Thursday, December 31, 2009

Free Enhancement for your Voicemail with YouMail

How to enhance the voicemail you are getting on your cellular phone? Have you ever think on the endless possibilities of the modern technology to make the voicemail more attractive, easy to use, and customizable? YouMail free services bring you these possibilities at hand.


Main Features:
Visual Voicemail
  • Completely visual - see who called, from where, and even their picture (when before all you had was their number!)
  • Use your smart phone or your computer - or you can still dial in like before (if you feel the need!)
  • Save time - Point, click and play or delete.
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Personal Custom Greetings
  • Easily have different greetings for your sweetie, your friends, your co-workers and your boss.
  • Choose from a library of free greetings or upload any sound file as a greeting.
  • Even use greetings as messages for callers who don't pick up their voicemail!
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Block Unwanted Callers
  • Automatically hang up on unwanted callers before they can leave voicemail.
  • Simple to set up with just one click!
  • Easily let a pesky ex or telemarketer thinks your number is no longer in service.
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The small application can be installed and used at any smart phone for the following platforms: Blackberry, Android, or iPhone.
There are also paid services, which enlarge the spec of the voicemail capabilities, like:

  • Read your messages - almost perfect transcriptions
  • Get organized - virtually unlimited storage
  • Go faster - no advertisements and quicker alerts

Video Presentation:


Yay: Easy to set up, easy-to-read format and allows for personalized greetings for friends, colleagues and even unwanted callers. Users can also access voicemails from an e-mail account.

Nay: We were charged airtime for accessing voicemails, and our voicemail icon alert no longer appeared on our handset. Further, each message carried an advertisement, though it did not get in the way of the message.

We say: YouMail is free. If managing voicemail with an e-mail account is an interest, then this is a good application. It is also works well for users looking to add a personal or hip touch to their voicemail. The company offers greetings that feature celebrities, clips from movies and music. Users can also select standard greetings or record one of their own. A greeting can be selected for each contact, a group that includes family or friends or for calls received from a blocked number or an unwanted caller.

Review: YouMail is available via the company’s Web site, youmail.com. To get an account, YouMail asked for our phone number so an activation code could be texted to our phone. The service then asked for the access code, our name, e-mail address and for a PIN number of our choice. The PIN is used with the e-mail account to log into the site in the future.

With the information, the service could tell who our service provider was and then asked for our handset model. The site gives numerous pictures of handsets and we were able to find our BlackBerry Pearl.

We then called an Orange County, Calif., phone number to activate the account. After the phone was activated, the site then showed how to switch the voicemail number on our handset from the service provider number, which is our phone number, to the California number that we were to call to access our YouMail account. This step was easy and the site provided a step-by-step tutorial that had pictures of the BlackBerry Pearl.

Once we saved the new number, the account was ready. We chose to access voice messages through the handset and with our e-mail account.

Numerous calls to the new voicemail were placed. After each call, a text message was sent to the phone alerting of a missed call. An e-mail was also sent to our account, which was also synched on our BlackBerry. With e-mail, we could listen to messages online and had the option of forwarding the message to contacts. Messages could also be deleted and saved.

We also could customize our greetings. YouMail automatically selected a “smart” greeting for our phone calls. One thing we found great about YouMail is it details where the phone number originates from and in most cases whose number it is. With a smart greeting in place, YouMail automatically acknowledged the person calling by greeting each person by name. For example, a phone call from a colleague’s phone used this smart greeting: “Hello Allie, Gary can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message.”

We also could customize a greeting for each contact by personally recording one or making a selection from many that are offered. We customized greetings for a few of our contacts. Greetings can be personal recordings or customized greetings offered online. We kept smart greetings for family but used a greeting from “Seinfeld” for some of our friends.

Through our YouMail account we browsed through a number of greetings that included recordings by celebrities, musicians and clips from movies. Most are free. Some you must pay for, but the Web page to buy a “premium” greeting would not load after numerous attempts.

YouMail also allows customized greetings for calls that are blocked or from someone you no longer wish to talk to, a former girlfriend or boyfriend perhaps. With “DitchMail,” an unwanted caller can’t leave a message after listening to a greeting set up for that number. We set up DitchMail using our work phone number. We selected a custom greeting that included the words “don’t ever call again.” Each time we called our phone from the work number this greeting was used.

The only drawback we could see with YouMail is the message alerts come with advertisements. The advertisements don’t really get in the way of reading the call details but are hard to ignore. Advertisements ranged from technical colleges to a pajamagram for Valentine’s Day. The other drawback was that the voicemail alert icon on our BlackBerry Pearl stopped working. New voicemail notifications were lumped in with the “envelope” icon that also contained text messages or e-mail notifications.

If all this is just too much customization, YouMail offers an easy way to delete the account and restore previous settings. After asking why we were deleting our account, YouMail told us to call *73. After the call was placed, our previous voicemail was back in place.

