This is really hard for all of us. We all want to come back to websites again and again that make us laugh, make us think, or even the ones that make us angry. But finding a way to be the person who writes these type of blog posts is a very difficult task. Here is one way I have begun doing it.

I use Google Toolbar. All the time. One of the features of the toolbar is that you can click it and see what you searched for the last 20 times or so. I find that good blog posts tend to answer good questions. By looking at my own search entries, I am reminded of the questions I have been asking for the last few hours, few days, or few weeks. If I am asking these questions, than other people are probably asking them as well.

Then, I need to decide whether I think I have something to offer as the "authority" on the subject, or if I want to write a post culminating my findings to the question I have been asking all week. The reality is, I very rarely feel like I can speak as the "authority" on any subject. The result is, I write posts like this one. Posts that are influenced by articles like this one, or this one, or this one, and especially articles written by this guy.

I stumbled on the SMS feature in Google Calender this morning... yes, thats right an SMS feature. You can send and recieve your calender by text message. This is just one more way Google is proving to me that you don't really need a phone data plan, because an unlimited texting plan can really do it all anyway.

First you have to set up your phone. Standard text messaging cgarges apply.
1. Go to "Calender Settings" > "Mobile Setup."
2. Enter the phone number again and hit "Send Verification Code".
3. After receiving the verification code, enter it in the "Verification Code" section.
4. Click the "Finish setup" button and "Save."　

And away we go!

To receive a notification with your calendar information, send a text message containing one of the following commands to the shortcode '48368' (GVENT):
'next': request your next scheduled event
'day: request all of your scheduled events for the present day
'nday': request your events scheduled for the following day

To create an event on your primary calendar via SMS, simply send a text message containing your event's details to the shortcode "GVENT (48368)."

(For example, if you send a message with something like "Shopping with Sarah at Monterey Market 5pm Saturday," Google Calendar can figure out what you mean and pop the new event into your calendar.)

The SMS is built to function around the quick add feature. Here is a video explaining what that means within google calender.



original video source

There are a ton of tips, tricks, and shortcuts that all can be found on the Quick Add Help Page...

This opens up a ton of possibilities!

Here is my twitter blog. Why would I have one?

I have multiple twitter feeds that I like to post to. I use my cell phone texting plan to do this, but twitter gets confused if you try to send multiple sms commands from one phone plan. Enter text to emailing capabilities.

Every Verizon customer has an email address associated with their texting plan. For every number you have an email address: your-10-digitnumber@vtext.com This is your texting email address. Also, your account associates a picture messaging account built the same way: your-10-digit-number@vzwpix.com. Any email address in the world can send a message to you, and you to them by using one of these addresses. (use the vzwpix address, it works better) Again, the only charge here is for a texting plan, which in my case is unlimited.

I used www.twittermail.com for a while, which allows me to email in my tweets, but I have found their service to be unreliable, since the site was bought out by a different owner. But now, I have found text-to-email-to-blog-to-twitter to be a great option... although a little complicated...

Here’s a step-by-step guide to building your own Twitter client that lets you tweet using regular email or phone texting.

Step 1: Go to blogger.com and create a dummy blog (say, mytwitter.blogspot.com)

Step 2: From the Blogger dashboard, go to Settings -> Email and set up your own private mail-to-blogger address – something like abc.twitter@blogger.com – save this email address to your mobile phone address book.

Step 3: Go to twitterfeed.com, login with your OpenID and associate the feed mytwitter.blogspot.com/rss.xml to your twitterfeed account.

Step 4: Go to advanced settings, and tell twitterfeed to publish the description only, and update every 30 minutes.

That’s it. When you have something to share with the Twitter universe, send that as an email, or text message to the address created in Step 2. Your tweet may take few minutes to show up on the Twitter homepage but it will be there definitely.

This is the coolest FREE thing going on in my computer world these days. Basically, it changes any Gmail account, (which is free by the way) into an online USB storage device. It canback up all your computers files where they can't be stolen, drowned, or torched. If you have gotten tired of your slow laptop, or want a solution where you can acces your files from multiple computers like I do, listen up, www.getgspace.com is most definitely for you.

Ok, so there is my commercial. But I can't say enough about it. Here is what www.download.cnet.com said about it in their review, which sold me on the software.

