Convert Voicemail to Text or Email

PhoneTag  is an alternative to calling in to check your voicemail. The service converts the messages to text or email, potentially making it quicker and easier to catch up on missed or ignored callers at meetings and other places where it’s difficult to listen to voicemail. Calls are rerouted to PhoneTag from your cell phone carrier’s voicemail service, where  messages are transcribed and sent to you as either an SMS or an email.  There are several price plans:  $0.35 per message, $9.95 per month with 40 included messages (then $0.25 for each subsequent message) or $29.95 per month for unlimited messages.

Bad Year? Try Stress-Relief Music

KitionCard

So your portfolio is down, vacancies are up, rental rates are soft and there’s no sign of a sale on the horizon. Tysons Corner, VA-based KitionCard claims it’s still possible to spread holiday cheer to similarly luckless business associates, even if they’re ”suffering from stress due to the global financial crisis.”

All you have to do, the company suggests, is send its $5.99 holiday card that play 40 minutes of stress-relief music.  The “effect on the recipient is soothing relaxation and relief from the stresses of the day and the trying economic times,” the company states, adding, “What better way to incur the profound goodwill of customers than through such a gift?” The price drops to $4.99 if you order the cards in packs of 10.

Can You Know More About Who You Know?

Gist is an online service created to “help you build stronger relationships.” It connects your inbox to the web, allowing you to get business-critical information about key clients and  the companies  where they work. Founder T.A. McCann says Gist, now in beta tests, “blends personal communication with the Web.” 

“We all spend so much time managing new e-mails, searching for old e-mails, learning about new people, and trying to keep up with our contacts’ blogs and other related information about them,” he said. Gist is designed to pull all that information together.

Software Focuses on Customer Service

The most efficient businesses maximize the value of their real estate-and new technologies can potentially help. Los Angeles-based Attitude Positive Inc., for instance, sells software designed to improve customer service. One of its key products is AccuPos, which allows touch-screen computers to replace cash registers. It’s designed to help small food-service retailers-including bakeries, restaurants, convenience stores, pizzerias and delis–move customers through lines more quickly, generate accounting reports, and even take lunch orders over the Internet.  

Convert Files to Other Formats

The biggest challenge on the Internet isn’t finding information. It’s finding it in the format you need to share or store. But one solution may be as close as an ad-suppoted site.  Zamzar is a free ile conversion service that lets you convert almost anything, including video, music, images and documents,  to anything else. Just upload the file, select the format you want, enter your email address and watch for the converted file in your mailbox. If your curious, the company says its name is based on a character in a book by German author Franz Kafka.

Tool Lets You Schedule Meetings Online

Contrary to what you may assume, Meet-O-Matic isn’t a dating site. It’s a business tool.

Another Human Powered Search Engine

ubExact a new beta-phase search engine that focuses on direct navigation, geography and action-based searches. The goal of the Fort Lauderdale, FL-based firm is to offer fast and easy searches that maximize the relevance of hits listed in search results.

Mapping Alternative Energy

Wind and solar power is arguably popular. But how much wind or sunshine is an area likely to get? That’s the kind of information a developer or investor may need to know before buying or developing a site. Just recently, 3TIER, an independent provider of assessment and forecasting of renewable energy, released a comprehensive, contiguous and high-resolution solar map for the entire Western Hemisphere. The clickable solar maps are similar to the high-resolution wind maps the company already released. Both are available online for free through the FirstLook Prospecting tool. The maps “allow policy-makers, developers and financiers to quickly identify potential sites and begin assessing their renewable energy potential,” the company says.

What Do You Mean You Still Can’t Hear Me?

Having a cell phone is no guarantee you can make a call. Chalk it up to dead zones, those annoying spots where cell phones are unable to transmit to a  cell site, base station or repeater,  usually because of hilly terrain, excessive foliage, distance or tall buildings.

If you think switching carriers is a solution, slow down. Before you switch check a site like  DeadCellZones or Mobiledia to pinpoint areas with the most cell phone coverage complaints. You can search by zip code, city, or address to find data on carriers like AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.

Extend Your Handwriting to Your Screen

Mountain View, CA-based PhatWare Corporation is offering users a chance to test PenOffice 3.0, a suite of handwriting recognition and collaboration software for Microsoft Windows-based computers and Tablet PCs.handwriting recognition, easy-to-use user interface, and extended set of pen-based collaboration features. You can use it with any Windows-based portable, tablet, and ultra-mobile PC–as well as a standard laptop. What does it do? It lets you add handwritten notes to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, embed control gestures into writing, create handwritten notes and more. Sign up to  participate in the PenOffice 3.0 Beta Program at www.phatware.com/pobeta and let me know if you find it useful.