guidance for cross-country treks, GPS is quickly moving into our everyday life and recently has hit price points that are reasonable and affordable for most of us.

One of the emerging killer applications for GPS today is in-car navigation. Let's face it: Even a detailed map requires some talent to read and most of us have the talent to make perfect use of traditional road atlases. This is where GPS not only is a gadget, but becomes a real tool to simplify an everyday task and provide true value. Therefore, it's not surprising that mainstream GPS functionality becomes especially interesting for the use in automobiles. [Read the rest]

KidSmart Vocal Smoke Detector

http://www.kidsmartcorp.com

"Traditional smoke alarms do not reliably awaken sleeping children."

Not because they are not loud enough; rather, it is a function of the way the brain recognizes sounds that are familiar to the child. This recently discovered problem has been detailed by media stations across the United States.

The solution - a personally recorded "familiar voice message" - has been studied by respected institutions from around the globe, including the Victoria University Sleep Lab of Melbourne, Australia, the world's foremost authority on sleeping and waking behaviors.

In those tests, Dr. Dorothy Bruck discovered that 100% of all children tested with a "familiar voice" awoke within seconds.

Additional tests have either been conducted or are currently ongoing in the following institutions:

• Consumer Product Safety Commission
• The University of Georgia
• Others

Read About the Research 

Buy the KidSmart Vocal Smoke Alarm now

$69.95

Google SMS

If you send an SMS from your cell phone to 46645 ("googl") and Google will send you a prompt reply with an answer to all sorts of queries.

How to use Google SMS (http://www.google.com/sms/howtouse.html)

Want to start using Google SMS? Here's a quick introduction to how it works and how to get it.

Important tip: You can get Google SMS help information sent directly to your phone by sending the word 'help' as a text message to 46645.

• Business listings
• Residential listings
• Driving Directions
• Movie showtimes
• Weather conditions
• Stock Quotes
• Q&A
• Product prices
• Definitions
• More useful information
• Help

Business listings from Google Local

Google Local enables you to search the entire web for just the stores and businesses in a specific neighborhood. Get the name, address and phone number of a business near you or in any zip code across the US.

To get business listings:

Enter what you want to find. You can search for either a specific business (Pizza Hut) or a general service (pizza).

Make sure to include both a city and state, or a zip code with your search terms.

If you want to make sure you get Google Local results, put a period between the business name and the location ('pizza.10013' or 'pottery barn.boston ma')'.

Sample queries:

pizza 10013

pizza new york ny

pizza.10013

Pottery Barn 02116

Pottery Barn Boston MA

Pottery Barn.Boston MA

Driving Directions

You can use Google SMS to get detailed driving directions, including total number of steps, estimated distance and travel time. Just send your start and end address to 46645 ('GOOGL' on most phones), and we'll return step-by-step directions.

To get driving directions:

Send a query with your start and end addresses. Use 'from' before your start address and 'to' before your end address. Based on how much you know about your location and destination, you can combine any of these query types*:

Address + zip code

Address + city + state

City + state

City (for major metropolis)

Zip code

Airport code (e.g., EWR for Newark Liberty Airport, LAX for Los Angeles Airport)

Sample queries: pasadena ca to santa monica from 98112 to SEA to 1130 N State St Chicago il from 251 e huron 60611 *Note: No need to use the symbol '+' in your address; this just indicates what combinations you can use.

 

Movie Showtimes

You can use Google SMS to get showtimes for movies playing near you. Just send a text message query with the movie title followed by the zip or city and state and you'll get back showtimes by location and movie details like running time, MPA rating, movie genre, and critics' rating. To get movie showtimes, theater listings and movie details: If you're looking for showtimes of a movie that's currently playing, enter the movie's title followed by your location (a zip code or city and state). For a listing of theaters near you and the showtimes of their top movies, enter 'movie: theaters' or 'movie: showtimes' followed by your location. For a listing of movies playing near you and their theater location, enter 'movie: movies' or 'movie: films' followed by your location. For movie details such as running time, genre, MPA rating, and critics' rating, simply enter the movie title. Get Google Local results in addition to your movie showtimes when you type 'theaters' or 'films' followed by your location. Learn more about our movie showtimes feature.

 

Weather To get the latest weather conditions and four-day forecast for a particular U.S. location, just enter 'weather' followed by your location, zip or city and state. You can also get weather in your Google search results on your computer. Learn more.

