Phone Phun

It's your big day out and about in The City. Museums, shows, public monuments, the whole thing. All of a sudden you get the call. We're talking about the Call of Nature here. Sure, there are those who think of New York as just a big public urinal, but that's not your style. You want a bathroom with all the amenities, like a door and all that. With that call urgently ringing in your ears—and other body parts—there's no time to waste.

Check out Diaroogle, which bills itself as The Premier Toilet Search Engine. Bring the site up on your smart phone or computer, enter an address, cross street, or neighborhood, and check out the list of public and almost-public restrooms. There's generally directions, a description of what to expect, and for some of them even a photo to check out what you're getting into. And if you know of a great heretofore undiscovered necessarium, they've got a Submit tool to add yours to the list. Good luck!

Okay, so you've heard of dial-a-story and dial-a-prayer. How about dial-a-song? Just call 802-735-2710 (not a toll-free number) and listen to the music. WMUD is a low-power user-supported non-commercial broadcast radio station serving the Champlain Valley of Vermont and New York at 89.3 on the FM dial. In addition to their local audience, they also stream their freeform programming on the web as well as making it available via telephone. Just call 'em up—here's a way to get your money's worth from your unlimited cell phone plan—and bring 'em along with you. The music's all played live, but they don't have talkative DJs to get in your way. Listen to the radio for the music—what a concept!

These guys are free to listen to, no matter which medium you use, but as a user-supported station, we're sure they wouldn't mind if you happened to send them a couple of bucks now and then. And thanks to Bill for turning us on to them.

Text messages are a handy way to communicate. Use just a few characters to pass along tons of meaning. Of course, to send an SMS message, you need to have a cell phone. And you need to have it with you. Right now. And depending on your service plan, it may cost you a bit to send that message along.

Txt2Day.com is a free service that addresses all of these issues. With this service, you can send a text message to just about any cell phone out there, but you don't need to use your phone–or pay your money–to make it happen. Go to their site, plug in the phone number and carrier of the phone you're sending to, enter your message, and send it. You don't need to sign up, so it's super easy to send your message.

With your WAP-enabled wireless phone, you can upload and download files the way that you do on your computer. That makes it easy to grab pictures, ringtones, video, and more for your cell phone. But how do you get those files out there so that you can download them to start with? One way is to check out WapDj.com. Like many free file storage services, you can upload media files and other stuff from your desktop to their servers. The difference is that you can then download these files directly onto your mobile device.

When you upload a file, you get an item code. When it's time to retrieve the file, point your phone or PDA at the site, enter the code, and download your file. They've got a 2MB size limit on files, so you're not going to be able to use this for general purpose file storage, but it should fill the bill for getting stuff from computer to phone. Files stay on the site for 48 hours, so there's time to go grab them before they go away.

WapDj.com is a free service. There may be carrier-initiated charges for data transfer, so be sure to check your service contract.

Got a birthday to remember? How about an important meeting? Sure, you can set reminders in Outlook or other apps on your computer, but that's no good to you if you aren't sitting in front of your machine. What would be great is to have those reminders come to you on the one piece of technology you are never without: your cell phone.

TextMemos.com is a free service that sends reminders to your wireless phone via SMS text message. Go to their site, sign up for a free account, and start reminding yourself. Birthdays, anniversaries, meetings–they're all fair game. And you can have reminders sent to your phone, or send them via email, or even have them posted to your Twitter account. No, you probably don't want "send a card to Mom" out there in front of the whole world, but you may have some other important "tweet' you want to have hit some time in the future.

While TextMemos.com is a free service, remember that you may incur charges for text messages that you receive, depending on your carrier.

We've all been touched by the scenes of the earthquake last week in Haiti. The devastation and carnage have been overwhelming; the stories of survivors plucked from the rubble even a week later are a testament to the tenacity of the human spirit.

