Porch thinkin' at days end

I've gotta say, carrying a phone, iPod, camera with a web browser and all these info aggregation tools in one device has been a great ticket thus far. I'm capturing more spontaneous photos, accessing info on the fly, and automating some routine tasks. Take one event today as an example.

A few days ago I installed an app called ReQall. I was standing in line for a coffee yesterday and called ReQall to experiment. I told ReQall to "send a (coworker) a note tomorrow asking when the new projectors are coming in." ReQall sent out the note the following am and I received a response from my coworker today with an answer. A digital secretary service. Sure, I could have sent the note myself but it's pretty convenient to call a service, have it transcribe your voice to text, decipher the command words in the note of "send" and "tomorrow" and have it actually do it! Thus far I've setup ReQall to add things to my Google calendar, send me text reminders, send email for me and remind me of tasks I have floating about. It's also free. Thus far, it's been a great experiment. There's a delay when you call ReQall, while it transcribes your voice but thus far a delay of 5 to as long as 30 minutes has not been a factor. Texting the service provides quicker results. The trick here is that it writes it to my calendar, sends me reminders via txt messages, etc all from spoken words or style (verbal or written) sentences. Going to run more experiments.

In the last week I've attempted to move away from the computer more for my reading, email and writing. Thus far, the iPhone has fit the bill. With these new capabilities I've been reading more, jotting down notes in a variety of places and taking far more spontaneous photos I otherwise wouldn't shoot because I rarely dragged around a camera. I've been on the mobile version of facebook, tossing out some txts with friends I used to speak to once a month. Ideas are flowing, I'm storing info in places where I can access it later in a much more seamless fashion. Great stuff.

My dog, Otis, has had enough though of me on this phone over the last hour. Picture of Otis shot, cropped and dropped the blurbs you see on the pic using the phone in about two mins. Editing photos on a phone... amazing. More later. Time to play fetch. Good dog.