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Archive for November, 2006

Snail Mail to Email

Document Command Incorporated offers Remote Control Mail (changed to Earth Class Mail somewhere around September 10, 2007), a service that will scan your US Mail so you can read it online. For $19.95 a month, the outside of each piece of mail you have directed to their mailing center will be scanned and posted to a website. You can then elect to have the contents scanned, shredded, recycled or mailed to you. This is certainly a boon for those who spend a lot of time away from home.

Their site also lists some services they plan to offer in the future that will make Remote Control Mail all the more valuable. Their NoLook Mail service will allow people to define rules based on the sender, Unmailme will remove addresses from mailing lists and their fax service will send scanned images to a fax machine.

I wonder if someone at the USPS is wondering why they didn’t think of this idea?

via slashdot

Return of the Cellarman?

Joe Sixpack is happy about the long trend of restaurants taking beer more seriously, but unhappy about one thing: The Beer Sommelier. He doesn’t think having a person at a restaurant dedicated to the selection of beers is a bad thing, he just takes exception to the sommelier title. As an alternative, he puts forth a much more worthy title: Cellerman or Cellerwoman as the case may be.

via slashfood

311

New York City’s 311 service has been around since 2003. Today, I finally had reason to use it.

The traffic light at 8th and 39th is quite out of sync with the other lights on 8th Avenue. This causes the traffic on 8th to back up, more than usual anyway. So, I rang up 311 and my call was answered promptly by a friendly operator. She was able to quickly find the right agency to talk to about the situation. I was transferred to the DOT specialist who quickly took the information. I was told that someone should respond within 2 hours. I’ll monitor the situation closely…

Update: A day later, the lights are synced again. Whether or not my call to 311 made a difference, I’ll never know.

PhoneCast

Podlinez will play the most recent episode of any podcast on any phone. Each podcast is assigned a phone number. When it is dialed, the podcast starts playing after a short announcement. Nice work, if anyone from Podlinez happens to be reading, here are a few unsolicited feature requests:

  • A searchable directory. 15 pages of podcasts are a lot to sort through. One should not have to enter the full feed URL of the podcast on the home page to see if it is already listed either.
  • A mobile accessible directory. Podlinz will really shine when one has some time to kill while not near a computer. An optimized site for mobile browsers, some form of search that uses SMS or even a audio directory would be great.
  • Keep more than just the last episode of a podcast on hand.

Good luck!

via Lifehacker