texting

Over the past six months, I've discovered a great way to interact with my customers. It has been around for a long time, but it has only been recently that I've put it to good use. In fact, several of Alfresco's biggest deals have been closed using this technology.

Which technology? The lowly text message.

SMS doesn't have the buzz of Twitter nor, at only 160 characters per text, the length of an email. But SMS/text messaging has become my preferred tool to interact with prospects and customers (when not talking to them on the phone, of course).

Why?

Because texting is personal, direct, and virtually guaranteed to reach the intended recipient. It's also somewhat secure, since most people can't (or don't know how to) forward SMS messages.… Read more

We've looked at quite a few mind mapping tools here on Webware. Most recently, Webware's Rafe Needleman checked out a half dozen services that do the job one way or another. Nearly all of them require you to build and develop maps in a giant 2D space, something I think most people will spend more time trying to figure out rather than simply getting ideas down, which is where Text2MindMap is quite handy.

Instead of having you build out your ideas on some huge network of nodes, the tool lets you simply write down a list. Whenever you … Read more

Last year Fiat built a mammoth version of its new Fiat 500 mini car for the Frankfurt auto show, and now, in a fit of more size-conscious advertising, Fiat put up a mammoth advertising display for the tiny car in Berlin. This giant display is 3,100 square feet per side, and it is set up near Checkpoint Charlie, the former Berlin wall gate between West and East Germany. The cool feature of this advertising monument is that you can text it. According to Fiat, if you send a text to 84000 with the password Fiat 500, the message will … Read more

Ever gotten a text message from the pope? Well, to commemorate the Catholic Church's annual World Youth Day this July, thousands of young Catholics in Australia will be able to say that they did.

"We wanted to make (World Youth Day 2008) a unique experience by using new ways to connect with today's tech-savvy youth," Bishop Anthony Fisher of the Archdiocese of Sydney said in a statement provided to Reuters on Wednesday. Pope Benedict XVI will be in Sydney for the six-day celebration, which starts on July 15, and Australian youth will be able to connect … Read more

Once you explore the power of NoteTab Light, you may find this text editor beautiful despite its hectic interface. At its core, NoteTab Light is to Windows' Notepad as an iPhone is to a rotary phone. NoteTab Light incorporates top-level tabs similar to most Web browsers, so that you can manage several different projects at once. It can automatically replace Notepad so that Notepad's icons open NoteTab Light instead--although this helpful shortcut trick doesn't work in Windows Vista.

However, it's more than a mere replacement. The left column displays a list of commands, called Clips, that do … Read more

If you're becoming hopelessly addicted to Twitter or any other social network, then by all means stay away from this device. Called "TextCu.be"--being of Web 2.0 in nature, it obviously can't have a normal spelling--this is a dedicated wireless receiver designed to get text messages from designated social networks.

There's just one question that immediately comes to mind: Why would anyone buy a device like this when you can set up instant messages from social networks directly to a mobile phone?

TextCu.be's makers claim that it's preferable because "… Read more

Who doesn't like listening to computer generated human voices for hours at a time? If you're a fan of Microsoft Sam, you should check out Dixero, a service that turns RSS feeds into podcasts you can subscribe to and listen to on your computer or portable devices. The company is showing of its products at this week's Web 2.0 Expo, despite the incredibly noisy show floor.

The listening quality is about the same as Odiogo, a service I looked at a few months back and have used with great success on blogs and news sites that … Read more

Sure, it's not new that people get interrupted at dinner by a cell phone call. In the past, it must have been a pager, or maybe in olden days, a courier pigeon. But with the increasing number of people getting iPhones (I have to admit that a scion of my friends are over it and are eagerly awaiting the next iPhone) what's happening is now I know what types of messages are interrupting that long-planned catch-up dinner with that over-scheduled friend sitting across the table from me. Whereas before you knew there was a message, now (thanks to … Read more

This free, open-source word-processor strikes us as a worthy alternative to pricey, big-name products. AbiWord has a quick learning curve, since the interface is very similar to other word processors. You'll find just about all the features you need, including the ability to cut and paste, to highlight, as well a bevy of common formatting tools.

Although we did miss a grammar-checking utility, AbiWord can check your spelling in many languages--you'll need to choose the appropriate foreign language dictionaries during installation. A huge plus is the ability to open and save Microsoft Word documents, though the program also … Read more