Inside Joe’s Head

I’ve told this idea to a lot of people and I am SO glad that someone has decided to do it. The way I envisioned it was using something like twitter to let people know about traffic situations and more importantly where speed traps are located.

There is a ktlink here in Hawaii that displays HPD’s traffic reports so if you’re about to make a trip you can quickly check for traffic accidents or congestions.

However, using trapster you can report and get reports on current speed traps. What I most like about this feature is that you can use Jott.com to actually phone in where those sneaking cops are hiding.

So I hope that helps! I’ve signed up and will be checking it out for a little bit.

If you need money, donations, help, whatever. Chipin is a neat site that will link your paypal account and give you a clean interface to help your friends, family, strangers help you reach your goals.

Here is an example that I have created:

I’ve mentioned language service Mango before. Since then I’ve played around with this language service in my attempts to learn Japanese. If you are looking for help learning how to read, write, speak, and hear different languages (11 so far) then you should definitely check Mangolanguages.com. They incorporate a clean user interface and provide you with different voices and dialect variations to help you master the language of your choice.

The Consumerist has gotten there hands on some pretty useful information if you are an AT&T or Cingular customer.

Here’s a direct port from the AT&T/Cingular internal database on how to handle complaining customers. These are the document every customer service rep in their call centers uses to deal with you when you kvetch.

Read More…

Customer called Sprint to get error resolved. Sprint cancels his contract because he ‘called customer service too much.’ I must say, this seems like a great way to get out of a contract. If you know me personally you know that I

HATE

(An intense and passionate dislike.)

Sprint. And I use hate in its strongest form. I often think I should write about my experiences with them but it just makes me angry. Literally. It is not good for my health to think to long about them. Even now as I write this my heart rate is elevated and I find myself grinding my teeth. I have at times stood outside Sprint stores warning them to not go in. Yes, it is that bad. Don’t believe me? Read this report and the provided chart below:

That is right. Sprint is 5 points BELOW the industry average and the company that is doing the best is only 4 points above the industry average. According to the chart, that means that generally, people on the Sprint network are getting sub-par service. Yes, I am sure that some people don’t have any complaints about Sprint but they are not the majority according to this study.

Glubble: Parental Control in Firefox
Glubble is a very impressive browser plugin that adds parental controls to Firefox. Glubble transforms Firefox into a locked down environment where kids can only surf approved sites, while parents can easily log into a restriction-free account for normal web surfing.

Glubble also re-skins Firefox with a simple and appealing kid-friendly look while logged into a child account. The browser under Glubble is a completely controlled environment, meaning all of your bookmarks and most of your other plugins are hidden while logged into a child account some plugins, like Flash for example, will still work — a good thing considering how many childrens sites utilize Flash.

Read More… [via Read/WriteWeb]

GrandCentral: The New Way to Use Your Phones

Grandcentral.com was recently acquired by Google. I was also given an invite and decided to start playing with it. This is definitely something that I want to start using. Basically Grandcentral.com gives you a phone number of your choice. This phone then connects any and all of your phones together. For instance, my mom is either at home or out and about with her cell phone. I can try both separately but if she had Grandcentral I could call one number and it would ring both phones.

Grandcentral has TONS of features as well.

Here’s a list:

Screen Callers
Know who’s calling and screen unknown callers

ListenIn
Hear why someone is calling before taking the call

Call Record
Record calls on the fly and access recordings online

Block Callers
Unwanted callers won’t be able to reach you anymore

Notifications
Receive voicemail notifications via email or SMS

WebCall Button
Let people call you from a web page without showing your number

CallSwitch
Switch phones in the middle of a call

Click2Call
Call from your addressbook and save your typing

Mobile Access
Visual voicemail for your mobile phone

Ring Different Phones
One number that rings different phones based on who’s calling

Greetings
Personalize your voicemail greetings by caller or group

RingShare
Go beyond the ring and choose ringback tones for your callers

So. Here is my ‘Web Call Button’ Try it out.

3D Warehouse is where users can submit 3D models of anything. Why would Google ever want to get into this? Remember, Google is getting into everything. They will one day rule the world. So you need a 3D model. Download it. They also provide a free 3D modeling program called “Sketch Up”. I’m definitely excited about this because I was recently going to get back into 3D modeling in Lightwave but I think I am going to just do this. Also, I just learned that Adobe has released a plug-in for Photoshop CS3

Don’t you hate it when you don’t have the time to sit at your desk and go through your RSS feeds? I do. It would be really nice to read my RSS feeds at the doctor’s office, boring parties, at the beach. I don’t know why I never thought of this before but I found a great tool to help me get my RSS feeds onto my iPod. It is called iFeedPod and if you are an RSS junkie like me then this is a must. It takes your feeds automatically collects them converts them into notes and puts them on your iPod. I was actually quite amazed at the speed at which this was performed. Best part of all is that it is FREE.

Google Maps Plugin for Address Book – Brian Toth