Sample queries:

weather dallas tx

weather 75201

 

Calculator: Want to convert the temperature from 'Fahrenheit' into 'Celsius'? Try Google SMS' calculator feature. For example, enter '70 F in C' or '70 Fahrenheit in Celsius'.

Q&A

To get answers to questions that cover a broad assortment of topics, including authors, inventors, populations and more, just send your fact-based question or query as a text message to Google SMS. Google will scour the web to find answers to your question and include our information source so that you can learn more.

To get facts: Enter the fact-based question or query Sample queries:

india population

Mark Twain's real name

who wrote hamlet

 

Definitions Find definitions for a word or phrase on the Web: Enter 'define' followed by the word or phrase Or use the shortcut 'D' before the search terms Google SMS is not case sensitive, so 'D' and 'd' are the same Sample queries: define prosimian D Gordian knot d crepuscular

Print Options in Word

Source: http://www.woodyswatch.com/wowmm/

PRINT PREVIEW
Print Preview was once an essential part of Word because it was the only way to get an idea of how your document will look on the printed page.  It isn't as necessary these days because Word now has an editing view called Print Layout which gives the same result as well as letting you edit the document.

However Print Preview still has a place.  You can get broad and multi-page views that are not available in editing mode.  Sometimes the difference between Print Layout and Print Preview isn't obvious until you try to change text in Print Preview.

Depending on your version of Office there is also an option to 'Shrink to Fit' which will reduce the font size of a document to stop a few lines of text creeping onto another page.


TOOLS | OPTIONS | PRINT
Aside from the Print dialog there are more printing options in the Print section of the Options dialog.

In Word 2003 here are some of the options available (most are common with earlier versions of Office as well).

Draft Output

Some printers have a 'draft' or 'economy' mode that prints more quickly and with less toner.  This option in Office _may_ trigger that option on the printer however the results may not result in much saving in either time or money.

Why is this choice on the Options menu rather than the main Print dialog?  After all this is a 'one off' decision you'd normally make at printing time instead of the overall settings normally on the Options menu.  Good question - one of the mysteries of Microsoft design choices.

Update Fields

Any fields you have in your document will be updated immediately before printing.  This can be useful but can also be bad.

For example if you use the {DATE } field to set the date at the top of a letter.  If you and reprint that letter at a later date you'll want the date of the original letter - not the current date.  Setting this option OFF would prevent that happening.

But, if you have a document that is always current at printing time - for example a receipt for an immediate purchase then you'd want this option ON.

There are other field options to cover these types of situations that go well beyond the scope of a single issue of Office for Mere Mortals ...

Update Links

If you import dynamic information from other documents using the {IncludeText } field for example, the document being printed will be refreshed from the linked sources at print time.

Allow A4/Letter paper resizing

We covered this in the last issue of Office for Mere Mortals.  This option lets you print out A4 or Letter sized documents to the other paper size without reformatting the document itself.

Background Printing

Normally Office does the printing job in the background, letting you get on with other work while it does all the pre-processing and communicating with the printer.  Usually all this happens without any interference with your use of the computer but if you do have problems you can de-select this option.

Print Postscript over text

It is possible to send printer codes and commands directly to the printer using the {PRINT} field.  Most commonly this happens with Word for Macintosh documents and even then pretty rarely.

Reverse Print Order

Instead of printing page one first, the last page comes out first.

INCLUDE WITH DOCUMENT
All these choices let you show things that you normally would not want printed but can be useful especially if you're trying to troubleshoot a document.

Document Summaries

The same summary info that's on the File | Properties | Summary tab.

Field Codes

A troubleshooting option for the most part (though you could use it in writing training documents about field codes themselves).

XML tags

Lets you see the tags applied from a schema - only available in those versions of Word 2003 that support XML features.

Hidden Text

Text in a document can be formatted as 'hidden' and would not normally appear in a printed document.  With this option on hidden text will appear along with everything else.

Drawing Objects

Normally this option is ON, but if you're printing a draft you could speed up the process by de-selecting this option and having blank boxes appear instead.

Background color and images

If you have a document intended for screen display it may have background colors unnecessary in the print version.

OPTIONS FOR THE CURRENT DOCUMENT

Print data only for forms

You might only want to print the entered data from an Word document as a form.

Default tray

This lets you choose an alternative paper tray for a particular document. Useful if the document needs special paper.