Squealing Rat: The Word

[Post originally published on The 2.0 Life. See the post here.]

Post by Squealer from Squealing Rat. Find Squealer on Twitter.

In the old days (you know, like the 1990s?), people used to connect in ways that the new generation knows nothing about. In fact, if I told a 10 year old with a laptop that his grandparents lived without the Internet and only a simple phone that could only call people, his jaw would probably drop.

Now, despite all the many technological innovations of the last several decades, many members of older generations are still living by these, shall we say, ancient habits.

Here are some new, tech-involved ways to do the tasks that the oldies used to do with rotary phones:

For anyone over 50, the idea of having a phone book is probably thought of as a necessity. In this day and age, though, a paper phone book is completely unneeded. And now, with the Internet and computers, the idea of having your fingers do the walking is laughable. Let us go over some options for replacements:

Better Than the Yellow Pages

AnyWho

AnyWho is the closest thing to an actual phonebook with the ability to look up people’s and business’ phone numbers, as well as a reverse look up of who owns a phone number. You go toanywho.com and plug in the person’s name, and location and it comes up with people that match that criteria. Their phone number and address is supplied. I am sure that if you were one of the many still owning a phone book you would be extremely interested in the new feature of reverse look up. Much as the name implies, you plug in the phone number of a business or person and it supplies the name and address. Very handy for those prank callers…

Google

Google is one of the more creative ways, and mostly unknown ways to locate the owner of a phone number, or find the phone number of a business. By plugging in a phone number you can find an entry for the owner, and if the number is a telemarketer, you can know instantly by the number of websites that list the number as a prank, or telemarketer. And like AnyWho you many also plug in a name and location to find the telephone number. Here is the direct link to the very unknown, unpublicized Google PhoneBook.

Pipl

Pipl is probably one of the best people finders other than Facebook. By typing in the name and location of a person you can find contact details, background reports, pictures, profiles, schools, businesses and anything else you could possibly think of. The tool must be designed for private detectives but the general public can use it for everyday use.

Not Your Grandpa’s Phone Company

Google Voice

Google Voice (previously called GrandCentral) is probably one of the more promoted services out there. The service purports to be a free phone service that aggregates all your phone numbers into one that everyone calls. This is designed for the businessman who has a work number, a work cell phone, a home number, a personal cellphone, a night phone, a day phone, a vacation phone, yada, yada yada.

Here’s how it works: you are given a new phone number (one of the few downsides), and people call that number. When that number is called all of your phones ring simultaneously- I know, it sounds kind of crazy. You pick up any one of the phones, and you’re set!

The service actually does a lot more than that: it allows you to make free phone calls (via the Internet- don’t worry, the quality is good), send free SMS, screen calls, transcribe voice mails to text, block callers, screen callers, play different voicemail messages for different people, and more. All free!

Catches? Not many: international calls are not free, but cheap, national calls are still free, you get a new phone number – oh, and the service isn’t available yet. Well, those customers who had the service before it became Google Voice can still use it, but it is still not open to the public. You can still sign up to be notified the second the service opens to the public.

Skype

Skype, is one of the most popular VOIP services. VOIP is a fancy way of saying phone calls over the Internet. Skype is a program that you can use to call other Skype users for free or call phones very cheaply. Skype makes the most sense for exchange students, or people communicating from different countries.

How do you find people online?

For more from Squealer, check out Squealing Rat

[Post originally published on The 2.0 Life. See the post here.]

This is a guest post by Squealer from Squealing Rat.

Getting answers to your questions is becoming an increasingly popular service to offer on the internet. Now there are several services that are different takes on this concept.

(David’s note: there are a couple of services here that are currently in an invite-only beta. We’ve gotten a few invites for each one to give to you, our wonderful readers. See the end of this post for how to score an invite – make sure to stay tuned, we’ll let you know when they go public!)

Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Answers has been around for what seems like forever. And the site does seem a little dated. But this popular service, becoming increasingly less popular, still manages to get the job done. Site questions still manage to work their way up to the first page of a Google search result, regardless of content.

The site gives you the ability to compose a question, then release it to an audience based on topic. The question/answer system is based on points. You gain points by answering questions, even more points by getting chosen as the best answer to the question, and lose points every time you ask a question. You gain a point every time you visit the site, one per day. The site does limit how many questions you can ask, and how many you can answer. Yahoo Answers is good, but in this day and age, I prefer to move to a Web 2.0-style site.