Gspace is a Firefox extension that takes the small pile of gigabytes that the Google folks give you for your Gmail account and turns them into a drive with storage and music-playing capabilities.
Accessible via a toolbar button or from the menu bar, the extension opens a new tab with an FTP-style interface. You can transfer files by highlighting them and hitting the directional arrow. Drag and drop is not available, but the plug-in is still replete with goodies. Uploading a file sends an e-mail with it attached to your Gmail. By creating an appropriate filter and folder, it can be quite easy to keep track of the files you've uploaded. Deleting the file from Gspace deletes the e-mail.
Gspace also allows users to switch between different Gmail accounts, has an Inbox button so you can quickly jump back to the standard Gmail interface, and supports different uses of the virtual drive. These include a Music mode, which can be used with a Flash music player to create a Web-based MP3 player, and a Photo mode, which can be used for displaying photos--although it didn't work for us.
Additional features include help buttons and a status bar that tells you which account you're using and the amount of space used. Gspace also can show you files uploaded with GMail Drive, a similar program, although those files aren't accessible from Gspace. Highly recommended.

These instructions will be for Verizon wireless users.

Ok, so most of us have unlimited texting plans. If you do not, this post should convince you to do so. Your normal Verizon texting plan does not include data usage, or internet usage... I'm here to tell you that you do not need it, so don't buy a data plan. Here is why.

Enter text to emailing capabilities. Every Verizon customer has an email address associated with their texting plan. For every number you have an email address: your-10-digitnumber@vtext.com This is your texting email address. Also, your account associates a picture messaging account built the same way: your-10-digit-number@vzwpix.com. This vzwpix email address is your ticket to data package freedom! Any email address in the world can send a message to you by using one of these addresses. (use the vzwpix address, it works better) Again, the only charge here is for a texting plan, which in my case is unlimited.

You can do a lot of interesting things over email without a web connection or data plan– you can read any webpages over email, maintain your task list, convert documents, upload photo and videos, get dictionary meanings of words and more.

Just make sure that you have added the following 10 addresses to your email address contacts, and phone address book: (I found this top 10 list here) The key to using these services, is to send an email as a picture message to each of the following servces.

10. pdf@koolwire.com – You have an Office document or a picture on your computer or mobile phone that you wish to convert into a PDF file. Just email that file an email attachment to the above address and it will soon return to your Inbox as a PDF file. [koolwire review]

9. ..@photos.flickr.com – Flickr provides a unique email upload address here – you can send your photographs to this email address as attachments and they’ll show up in Flick Photo gallery almost instantly. The subject line of email becomes the photo’s title while the body of the email becomes the photo’s description.

8. e@xpenser.com – This is like filling data in a travel spreadsheet through email. You can use this address to gather and record your travel expenses while on the road. [xpenser review]

7. go@blogger.com – You can use this address to post pictures on any Blogger hosted blog. Any picture that you send to this email address will appear as a new blog post in your mobile blog. You can also use this service to post regular text entries to your Blogspot blog. In that case, the “Send to Blogger” email address is available under Blogger Dashboard.

6. upload@upload.slideshare.net – If you have (one or more) PowerPoint Presentations and PDF documents that you quickly want to share with friends, just email the files to Slideshare and they’ll instantly turn them into a web slideshow. [Slideshare upload options]

5. …@mms.youtube.com – YouTube member can create an MMS profile here – if you have a video clip on your mobile phone or comptuer but no access to YouTube website, you can easily upload that video file to YouTube through that email address. [Details on Youtube Email upload]

4. pdf2txt@adobe.com – Send a PDF document to this email address as an attachment and it will come back as a plain text file. Handy when your don’t have a PDF viewer to open the PDF document. Alternatively, you can send the PDF file to pdf2html@adobe.com for conversion to HTML format. [Extract Text from PDF]

3. ..@prod.writely.com – Google Docs provides a unique email address here – you can upload your documents, spreadsheets and presentations to Google Docs through this address and read them on your mobile phone using the just launched Google Docs mobile at docs.google.com/m. [Google Docs Upload]

2. …@rmilk.com – When you signup for Remember The Milk, you are assigned a unique email address. Emails sent to this special address are automatically converted into tasks and appear in your Inbox. Click on Settings -> Info -> Inbox Email Address. Very handy for keeping a track of your unfinished tasks and getting things done while on the move.

1. wsmith@wordsmith.org – Get the dictionary definition and synonyms of any word by sending a blank email to this email address. Make the subject line as: define myword

And now the most useful email address that will help you read webpages through email without requiring a web connection:

0. www@web2mail.com – Send an email with the URL of the web page in the Subject field (e.g. www.cnn.com) and you’ll soon find a copy of that web page in your Inbox. A perfect option when there’s no Internet access in the area or access is restricted (for instance, you want to read the BBC homepage in China).

Another similar service is www4mail@wm.ictp.trieste.it – it will also fetch websites for you through email though in this case, the site address should go in the body of the email message.

These web-to-email services will come extremely handy for receiving on-demand Stock quotes (for the current Google stock price, type finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GOOG), weather updates, currency exchange rates (for USD to INR, type finance.yahoo.com/q?s=USDINR=X) and more.