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?

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.

I have been noticing many ads on the internet about TakeTV. I decided to take a look at it and discovered a neat little device that might interest me, or you for that matter.

At CES back in January SanDisk showed off a USB media player device that has just now made it to market. The system is called the Sansa TakeTV. The system is somewhat similar to the Apple TV product in that it records content from your PC to play on your TV. Whereas the Apple TV uses wireless connectivity to connect to your TV, the Sansa TakeTV uses a USB drive that plugs into a cradle connected to your TV.

Unfortunately, I cannot give you a full product review, because I have not been able to get my hands on one, but here are some details for you. The full kit comes with the video player, docking station, power adapter, remote control and AV cables. There are two models – 4GB and 10GB capacity for consumers’ selection. Priced at priced only $99.99 and $149.99 respectively, I am sure this is a good deal for beginners that would like to switch its PC contents to the living room.

TakeTV supports DivX, Xvid, and MPEG-4 video files. The device is Vista and XP compatible, so sorry Mac users. In addition, TakeTV lacks support for High Def and 2.1 channel audio.

TakeTV is an easy way to grab the tons of BitTorrent files and other video content from your PC to watch on your TV. Sure, the exclusion of 2.1 audio connections might disappoint you. Nevertheless, the lack of wireless streaming is not that much of a bummer. You and I both know that network hiccups and bandwidth issues can affect wireless video streaming sometimes. In addition, transferring files wirelessly isn’t always speedy. Moreover, the device is affordable, and that alone, is good enough for some people, and worth checking out.

Let me know how you like it.

Get either model from amazon.com:

• Sansa TakeTV 4 GB Video Player
• Sansa TakeTV 8 GB Video Player

Everyone loves free stuff! I looked at the free top five useful services that anyone can access with their phone. You will see below a list of web services where your phone plays a main part in the service. Whether you need someone to wake you up in the morning, or even detailed driving directions, even to make free overseas call, it’s all here and accessible from your phone; Your mobile phone, or your landline phone. Enjoy!

1. Yak4ever – This is nice. This service offers astounding free, unlimited overseas calling directly from your phone. Now if only I had overseas friends to call…There are a few other services that work the same way in other areas too.
   1. AllFreeCalls.co.uk – UK and supports O2 Peak/Off-Peak, Orange/T-Mobile both Peak and Off-Peak
   2. AllFreeCalls.ie – Ireland
2. Bringo – This practical service lets you bypass annoying phone support waiting lines and get to the company representative you need in a matter of seconds. You can: (1) Find the company you’d like to call by category (credit cards, mortgages, health care, etc), Press (2) Enter your phone number. (3) Wait for your phone to ring.
3. Tellme – I use to use Tellme all the time. This is yet another free directory service for local businesses, maps, and directions. To use Tellme, you can either Dial (1-800-555-TELL), send text message (to 83556) or download TellMe software to your mobile.
4. Call-in-Sick – Don’t like calling in yourself? Or you know you are going to have a late night and don’t want to call your boss in the morning. This evil but rather handy service lets you record ‘i am sick’ type message and schedule it to be delivered to your Boss early in the morning. I have not used the service yet, but I am pretty sure that that would not fly with my boss.
5. GoogleSMS – Google just keeps getting better and better. You are now able to get instant info about local restaurants, weather, flight information, movies, translations, driving directions, currency conversions, etc. via SMS.

I hope you find most, if not all these services to be useful. I sure have. There are so many more out there and probably requires a whole other blog to talk about each service available today. However, be sure to check back as I may list some more services that you may want to check out.

What services do you use on your phone and cannot live without?

The verizon phones dubbed Venus and Voyager are now available for preoder. Venus is going to set you back $199 on a 2 year contract and is set for release on November 19th. Pre-orders for LG’s Voyager have also started and is going to set you back $299 on a 2 year plan with availability slated for Nov 21st. If you are quite sure what these two phone do, or haven’t heard anything of them, read on:

Voyager:

“If sublime style and profound performance are part of your mobile destiny, the new Verizon Wireless Voyager™ by LG is just what you’ve been waiting for. The first handset with both interactive touch screen and a full QWERTY keyboard, this one−of−a−kind wonder can also tune you in and turn you on to V CAST Mobile TV and full HTML Internet browsing. The VOYAGER will take you where you want to go with a music player, dual speakers for stereo sound, Bluetooth®, and a 2.0 megapixel camera & camcorder. For the ultimate mobile excursion, there is nothing like the VOYAGER. “

Venus:

“The brightest star yet in the Verizon Wireless line–up, the new VENUS™ combines the best of all worlds! This sophisticated and stunning slider features a lower display with interactive touch navigation, music player, 2.0 megapixel camera, and up to an 8GB microSD^sm memory port for extra storage. Of course it has Bluetooth® Stereo Support for Listening to Music and is V CAST ready for stellar performance while on the go. The VENUS by LG. You’re gonna love it!”