Ring Ring

See Update Below

So I have a new phone number. It's supposed to be the last one I'll ever have according to Grand Central. Grand Central is a new service that I'm playing with. Here's their own schpeel about their service:

What is GrandCentral?

Get all the same calls, but in a whole new way.

GrandCentral doesn't replace your phones; we just link them together and help them do more. How do we do that? We give people One Number...for Life^TM - a number that's not tied to a phone or a location - but tied to you.

With GrandCentral, you can be reached with a single number, answer a call at any phone you want, seamlessly switch phones in the middle of a call, and even know whether a call is important before you take it.

What else can I do with GrandCentral?

We're not your typical phone company. And these aren't your typical features.

• Check your messages by phone, email, or online
• Keep all your messages online for eternity
• Record and store your phone calls (just like voicemail)
• Quickly (and secretly) block an annoying caller
• Click-to-dial from your address book
• Surprise your callers with a custom voicemail greeting
• Forward, download, and add notes to your messages

I've been using them for over a month now and I've really enjoyed the service. I like people being able to be reach me without trying to play phone tag. I also like having a single voicemail box. They offer a lot more features than the ones listed above. For example, they have custom rings that you're callers will hear while Grand Central (GC) tries to call your phone numbers, some of them are quite funny.

They also have a phone switch feature that allows you to transfer your current call to another one of Grand Central phones. For example, if someone calls me on my GC number and I pick up on my work phone. Let's say that it's my wife and she talks more than I expected (happens all the time) and I need to head for home. I can hit the '*' on the phone and GC will have all my other phone numbers tied to GC ring. So I pick up my ringing cell phone, hang up the work phone and continue talking to my wife without her ever knowing that she's been transferred.

It's been a great service. I think they are still in private beta so not everyone can sign up for the service right now. I still have a few invitations left, so let me know if you want to try out the service.

Update: GrandCentral is not doing invitation right now.
Update 2: GrandCentral is now Google Voice. The service is essentially the same just run by Google.

Been Busy

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I started up my Master's degree in August and I've been a little busy. By the time I get done with work and school, I have very little desire to sit in front of a computer. I hope to catch up on some blogging during the fall break.

Picking Out Color Schemes

I hate trying to pick colors out for a website. If you're like me, you'll want to check this site out:

http://kuler.adobe.com/

Thanks Chris

Another Handy Find

I'm sure everybody has a free online fax service that they use. I didn't for awhile and found faxZERO about a month ago. Their service is free but includes an advertising cover page. They accept Word doc or PDF files. They also have a pay version for $1.99 that doesn't have ad on the cover page (although this seems kind of pricey to me). What online fax services do you use?

Handy Regular Expression (RegEx) Tool

I found a handy tool that can help you quickly validate your regex expressions or validate text based off of your regex expression. It's not very fancy but it does the job.

Check it out: http://erik.eae.net/playground/regexp/regexp.html

My Brain is Full Now But Empty When I Need It

Have you ever had a great idea but by the time you can write it down, most of the details are gone from your mind?! Or what if someone tells you about some event that you should go to but don't have anything to write it down with. This stuff happens to me all the time. I think I just have too much garbage in my brain.

I recently discovered a service that I really like that helps me remember some of the important stuff until I can write it down. It's called BrainCast. It is a web/phone service. Here's how it works:

1. You have something that you need to remember.
2. You call the BrainCastphone number from a phone number that you have pre-configured with BrainCast.
3. You immediately here a beep, and then you leave a message with the details of the thing you need to remember.
4. BrainCast takes the wav file from your message and automatically ties it to your web account
5. Later, log into your BrainCast account and organize/listen to your BrainCast messages.

I think this is a really neat tool. I added my cell phone as one my phone numbers (allowed up to three) and created a speed dial on my cell phone to the BrainCast toll-free number. This tool has helped me remember quite a few things. I've had no complaints with their system. They are hosted by the VOIP company ViaTalk (my replacement VOIP after the fun with SunRocket). Even though this is a ViaTalk service, this service is open to everybody and is absolutely free.

Check them out: http://braincast.viatalk.com

Free PGP Software

At my day job, I deal with a lot of sensitive information. Sometimes I need to send files to someone or receive files from someone. My boss gets really nervous when I send social security numbers and salary information in clear text. So I found a free PGP application that lets me encrypt and decrypt these sensitive files. It doesn't have the cleanest interface, but it allows me to manage (add/delete/manage) my PGP keys, encrypt/decrypt, and sign files. I highly recommend this tool if you have any kind of sensitive data that you need to send across the public internet.

http://www.gpg4win.org

My Security.Config files for .NET are missing

I went to modify the security rules for a server the other day and I could not find the security config file (usually found here: %WinDir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\vx.y.zzzz\config). I did some research and found out that sometimes the security.config file is not created when you install .NET and the framework uses default security policies built into the framework. I found that you can get the framework to emit the default security policies into the security.config file by running the following command:

caspol -all -reset

Check back in the %WinDir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\vx.y.zzzz\config folder and you'll see the security.config file. Now you can modify it all you want.

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnfa/archive/2006/02/09/527688.aspx

Pixel Guess

Have you ever played the pixel guess game? I play it all the time. I'm trying to figure out how big something is on a computer screen and you have to start arbitrarily guessing its size. My brother told me about tool that he uses to help alleviate this issue. It's called Pixel ruler. It shows a ruler with pixel increments on your computer screen that you can use to measure screen objects. It doesn't have a lot of options but you can flip it horizontally or vertically. It is a very handy tool.






http://www.mioplanet.com/products/pixelruler/index.htm

Screenshot App

I've been using this tool for quite sometime but I went to put it on a new computer and couldn't remember its name. So I'm putting it here to remind me. The application is called Gadwin PrintScreen. It replaces the functionality of the Print Screen button with a whole lot better functionality. You can configure to capture a rectangular area (my favorite option), capture the current window or full screen. It has oodles of settings to customize it. This is a very handy tool.

http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/