For a two-week period, Google is offering free calls to Haiti via their Google Voice service. If you've got family or friends in the affected area, this is an opportunity to touch base with them and make sure everybody's okay.

As the relief effort ramps up, there are several agencies that are sending aid workers and relief supplies into the stricken area. As tempting as it might be to donate a blanket or a case of bottled water, what these folks really need is cash. You can donate online, via phone, and in some cases via text message to these or many other organizations:

Red Cross 1-800 RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767)
or text Haiti to 90999 to donate $10

CARE 1-800-521-CARE (1-800-521-2273)

UNICEF 1-800-4UNICEF (1-800-486-4233)

Save the Children 1-800-728-3843

The Salvation Army 1-800-SAL-ARMY (1-800-725-2769)
or text HAITI to 52000 to donate $10

Donations should be tax deductible (check with your tax professional for details). Standard text messaging rates apply to text donations (check with your carrier for more information).

What are those crazy kids talking about? While that's a question that parents and other adults have asked of the younger generation since cave-man days, there have never been so many opportunities for the jargon of the younger set to go totally over the heads of all the old fogies out there. Along with just plain old conversations, there are a wealth of other venues for confusion, including text messages, IM exchanges, even cute little emoticons. If you're not living on the cutting edge, then you probably need a bit of translation to understand what they're talking about.

transl8it! is a free online service that helps you bridge the gap between what you saw/heard/read and what it really means. Just enter the text message, phrase, or emoticon, click the transl8it! button, and you'll get the English-language equivalent of the cryptic message. It works the other way too: enter what you want to say and it's translated for you from English into lingo. Everybody will be impressed at how on top of things you are–the most excitement in your life since you got those white bucs for the prom!

All good things must come to an end. Whether it's a movie that's captured your attention, a job you love, or something else, you know the time will come when it's run its course and is done. The same is true for your mobile phone as well. No matter how much you love it, or how much it seems just a part of you, the day will come when it shuffles off this mortal coil and goes to its reward. So what do you plan to do with the leftovers? You know you can't just chuck it in the trash, without fouling your local landfill for the next ten thousand years. How about recycling it?

RecycleMyCellPhone.org is a project of Earthworks, an environmental protection group. Visit their site, print out a postage-paid mailing label, and send your old phone or PDA or pager (do they still have those?) in to them. You get a tax deduction and the knowledge that you've done your bit for the environment.

Do you suppose I could send them all the junk in my garage as well?

It seems like just about everybody is on Twitter. That's both good and bad: you can keep up with your favorite celebrities, but that also means that there are those poor souls who literally do just answer the question "What are you doing?" So how do you keep everybody up-to-date on your latest activities and opinions? Sure you can post on Twitter's site, or you can use a third-party tool to tweet. How about your phone?

TwitterFone is a service that lets you call up and speak your message. The magic TwitterFone machine takes your message and translates if from speech to text, and then posts it to Twitter for you. You can also listen to your Twitter stream as well.

TwitterFone is still under development, and is currently in beta. In order to join this service, you have to get an invitation from them. Submit your request on the site, and then just sit back and wait for the secret sign-up code to come your way. No decoder ring necessary.

While the sugar plums may not be dancing in their heads yet, your little ones certainly know that it's December and that the Big Day is getting closer. What better way to really get into the spirit of the season than receiving a phone call from the Right Jolly Old Elf?

The folks at Kroger have arranged for you to get a personalized call from Santa—or Sammy the Snowman, or even NASCAR driver Tony Stewart if you prefer. Visit their website, give them some basic info—child's name, phone number, time for the call—and then sit back and wait for the special moment.

There's no cost for the call, but you do have to sign up for an account with Kroger; hopefully if you un-check the appropriate boxes on the form you won't be inundated with grocery-spam. Also be aware that there is an ad at the end of the message. It follows several seconds of dead air, but you may want to make sure that you grab the phone back from little Billy or Susie before the sales pitch starts. Ho! Ho! Ho!