Ted

Matt on Candace Gingrich: A Letter to My Brother Newt Gingrich: "I love that this is happening..."

Jan-Paul van den Bos on How to Sync Entourage, iPhone, and iCal: "At first it seems if setting..."

Rick Hightower on How to Sync Entourage, iPhone, and iCal: "Thanks. This helped a lot. I..."

Joy on How to Sync Entourage, iPhone, and iCal: "Hi - in iTunes, I don’t..."

Matt on Don’t want to be in there.: "Well, the fact that it passed..."

Josh on Movies.app - Find movie showtimes, reviews, and tickets on your iPhone: "Movies is great, but I think..."

Matt on What’s going on in there?: "the republican congress is realizing their..."

Check out this collection of cell phones. We’ll all be using one within 6 months.

Billmonk (http://www.billmonk.com): This is a system for tracking informal loans. Daniel and I used it when we traveled to Chicago recently, to keep track of expenses for each other. At Cheesecake Factory (one of the many times we went), you could hear us saying, “I’ll pick up the check and Billmonk you for the rest.” When I was feeling particularly generous, I would say, “I’ll get that pack of gum and I won’t Billmonk you for half of it.”

I would say it was a stress reducer, and the whole idea of sending an SMS somewhere that magically keeps track of things for us was pretty cool. A great example of an extension of the Web using SMS. When we got back. Daniel was able to print out all the charges, write me a check, and we were done. I suppose in the future, they could have PayPal integration, so all of that could be handled. Prior to Billmonk, I would have had to go into Quicken, run reports, and send long narrative flowing descriptions of the charges and then politely ask for money. No more! Billmonk will do that for us!

If I were to extend this service to a broader audience, I would use it for corporate expense tracking. I thought to myself that I might create a dummy identity for my employer and Billmonk them for expenses on the road. When I got back, they could all be formatted nicely so that I wouldn’t have to go back and write all of them down. I realize that a lot of employers are using Web based or other automated expense tracking. Hmmm…maybe one of those vendors will latch on to this concept. Regardless, it’s good to have a running tally of expenses relative to daily per diems, you know?

The thing they seem to be getting into now is lending of hard assets like CD’s and books. That’s not going to appeal to me. I pretty much refuse to borrow anything from anyone because I tend not to return it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Des’ree CD or a white BMW (who, me?). I say focus on dollars and cents. That’s where the action is.

These days I am fascinated with anything and everything Web 2.0. More than ever. I can’t believe it, actually. I started out with blogging, oh, about 2 years ago (time flies), and ever since then, I have been watching other technologies and lightweight communication engines crop up. I think there’s something here. Something that could actually improve lives.

I am starting a new topic on here. I’m going to review Web 2.0 services I’ve been trying out. If there are ones you think I should try, let me know and I’ll post my review.

Now, as I describe, what I’m doing is discussing what I “think” these services do. That may not be their intent, so forgive me, and then try them yourself. Also, everything out there about Web 2.0 says, “go find a 25 year old to explain this stuff to you.” I am not one of those, so I’ll be a little bit more “GenX” in my commentary, with an eye toward enterprise uses.