Friday’s Trick – Auto Search Craigslist with Notify.me & Yotify.com
Every Friday I share a web tool that has help me or that I find interesting. Last week I discussed how to create your own screencast using Screenr.com.
Often I find that I am searching Craigslist for something I need. I go to Craigslist and search for it everyday. I kept saying to myself, “I wish I could set-up an automatic search to save time.”
Well, I found several services that can accomplish that and much more.
Notify.me
Notify.me delivers notifications that interest you in near real time. It eliminates the need for you to constantly check on classified listings, blogs or social networking sites.
Notifications are pushed to your destinations of choice such as instant messenger, mobile phone, email, desktop or web application.
Click here for detailed instructions on setting-up detailed instructions on custom Craigslist searches.
The uses are beyond Craigslist – they have documented how-to’s for Facebook, Google News, Yahoo! Real Estate, Songza and more.
An alternative to Notify.me is Yotify.
Yotify.com
Yotify is a similar service that send “scouts” to crawl the web. You can search Craigslist, Youtube, ESPN, the Wall Street Journal, etc.
Yotify will easily allow you to track anything on the web that matters to you.
So, if you are ever experiencing the same problem as me and need an easier way to search craigslist, both options should be of pretty good value to you.
Warren Buffet says Social Media overvalued. Do you understand your investments?
Warren Buffett said earlier this week on Social Media IPOs (initial public offering):
“Most of them will be overpriced,” Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said today in New Delhi. ”It’s extremely difficult to value social networking site companies,” he said, without specifying companies. “Some will be huge winners, which will make up for the rest.” – Busiessweek
This made the headlines of Techmeme and other sites like NBC and Huffington Post.
However I am surprised this was such an important headline as Buffett is known to not invest in industries he does not understand himself. This is part of the reason he has stayed weary of derivative investments and invested mostly in textile, insurance, and more traditional companies.
In fact he has been quoted not being favorable towards IPOs:
It’s almost a mathematical impossibility to imagine that, out of the thousands of things for sale on a given day, the most attractively priced is the one being sold by a knowledgeable seller (company insiders) to a less-knowledgeable buyer (investors).
So, when one of the richest men in the world gives an opinion, you should probably listen up and take note. He could be right on that there is a bubble forming around social media companies. But what can you learn from his opinions?
What are you invested in that you don’t understand? Can you explain your insurance plans? Do you know you loan your money to banks for zero interest and borrow back rom them at 18-29% using their credit cards?
Know your investments and financial products you are buying and using… but just my opinion.
How to Leave Your Smart Phone (Part 2) – Get emails through SMS
One of the best features of a smart phone is the ability to read and respond to emails on-the-go. A few days ago I listed methods to update Facebook and Twitter using SMS. The good news is through SMS you can not only update social networks, but also get the first 140 characters of emails to your cell phone.
You will not have all of the smart phone functionality, but you can very easily receive important emails to your cell phone using SMS text messaging and Gmail filtering.
First you have figure our your Carrier Specific SMS Gateway. This is basically an email that sends a SMS Text message to your phone.
Go here or do a search for “SMS Gateway List” to find your carrier and the gateway email. Mine is on the Verizon network, so my code is mynumber@vtext.com.
Here are the top SMS Carrier Gateway Codes (United States Only):
- n@message.alltel.com Alltel
- n@txt.att.net ATT Wireless
- n@myboostmobile.com Boost
- n@mobile.celloneusa.com CellularOne
- n@mms.uscc.net CellularOne MMS
- 1n@mobile.mycingular.com Cingular
- n@messaging.sprintpcs.com Sprint PCS
- n@tmomail.net T-Mobile
- n@mymetropcs.com Metro PCS
- n@email.uscc.net US Cellular
- n@vtext.com Verizon
- n@vmobl.com Virgin Mobile
Once you have figured out your code you first must set that SMS gateway as a verified forwarding email address in your Gmail. Go here for directions on setting that up.
Then create a filter to only forward important items to your cell phone. For my filter I chose for any email containing the words “unsubscribe” or “click here.” Click here for directions to set-up a Gmail filter.
After I set-up this filter I quickly discovered several emails I did not want to receive were coming to my phone. My filter ultimately looks like this now:
Here is the filter I used in my Gmail email to forward emails via SMS to my Verizon cell phone. Note: I had to add some additional parameters when I got unnecessary emails.
Once that is set-up you should start getting emails that are “important.”
As an afterthought you may want to also create a filter from important people (my wife, family members, boss, etc) where the email is always sent.
Also, please, please, please confirm that you have a text messaging plan to cover the text. Your incoming texts will drastically go up.
Here are some additional guides on getting your emails sent to you via SMS text messaging:
