Breakfast Links: Sidewalk bell, Microsoft and Spinvox
First off, I totally had this idea a long time ago, except for in my brain this wasn’t a bicycle bell it was a car horn. But I guess if you’re in Japan a bell works just fine. I love how everyone just moves aside, even the ones who notice that he’s not actually on a bike. The idea works! I like the one where he’s on the escalator. Of course, my original idea would be way more satisfying - to get trapped behind a group of 5 slow movers spread across the entire sidewalk and blast that horn? Yeah..
And then we have Microsoft asking you to steal from them, if you’re going to steal at all. It’s interesting to see that they recognize that in many ways the ubiquity of their software is important to their corporate well being, however that ubiquity is achieved. Although last thing I heard from them on this front was about their efforts to cut down on this.. it’s a little schizophrenic. Oh well.
And lastly, I’ve been trying to sign up for SpinVox. Among other things they have a voicemail to text (via sms or email) service that I have wanted as long as I have had voicemail. I hate retrieving voicemail, I thought that the Vonage service that emails you .wav files would do it, but it doesn’t really work on my treo. I would definitely pay for this service if the translation was good, unfortunately, their website is kinda ugly and the sign up procedure asks for a verification code that I don’t have. Sad for me, but I’ve got an email into their support so hopefully it’ll get straightened out.
BONUS! Our expert at the connected series of pipes, Howard, read yesterday’s post and took up the challenge. I had thought it was a Dilbert strip but misremembered the hook. Anyhizzle, here it is for all your nostalgic needs, this is really what it was like back then.
