Demo Girl

While talking to my Mom the other day, the subject of text messaging came up. She said that she doesn’t understand why anyone would send a text message over making an actual call. I tried to explain to her that sometimes you just don’t want to talk to the person – you just want to relay a quick piece of information without getting caught up in all the chit chat that comes along with making a phone call. She said, “Oh, Ok” but I know she still thinks it’s a dumb idea. I completely disagree. The thing is, that sending a text message is still sort of an interruption and you usually feel some sort of response is necessary. Even if you just text back, “Ok, thanks”, you still have to involve yourself in the conversation somehow. This is why SlyDial is so sneakily cool.

SlyDial allows you to call a person and leave them a voice mail, without their knowledge. All you need to do is call the SlyDial number and when prompted, enter in your friends number. You’ll hear a quick advertisement and then you’ll be connected to your friends voice mail, all without their phone ever ringing. I tried it out a few minutes ago on my friend who lives in Hawaii and it appears to have worked. You could use SlyDial to call in sick to work and not worry about talking to your boss, to cancel plans with a friend you don’t really like, or to leave a birthday message for a relative you hate conversing with. The possibilities are endless. SlyDial is in private beta right now but you can sign up here to try to get early access.

[via Webware]

Recently, I’ve started listening to NPR on my laptop when I go to sleep at night and when I wake up in the morning.  I’ve always needed some sort of background noise in order to sleep and having the TV on is just too distracting.  NPR is great, but I think Stitcher is going to be my new morning online radio.

Stitcher allows you to listen to stories from popular blogs and Websites such as TechCruch, VentureBeat, The Onion Radio, The Weather Channel, and much more.  When you first log into Stitcher, you’ll see stations that you can choose from (ie: sports, comedy, Silicon Valley Professional) and within those stations are various streams of audio from specific sites.  You can create a favorites list of all your favorite content so all you need to do is press play.  Over time, Stitcher will learn what you like and suggest stations to you.  Of course, the best part of Stitcher for most of you out there is that you can listen to it on your iPhone which could make your morning commute a little more enjoyable.  Stitcher is currently in private beta but if I get my hands on any invites, I’ll pass them on.

[via Mashable]