Like what you read? Sign up for free at http://www.youmail.com/

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Soonr - Automatic backup and data access services from any Web browser or mobile phone

One of the most important concepts of the modern computer-literate person is BACKUP. No matter, how much you take care of your computers, netbooks, PDAs, or smart phones, you cannot be 100% sure, that one day your electronic friend will not be dead (or stolen). While businesses realized the danger of the information losses, and apply all kinds of protection backup services, individual users might not be so scared to loose data, until the disaster happens. There are multiple utilities and services allowing to save the important files on another storage device or online. In this post, we will present one more, which is a proven way to get things done.

With Soonr, you have the files you work to be automatically and securely backed-up.

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After you install a small desktop application and choose a few settings, your files are automatically backed-up to your account. When you change your files on your desktop or your colleagues (you give access to your account) make changes, files are automatically updated. You don't have to buy other software or subscribe to other services - Soonr takes care of this too. Active backup means files can be retrieved immediately when needed and are always ready to help get work done. Documents are beautifully rendered and accessing and viewing is amazingly fast since the online service only sends portions of the document as requested. All of these capabilities are available, even when host computers are sleeping or powered off.

Soonr has three user levels to meet all your possible needs, the start at the “lite” version and go to “pro”. The lite free account allows up to two users to share files and work together, providing up to 2 Gb of storage space for your files.
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The pro version is about twenty bucks a month but offers a plethora of options from 1 to 5 users to custom branding. There is also an option to add your efax account and fax from where ever you need to.

But the service capabilities are not limited by desktops only (both Windows and Mac, by the way). Soonr which has been enjoyed by earlier by the IPhone users, now has finally made its way to BlackBerry and Android mobile operation systems as well.

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Soonr is compatible with sixteen different file types so all users regardless of what format you use: DOC, XLS, JPG, MOV, PPT, PDF, and others.

Developer website: http://www.soonr.com/index.php

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

External Hard Drive Preventive Maintenance

You want to keep your Hard Drive with all important data in best shape? Danz Family provides you detailed step-by-step instructions on how to do so, with nice illustration of all steps. But before starting to follow the instructions, read the manual to the end first! Please!

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Many of the problems encountered by users of hard drive storage devices can be avoided by simple annual maintenance. You clean and maintenance your car and other things around the house, why should your hard drive be any different? You've defragged, run other maintenance programs, but have you bothered to open it up and give it a good cleaning? For optimal hard drive performance, follow the easy steps below. (As always, read through all the instructions before beginning.)

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Gently pry around the edges of your hard drive case and separate the cover from the main unit. It just pops off. Don't worry about any small plastic pieces that break off, they won't affect anything.

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Time to start unscrewing screws! These are the easy ones, a simple Phillips screwdriver will do the trick.

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Keep going, some of the screws are a little hidden. Be sure to save the screws for reassembly later.

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Finally, we get everything unscrewed and unplugged from the hard drive, wrapped in thick foil in the center.

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Carefully peal away the thick sticky foil from the hard drive.

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Once you get all the foil off, you'll have to remove the screws from the hard drive itself. Some are hidden under stickers and all are the uncommon torx type. By this point you've probably figured out that the manufacturer hasn't made it easy for you to perform maintenance on your hard drive. Duh, that's because they are in the business of selling hard drives! Imagine if other manufacturers could convince consumers never to clean or maintain their product? What a scam!

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Here's one of the hard drive's reading/writing heads. Oops, is that a scratch? Ha, ha, don't worry, modern drive's aren't affected by little surface scratches. Have you ever seen the back of some CD's and how scratched up they are but still play perfectly? Hard drives are far more technologically advanced and are even less affected by simple surface scratches.

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In fact, feel free to scratch up the surface all you want. At this point in the process, I can promise you, you won't adversely affect the hard drive's performance. Some people like to scratch in the date, so they can tell the next time they open up their hard drive when the last time was that they cleaned it.

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If you happen to bend the read/write head, don't worry, just bend it back. Be sure to press it down real good so it's as close as possible to the drive's surface.

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Time to give everything a good wash! A little dish soap, some warm water and a scrub brush. Don't hold back with the elbow grease! Give it a good scrubbing.

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Finally, you may find that some of the parts have worked themselves loose and are just spinning around uncontrolled. Good thing we caught this before it completely spun itself apart! Get yourself a hammer or a hatchet and pound them down until they are solidly in place. Once everything dries, reverse the steps to reassemble your hard drive.

In the first paragraph I promised "optimal hard drive performance." Following the steps above is the only way to absolutely guarantee you will never again loose valuable data and time to a failed hard drive. I know I'm certain the drive pictured will never again cause me problems!!! Not to mention, sometimes it just feels good to get "hands on."

