(Untitled)
on Category: technology
on entertainment by Vonage
on We use Vonage for our home phone service. One of it’s features is that it transcribes voicemail messages and delivers them directly to my email inbox. Lately, Vonage’s transcription chops have gotten a little sketchy (or maybe it’s just sloppy mouthed message leavers?). To be fair, Vonage not only transcribes, but also sends an audio file attachment of the actual message. Even better than the service Vonage provides, is the entertainment thanks to some of the transcriptions. Here’s an excerpt of the latest message (brackets are editorial comments and ellipses are where I left out the uninteresting or not entertaining parts!:
Hello parents, this is an important message from the [the local school district] about registering your child for the upcoming 2012 2013 school year. Wait till I guess two years we used to have a new online registration system …You should have received an informational flyer up out this new process with your child slash report car.. Your child school will have computers and printers available for use beginning July 9, wake a liar. She is pleased to offer pine shaving online registration. And we encourage you to take it.
random stuff i’m mulling over/pondering/interested in 2.29.12
on firewalling your attention (chapter in Lifehacker founder Gina Trapani’s book “Upgrade Your Life”
http://ginatrapani.org/
streamlining and economizing instruction – cut the fat! http://t.co/uzkkekzT
technology, media, and communications predictions for 2012 http://bit.ly/whfUFb
workplace readiness skills – in contrast to whatever kind of skills we think we’re creating in academia. this stuff seems more universal, more important than knowing the longest river in the united states or how many planets there are (today, anyway!) and what their order is
http://www.cteresource.org/downloads/1/wrs_poster_2012.pdf
managing professional (or any!) information overload: http://lonewolflibrarian.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/managing-professional-information-overload-02-21-12/ @LONEWOLFMLS for passing along and @hbraum for the prez
how people spend their time online
http://lonewolflibrarian.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/how-people-spend-their-time-online-02-29-12/
the future unpacked
on behold…the future
on favorite apps and conversation
on this morning, a few of us met for a and informal and delightful conversation about all kinds of cool stuff. here’s a quick review of what we discussed at this morning’s zombie/magpie incubator confab:
we talked a little about . . .
interest in gathering, sharing ideas, sparking, rejuvenating, technology, teaching, and getting together on a regular basis, about what exactly this gathering is or isn’t but everyone seemed comfortable with the murky mystery and not trying to hem it in or put a fence around it. (I liked stephen’s description – “sort of like a book club for other stuff.”)
we talked about Apple’s recent iBooks/iTunesU/texbooks announcement:
about how favorite apps differed sometimes depending on the platform you’re talking about (some stuff that we’d definitely want on our phone, but not on iPad or vice versa)
while there was a lot of fave app discussion flying around, here are the one I was able to capture from the fray!
in the category of productivity and tools:
alarmed
robust and customizable alerts, alarms, pop-ups, snoozes, etc.
envelopes
old school meets new school, budgeting app using virtual envelopes for your funds
genius scan app for scanning docs on the go, email as jpg or odf
stitcher
on demand streaming of 5,000+ podcasts and radio shows instead of downloading
mocha telnet
use your iphone or ipad to access telnet servers and run terminal windows
evernote
remember everything (notes, photos, to-do-lists, voice notes, etc) synced across all your devices and searchable
dragon dictation
user-friendly (and very accurate!) voice recognition app instantly converts to text that you can output directly to social media networks or email
flava
clean and easy holding bin / virtual scrapbook for voice memos, text, photos, music, websites, etc.backup/sync with dropbox and evernote, one touch social media share
urbanspoon
slot machine meets concierge for restaurant suggestions, organized by price, neighborhood, type of food
aroundme
helps identify nearby banks, gas, hospitals, theaters, restaurants, markets, etc. with distance and maps
checkplease
for calculating the tip or splitting a bill between multiple people
and the cateogry of mental break/entertainment must haves:
today’s wordcloud:
