6 Free Applications to Transform Your Phone into a Productivity Booster
David Pogue, technology columnist for The New York Times recently gave a talk about some neat, productive and time saving things you can do with your phone. There’s some old-hat stuff about VoIP in the beginning but skip to 7 minutes into the video for the useful phone hacks.
If you’re interested in anything Pogue mentions, I’ve collected the links with summaries below.
GrandCentral. Calling one phone number will make all your phones ring. You can set limits on who can call you at what times and customize what messages different callers will receive.
Google Cellular. Text a search query to 46645 (United States only) and Google will send back the search results. You can text to find out the weather, flight delays, stock quotes, movie show times, definitions, driving directions, and unit and currency conversions.
Google Info. The same idea as Google Cellular, but voice controlled. Call 1-800-GOOG-411 and speech recognition will figure out your questions and give back the best answers.
1-800-2CHA-CHA. Call up and ask any question. An army of 10,000 humans are on the other end who will hear a recording of your question and text back the answer. Because you’re dealing with real humans, it’s easier to ask imprecise questions.
Spinvox, Phonetag & Callwave. All three of these services turn your voicemails into emails. The message is transcribed and sent to you with an accompanying MP3 recording.
PopularityDialer. Need a fake phone call to get you out of that bad date or boring meeting? Popularity dialer is the answer — tell it the date and time you need a call and PopularityDialer will even provide the fake voice on the other end. Sadly, this project is currently halted because some people used it to make prank phone calls. Hopefully, they’ll sort out the issue with the FCC soon and get it back up and running.
Do you know any other free tricks on your phone that help boost productivity? If so, please leave a comment below.
--
Header photograph by rodrigo senna
--To read the rest of the 30 Days to a More Organized Life series, click to get free updates via email or RSS.
--
If you would like personalized help in being more productive and managing your time then click here to read about time management coaching from Silver Clipboard. The first session is free, so why not give it a try?
It doesn’t so much help with productivity, but another phone tool is the Rejection Hotline http://www.rejectionhotline.com/ which gets you out of awkward situations where you give out your number.
ChaCha also has a text service — text questions to CHACHA (242242).