This year, toast the new year on your own [virtual] Waterford champagne flute with Waterford’s Clink-Clink iPhone application. It’s free, and features a picture of a champagne glass that “clinks” when you tip your phone.

If you “clink” with an iPhone of a stranger with the application, you will exchange contact information.

It certainly is a fun idea, but how many of you will be carrying around a virtual glass of champagne in place of a real one?

Text messaging is huge! Almost everyone with a cell phone is texting more often these days. Why? I guess it’s the cool thing to do. Not to mention, it is sweet, short, and simple. So many companies and services are taking advantage of text messaging and I could spend a couple of days going through each one, but I’m not going to bore you. Just the other day, I text-messaged my order to Papa Johns and my pizza was here in no time!

One technology that I find rather neat is fighting crime with text messaging. Just like callers to a crime hot line, text tipsters can collect rewards for significant information. It is done with the cooperation of banks that hand over the cash — no questions asked — to people who present a code issued by police.

Most of us can agree that it is sometimes easier and less time-consuming to text rather than call, especially if you don’t feel like talking, so Police hope the idea helps recruit teens and 20-somethings who would not normally dial a Crime Stoppers hot line to share information with authorities. For instance, if your son/daughter overhears someone threatening to blow up their teacher’s car with explosives, then they can text that in. I hope they would!

“It’s obvious that the future of communication is texting,” said Officer Michael Charbonnier, commander of the Boston Police Department’s Crime Stoppers unit. I would agree with him. Texting is not going away soon and will only be used more often if not favored more than talking in the future. Personally, I can never see myself favoring text messaging over talking, but as time goes by, and children are born with cell phones in hand, talking is likely to be the least thing on the younger crowds minds. Especially at schools where text messaging soars.

I think the idea is awesome. It sure is a sneaky way to rat out another person. I just hope it does not get abused. Another problem that may arise is this text messaging language that has surfaced. Not everyone knows “lol” (laugh out loud) or “ttyl” (talk to you later). God knows what might be texted to police and misinterpreted. I can see a list now of “commonly used text messaging abbreviations” being distributed on desks in police departments. 

As gas price increase, my bank account decreases. I currently own an SUV (not for long) and to fill up my car, I have to take out a loan…Well, maybe not that bad quite yet, but at over $100, I am just about willing to do anything to fill up for as cheap as possible. Whenever I take a necessary ride somewhere, I noticed the price of gas rising right before my eyes and it seems like yesterday, I was complaining over $1.92/gallon. I cannot help you get it back to that price, but I can help you save some gas money.

I’m pretty sure most of you have heard of the few places I am going to talk about since traffic to these sites are growing every day. “GasBuddy.com, which serves as an umbrella site for 180 regionalized sites covering some 170,000 gas stations in the U.S. and Canada, has seen more of a steady climb in traffic.” This site, and GasPriceWatcher essentially do the same thing – Find the cheapest gas prices in your vicinity. GasBuddy.com and GasPriceWatch.com, both 8-year-old sites, rely on their networks of registered members/spotters. Spotters are community members who are usually offered incentive points or a chance to win a “thank you” prize such as a discount on gas.

GasBuddy.com has one of the coolest features in what it calls its Gas Temperature Map, an interactive display of gas prices around the country, with areas color-coded according to their average price for regular unleaded gasoline. I was able to find some cheap gas this way, but that is not the only way to be alerted of cheap gas. It should be noted that new technologies have changed the way we consumers are accessing information from the gas price sites. Some are still looking at the sites on their PCs. But other gadgeteers, like me, are getting such information through in-car GPS systems, text messaging, and smartphone applications.

Make no mistake that these are not the only gas saving websites out there. There is also AAA’s Gas Price Finder, unlike the other two sites; this site uses data primarily from credit card transactions. MapQuest Gas Prices and MSN Gas Prices rely on data supplied by the Oil Price Information Service, a pricing database that collects information from 125,000 North American retail outlets. Not to mention, last year, a X-writer here at The Tech Brief wrote about six super ways to save on gas. That super six ways is definitely a must see.

If you were not aware of these sites, I suggest you use them, because now a day, every little bit of savings helps. Another useful tip I heard not too long ago is if you can find a gas station that does not accept credit cards, then the gas will be considerably cheaper. Word on the streets is that the prices will continue to grow to groundbreaking records and soon, we will all be working from home, not going anywhere.

I am in Walmart browsing through the CDs when I hear the man beside me yelling about the front porch being painted sandy brown instead or burnt orange. I should mention that it was just me and the man in that section. I look up, thinking he was, for some unknown reason, talking to me. I did not notice he was on the phone, so surely he would not be talking to himself like that (although some people do). After staring at him for a brief moment of time, trying to figure out if he was talking to me, I was about to respond with an “excuse me,”  when he points to his ear and indicates that he was on the phone.