As you might understand already, this manual is a pure joke. If you follow it precisely, you may be confident that your data is lost forever. Actually, simply opening the Hard Drive at your home environment will make a trick. The dust contamination will make it absolutely un-useful and unrecoverable. So, what can you do externally to keep the Hard Drive in best shape? I do not mean useful software to clean, defragment, and fix error. I really mean – externally. If the Hard Drive is internal, use vacuum cleaner once a while to remove dust from inside the PC. Be careful not to touch any wiring thou. If the drive is external, assure the adequate ventilation and fresh air access. Do not keep it on the mild surface, which might cause its overheating.


I also found that in spite of the fact that some of the external drives are designed to be positioned vertically as well, it is preferable to keep it horizontally, when the spinning forces less affect the internal mechanics.


And, no matter what you do, and how careful you are, keep the backup of the most valuable information!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Free the Internet - Blog Carnival at Collection of Web Freebies - 12th Ed.



Welcome to the 12-th, December 12, 2009, edition of the "Free the Internet" Blog Carnival. Some statistics: Submitted Articles - 52. Published Articles - 26. I want to thank all the authors contributing to the issue. Some articles were excluded from the review, since their topic of discussion did not match the main target of the carnival. I am sorry, that not all submissions were accepted, as some of the excluded articles carried a significant value. As one of the submitted articles carried a link to the potentially dangerous site, I want to ensure all the readers that all articles were tested and evaluated, and all the posted links are safe to visit.
Enjoy!

John Laugherton presents Top 50 Web Design Resource Blogs posted at Designer City, USA.

Allison Johanson presents 25 Free Web Tools Every Student Should Use posted at How To E-D-U.

Kaitlyn cole presents 100+ Google Tricks That Will Save You Time in School posted at Online Colleges.net.

Jipson Musundi presents How Adware Comes to You and How to Get Rid of it posted at Computer Centerplus.

Jipson Musundi presents Preventing Spyware from Getting on your Computer posted at Computer Centerplus.

Camille Hensley presents 25 Incredibly Useful Color & Palette Tools for Designers posted at Designer City, USA, saying, "Web designers know how important color is to the look of a site. Indeed, color and palettes are essential."

Ankesh presents Is Google working on a FREE Navigation Application? posted at OnlyGizmos.

Rose King presents 100 Best Websites for Your Business News and Know-How posted at Online Classes.org.

Anne Simone presents 100 Extremely Useful Search Engines for Science posted at Online Courses.org.

Barbara Williams presents 75 Coolest iPhone Apps for Lifelong Learners posted at Online Degree Programs.org.

Rose King presents 100 Useful Reference Tools for B-School Students posted at Online Classes.org.

Linda Jones presents 100 Great Google Docs Tips for Students & Educators posted at AccreditedOnlineColleges.org.

MikeM presents CraigsList Reader � Free Tool to Search Craigslist More Efficiently posted at HTS Tech Tips - Computer Tech Tips for Non-Geeks, saying, "Here is a great search tip to simplify the Craigslist search process by using the CraigsList Reader, search tool for efficiently wading through the vast amount of information in the Craigslist listings."

Anthony Stewart presents Top 50 Journalism Blogs posted at Journalism Degree.

Harold Gelien presents The World’s 50 Best Open Courseware Collections posted at Online University Rankings.

Debbie Foster presents SEO Forums Provide Useful Information posted at Internet Income - The Journey.

Linda Jones presents 100 Great Twitter Tips, Tools & Tutorials for Serious Students posted at AccreditedOnlineColleges.org.

Heather Sanders presents 50 Essential Free Open Courseware Classes for Web Designers posted at Designer City, USA.

Kaitlyn cole presents 101 Useful YouTube Tutorials for College Students posted at Online Colleges.net.

Abhigyan Banerjee presents Fishbowl is awesomeness for Facebook! posted at Technokracy: Democracy for Geeks!, saying, "This is a post about a Facebook client for Windows. Fishbowl is a free application that makes it really snappy to manage your social life on Facebook. Review Inside."

Ankesh presents Google simplifies Image search using “Swirl” posted at OnlyGizmos.

Ankesh presents Dell honours geeks, gives Chrome OS to play with posted at OnlyGizmos, saying, "This post tells about from where and how to download Dell’s compatible version of Google Chrome OS"

Kaitlyn cole presents 100 Killer iTunes Feeds for Serious Science Geeks posted at Online Colleges.net.

Barbara Williams presents 100 Open Courses That Will Make You an Internet Expert posted at Online Degree Programs.org.

Leslie Brown presents 40 Must-Know Google Hacks & Tips for Medical Professionals posted at Online LPN to RN.

Mariano DiFabio presents Facebook: Friend, Fan or Group? posted at The Web and You, saying, "So, you’re just getting on Facebook with your business, but you’re not quite sure *how* you should be using Facebook. Personal page? Group? Fan Page? We try to overview differences and unwrap some of the mystery behind connecting with your customers on Facebook this week."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of free the internet using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
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