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?

I covered google docs in this post, since then I have been keeping an eye out for another application that has as much to offer someone wishing to bring more of their work online. The good news is that I think I found one, the bad news, with so much of my stuff invested into google docs I am not sure that Zoho provides enough reason for me to switch. However for those of you who are about to make the jump from desktop applications to online document use, Zoho may be your answer.

While both google and Zoho offer very similar services there are some that only Zoho offers and others that only google offers. Both offer the following: Word Processor, spreadsheet, slideshow, web clippings, email, chat, wiki (google uses Jot), and web conferencing. What only google has: Web site hosting and feed reader. What only Zoho has: Database application, Online database, project management and customer relationship manger. I think the main difference between the two is that Zoho appears to be more business oriented while google remains strongly consumer driven.

While time will only tell if Zoho will be competitive against the juggernaut that is google, however if you are someone looking for a new place to store your work online, Zoho is worth the time it takes to explore it a little. I like Zoho a lot and if in the future I find that google does not meet all my needs I will definantly give them a shot. You can check out Zoho here, registration and use is free unless you opt for their Zoho business which runs $40 per user per year.

Today, a large percentage of people have internet over phone so many companies are taking full advantage of this by offering services like Skype and Vonage. There are also free alternatives like AimPhoneline, which gives a person a number to receive a call. You will have to pay more to make calls. Many others are offering services like these that are slowly killing landline phone companies. There is a new kid on the block though. This new service blows everyone out of the water.

Magic Jack is a fairly new service that gives you a number, voicemail, call waiting, caller ID, etc. and a nifty little phone jack. Despite the name, the phone jack is not magical, but it gets close. It is a USB phone jack that plugs into a computer and then the person plugs a phone into the other end allowing them to make or recieve calls for free. All you have to do is buy the phone jack for $39.00. That is not bad for a phone service. There aren’t any other costs. As the website says, “Never pay a phone bill again!”

I discovered this service as I was waiting on a phone number via Free 411. “Press one to find out more information about this service.” I pressed one. I am almost tempted to get one. My cell phone works everywhere in the US, so the only reason I would use it, if I were to go out of country. I don’t do that often at all.

I have heard good things, and I have heard bad things about the service. If you have one, let us know what you think. We are all curious.

I reviewed Google docs about three weeks ago when the tech brief first opened, at the time I really didn’t think I would have a reason to look back at this neat little application brought to us by Google. It is now very apparent that I was wrong, Google has just released a new option to the popular Google docs, Google docs mobile. Now not only can you create spread sheets, word documents and other such things with your team or friends on the internet you can now have it available from your hand held computer device as well.

I suppose I may be kind of weird, but this little addition to the already awesome Google docs family really makes me happy. Now if for some reason I can’t be at my computer, I can still be in touch with the various documents that I have stored on Google docs with Google docs mobile. While the mobile version is somewhat slimed down you can still access everything you could while online. It does take some getting used to as far as learning to navigate without a mouse, but it is a small price to pay for being able to take this handy little application anywhere you can use your hand held device.

While I am sure that there are some issues with this new application somewhere I am as yet unable to find any, however if you do find some please let me know via comment or email.

Sick and tired of getting lost in the back streets of Daytona? Can’t find the bikini clad babes on the board walk? You need the Tom Tom Rider.

Specifically developed for use on a motorcycle, the Tom Tom Rider is waterproof, has a biker friendly touch screen designed to be used when wearing gloves, comes with mounting hardware for almost any bike and has high quality in-helmet bluetooth voice instructions.

The scary thing is that you can also add friends to the Rider, and it will tell you where they are on the road, so no more stopping off for a beer while the missus is at home; if she’s got one too, she’ll know to within a few feet exactly where you are at all times. Oops. I don’t think Tom Tom were thinking of this particular application when they designed it, but any tech-savvy biker chick is going to see the possibilities immediately.

The technical specs are impressive though, and it did pass the Knowles destructo-test™, when I dropped it going down the road at forty miles an hour. That’ll teach me to leave well enough alone.

It looks good, is as tough as they say and most importantly, tells you where to go with a minimum of fuss. I’m not sure any self respecting Harley rider should be adding a piece of Dutch technology to his Fat Boy, but who knows?

More info from amazon.com:

•  TomTom ONE Portable GPS Vehicle Navigator
• TomTom Rider 2 GPS Navigator for Motorcycles and Scooters
• TomTom Rider 32MB GPS Navigator for Motorcycles and Scooters