I refuse to give in to the trend that is forcefully pushing through of wearing the cool devices we call Bluetooth headsets. Yes, eventually I will fall into the trend convincing myself of what a convenience it is and it is not so bad, but for now, I do not like the Bluetooth headset. However, there is coolness about them, and makers are finally delivering these products that could quite possibly accessorize with your attire. So not only convenient and safe, but also fashionable.

New legislation prohibiting drivers from talking while behind the wheel, combined with a demand for more fashionable and advanced devices and more sophisticated phones, is driving Bluetooth headset makers to innovate. I took a look at the newest Jawbone technology and I must say, it is very nice.The latest addition to the wireless world is Aliph’s Jawbone with “NoiseAssassin” technology.

Aliph set out to blend science with beauty in a new design that is 50 percent smaller than the original Jawbone and features noise-elimination technology that promises better voice quality. The new headset is available exclusively at AT&T retail stores and at Jawbone’s site. The new Jawbone features military-grade NoiseAssassin technology, designed to address real-world noise environments like busy streets, cars and airports. Aliph said, “it has 10 times better voice clarity than competing headsets” — meaning it is virtually quite.

The Jawbone headset uses the VAS (Voice Activity Sensor) to distinguish the sound of your voice from ambient noise and then uses proprietary Digital Signal Processing (DSP) algorithms to subtract the noise so only the sound of your voice comes through. You are probably thinking, “wow, this is high tech for such a simple piece of equipment.” You are right, it is, but for good reasons. Not only are you getting military technology for your phone, but you are getting it in style.

The new Jawbone is designed to look and feel like an accessory along the lines of jewelry and eyewear. It offers a customized fit with three sizes of earbuds and four ear loops that can be worn on either ear. It is important to not only be functional, but fashionable as well. I’ve noticed quite a change in the younger crowd. As mentioned in an earlier post, kids are practically born with cells phones and unlike my days of school where it was cool to show off your coolest shoes, CD Player, or hat, the cell phone industry has made a remarkable turn to attract with the coolest cell phones and accessories. Why not add some style to a Bluethooth headset!

Sure, you can grab a cheap Bluetooth headset of the shelf for no less than $20.00 now, but the Jawbone has class. It sells for $129.99 in matte black. Silver and rose-gold colors will soon be added.

I know I am young (24) so my generation definitely knows what a cell phone is and how much money it can save if we just have a cellphone and not a landline. So many people I talked to no longer have landlines these days; or either they do, but never use them. Why? I think one reason cell phones win over landlines is the simple fact that they are portable. You can get a call anywhere. No longer do you have to be tethered to a phone jack to receive a call.

It is said, “for nearly three in 10 households, people do not even bother trying to call them on a landline phone.” Most figures show they either only have a cell phone or seldom if ever take calls on their traditional phone.  Most figures also show that dependence on cells is continuing to rise at the expense of wired telephones. “In the second half of last year, 16 percent of households only had cell phones, while 13 percent also had landlines but got all or nearly all their calls on their cells.”

It is far no surprise that these nifty, cool, little gadgets are growing, and growing quickly. Another reason why I think cell phone usage is growing is because solicitors. Cell phone users get freedom from those annoying solicitors. Families often either have their landline hooked exclusively to a computer or rely so heavily on their cells that they ignore landline calls because they are probably from telephone solicitors.

However, leaving out the poor landline can have some problems too. “The trends have an important impact on polling organizations, which rely primarily on calls to random landline phone numbers.” Calling cell phone users can be more costly for pollsters, in part because federal law forbids unsolicited calls to cell phones made by computerized dialing systems used heavily by pollsters. That is a joy to some people. I am definitely happy that I cannot get unsolicited calls to my cell.

But there is another problem — Also affected are the telephone industry and emergency service providers, who can find it harder to locate people calling from a cell phone. This can be crucial. My parents made the decision of switching to an unlimited cell phone plan and ditching the landline because they were not home. Before, they had their home phone forwarding calls to their cell phones anyway, so I could see their reasoning. More and more companies allow cell phones so it wasn’t a problem for their jobs. However, a situation that involved emergency help was delayed by the simple fact that they had nothing but a cell phone.

I searched and looked at the National Center for Health Statistics and found that out of the 13,000+ individuals they interviewed, they found some interesting findings:

-Low-income people are likelier than the more affluent to have only cell phones.

-About a third of those under age 30 only have cell phones.

-About 2 percent of households reported having no telephones

-Households with both cell and landline phones who rarely or never get calls on their landlines tend to be better educated and have higher incomes.

-Those with only cells tend to be living with unrelated roommates, renters rather than homeowners, and Hispanics and blacks rather than whites.

Of course, these finding do not apply for everyone,everywhere, and living situations, so you should not get offended, but their findings are interesting to see. I feel that, as time progresses and the sheer volume of people grow, landline may be the thing of the past, leaving us vulnerable to those polls and unsolicited phone calls. Kids these days are practically given cell phones after birth and the child grows up with the mindset that they don’t need a landline and that, my friends, is the start of a “landlineless” world.