One of the useful things about blackberry devices is their always connected status, I’m told. If you are not so fortunate as to have one there is a couple of ways to work around this in some situations. I don’t have an unlimited data plan for my cell phone. I do have unlimited text and extended text. That’s why I don’t bother with the built in mail clients available to me on my phone already.

My carrier is At&T. I am generally satisfied with how they treat me.

I was wondering how I could improve my ability to answer e-mails in a timely way, without having to sit at my computer waiting sometimes days for a particular e-mail, like an interested party for a sale on Craigslist or eBay.

The answer is actually pretty simple. Most Cell phone services that handle SMS or Texting also have a e-mail to SMS Bridge. Here is a list of the common ones.

Wikipedia has an article on this as well as a list of the common gateways.

So the idea is at your mail server, you set up a forward on that particular account, to your number at the gateway, whenever certain keywords are used, not used, or from certain addresses.

The question then is, “what if you don’t run your own mail server?”
Well Gmail, lets you do the same thing, with pretty much the same capabilities. I’m pretty sure most web based free e-mail services let you do the same thing.

Some people might note this doesn’t seem that groundbreaking. A few friends have mentioned keeping a e-mail client open and running on a computer locally. There are several problems with this:

Setting up a filter at the host or at your own server sends the e-mail, in my experience, to your phone instantly. Then you can go check it on a client if you did not receive it on your phone correctly. At least you have been alerted that you have an e-mail waiting for you.

This puts the work around a little closer to a “push” mail service rather than the traditional ones. With a conventional service you would check the server, download your mail via a client like Eudora, then it’s filters would process it, and forward the e-mail to you. Again It’s probably a good idea to not check your mail via a client more frequently than every 5-10 minutes.

I plan on putting a few more filters in place for various friends as well.

Cell Phones, push mail, sms, sms gateway, txting

According to a CNN tv blip this morning, and I would guess the NTSB, about 19 teens die in car crashes every day, in the United States.

SafeCo is offering a program to put a GPS in your car that would let you monitor the driving habits of your teen. The plan is in pilot stages right now, but it could lead to lower premeiums, as it has been shown already to reduce claims. The SafeCo system is about $25.00 a month. They claim a third party handles all the data so they only see it in agregate, and it will not be used to influence your premiums. This data is subpeonable by legal entities though. CNN unfortunately does not have video online right now of the broadcast story I just saw.

There are several other companies doing this. One Rocky Mountain Tracking offers their service for several different types of vehicles, for different types of functions including fleet tracking, loss prevention, and checking up on your spouse.

Here is another company offering essentially the same service but different sets of terms Safe Teen Driving Club /the GPS they sell is $599.00 and the monthly service is $29.95 with a one year commitment.

AIG seems to be the first auto insurance company that has implimented this type of technology specifically in this way. Here is AIG’s partner site called Mobile Teen GPS
AIG states,

“AIG Auto Insurance will not track individual customer’s daily driving behaviors and data gathered during this pilot will not impact a customer’s rate or renewal eligibility. AIG Auto Insurance will offer this service to the pilot policyholders at a substantial discount off the normal device and monthly service fees.”

They sell it as a way of increasing privilages for the driving teen as the parents “Know” they are being responsible. Thier FAQ area is interesting.

There are three price levels for plans and coverage which is a little different from the other companies which have just one price point.
The Starter plan at 14.95 /month gives you 20 locales
The Value plan gives you for 29.95 / month 100 locales
and finally the Safety plan offers for 39.95 a month 300 locales.

It seems you can get hit on your credit card for every local your kid goes over or if you get allerted more than a certain number of times per month.

I predict that cell phone companies will get in this business if it is technically feasiable.

This Tattle Tail site even lets you tattle online if you see soemone with a bumper sticker telling you about it. Tattle-Tail -Like that will never be abused in a high school setting. -(sarcasm)

They do have a great money making opportunity though for groups or organizations. Your group gets $5.00 and $10.00 for each 1 and 2 year sign ups, but your org has to handle all the money and mail it in to them. Too bad there isn’t a web affiliate, it would be pretty lucrative compared to other add revenue.

To contrast this relatively simple idea with Hunter Pro’s web site I’m a little over whelmed, which does not appear to let you purchase from them. It’s not quite ready for regular people to jump in on that web site.

Lightening GPS offers a several different devices including one that can be moved from vehicle to vehicle for a one time activation of 69.95, and a but relatively expensive monthly service: $69.95 /month for service but up to 2000 location queries a month.

The Wall Street Journal has a lengthy article with comparisons of the various prices/ features. But they make no mention of the legal liabilities smoething like this carries. Imagine your kid getting a heavier sentence because of your “concern” with one of these spying type devices. I included a link to a article where this has already happened.

A completely different form of “tracking” is a camera that only recordes the last 10 seconds before an “event” like a crash or other rapid change in acceleration. via TechDirt

This is a little better trust wise than the other system, but they mention in this WSJ Article it can be subpoenaed in legal precedings.

Here is mention of a vehicular homicide case that officials are trying to get access to the device recorder to either convict or raise the penalty

Here is the National Motorists Association position on the idea of recorders in vehicles.

Finally here is good example via a carblog called Stangs Uleashed with a real situation in which a driver was being charged with a larger crime based on whats in the recorder.

Here are a few other blogs about this as well:
Telematics Journal
Mike the Actuary’s Musings

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Open NAS seems like a really cool idea. The iso is only 30 MBs. I found out about this via slashdot. The review at Newsforge seems promising. It looks like its controled from a web interface, and you can ssh into it.

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Linux Iso looks a like a good place to pick up the latest Linux Distribution and has a comparison of the various flavors out there. Knoppix is by far the easiest to use. Just download, burn to cd, and boot. Thier distro includes The Gimp (a photo editor that has quite a few features and is open source), Open Office (a productivity suite), and KDE (a graphical desktop enviroment.)

Lego Factory via Wired . The Lego factory lets you buy pieces that fit a model you upload. or you can browse the other designs other people have uploaded and buy their sets.

Wired states…

it’s a brilliant move. Customers get to make whatever they want, and LEGO gets to transform its army of users into a massive product design team.

Also from Wired, a story about the new robotics set from Lego called, MINDSTORMSâ„¢ NXT. Check out this Slashdot thread about it.

Two lego unrelated stories about Lego in one day on Wired, kinda makes you almost wonder if there was a paid product placement involved. Even if there was, these developements are so cool I’m willing to overlook it, if it was one. I own the first generation of Mindstorm kit. It really lets you focus on design of behaviors rather than spending inordinate amounts of time designing robot hardware as you would with other systems.

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