Aardvark

Aardvark manages, very successfully, not to be a website at all. The concept of AIM bots have been around for awhile, serving little purpose other than to tell the latest movie show times or what not. Aardvark manages to be an addicting and purposeful AIM bot.

The service is based solely in your chat client; i.e. AIM, Google Chat, etc. You can “chat” with the bot, giving typed commands for what you want to do. For example, you can type “try” to try a question, or type your question in the chat window. Now when you sign up for the service it asks what topics you are comfortable answering, anywhere from the very specific, OfficeJet Printers to Internet.

When you type your question it recognizes the topic, by searching your question for keywords, then looks for other people that have signed up for that topic and connects them. Aardvark is currently an invitation only service, but by searching Twitter for “vark.com”, you can find people with invitations.

Hunch

Hunch is the newest of these services. The website was created by the founder of Flickr.com, one of the most popular photo sharing sites on the Web, and takes a very different look at questions and answers. Hunch works on the basis of user trained questions.

Think of it as a create-your-own-adventure for questions. For example, you could find this question: “Where should I go on vacation?” The site would then ask you questions about your preferences, then spit out a result. The site, like Aardvark, is currently an invitation only service, but by searching Twitter  for hunch, you can also find people with invitations.

Twitter

Twitter is not designed for question and answer but for life feeds. Basically, you are given 140 character to say what you are doing and people can subscribe to this feed of updates. Yes, I know, right now it probably doesn’t make sense to you, but do a little Googling and you will find that Twitter is an enormously popular service that people like Barack Obama, Britany Spears, David Pogue, and Al Gore are on.

Furthermore, you really don’t need to know all of this to get simple Q & A. As previously mentioned, the Twitter Search is very helpful for finding invites to new services. But what it is also good for is answer finding. You can search for “great restaurant, sf” and find hundreds of great restaurants.
In conclusion, if you have a question, check out some of these services.

There are lots of great applications out there, and these are some of the best. But the easiest way, and final way, is to just Google it. I know I will…

David: Two of these services, Aardvark and Hunch, are still technically invite-only. I’ve got 10 invites for Aardvark (they play hard-to-get with beta invites), and 3 for Hunch, though I don’t think you’ll need it – just enter your email and check it, my invite came pretty fast. If you want an invite to either, drop a comment below and make sure to use a real email address. After 24 hours, I’ll randomly give out the invites. Make sure to specify which site you want the invite for!

[Post originally published on The 2.0 Life. See the post here.]

This is a guest post from Squealer over at SquealingRat. Head over there for tons of great articles about the Web, technology, and all manner of coolness.

In 2005, I received an invite to a relatively new and interesting new email service, Google Mail. I immediately switched my email over to Google Mail, also called Gmail, and encouraged my friends to do the same. But one of my friends refused to go to this beta, justifying that the email service would soon die out and you would loose all of your email.

Four years later, that friend has two Gmail accounts, which, by the way, are still in beta. But this article is not to talk about Gmail beta, although this article does. This article is to talk about the adaptation, the using and the finding of new websites.

Finding

In order to find a service, or web, you need a source. Sources can be blogs, Twitter, and news sites. The recently re-discovered Go2Web2.0 helps you find new Web2.0 sites. Twitter can be used to find new sites that other people are recommending. And blogs like MakeUseOf, The 2.0 Life and Mashable can also help you discover websites.

Giving and Getting

Nowadays many web services are making invites to their sites harder and harder to get. And now, GrandCentral (now Google Voice), Google’s phone service is not accepting any new accounts. But to find and get invites to many betas, I use the very popular site, InviteShare.com. Invite Share allows you to invite people to services and get invites to services. InviteShare works on a rewards system in which the more invites you give away, the faster you can receive new invites.

Signing Up

I have tried a lot of services in the past, but rarely return to them again. When I sign up for an account, I use the Google Toolbar’s AutoFill feature to fill in the email address, although you could also use RoboForm to do the exact same thing. I like to use a junk email address, a Gmail account, especially set up for all online sign ups. For creating the password, I recommend using this tip. And finally, if I really do not want to waste time signing up for services, BugMeNot.com can help by offering free log in information.

Exploring a Site

I recently discovered the potential of Twitter (@squealingrat) and after examining tweets noticed a little text at the bottom of each tweet saying where the tweet came from. Through this helpful little text, I could discover new services that Tweeters are using, and soon discovered Twitterfeed. So, explore sites to their fullest. Take a look around, look at the fine print and have fun.

How do you find and try new websites?