Cell phone use while riding a bike? What in the ***?

There are some things you hope never to see. Like today, I had to swerve to avoid hitting a guy on his bike when I turned into a parking lot, because he was chatting on his cell phone while riding!

At least the guys in the photo above had the sense to wear a helmet, unlike today's doofus. However, it's scary that these are cops blabbing on cell phones while riding!

I haven't heard of a jurisdiction banning cell phone use while riding a bike (which you'd think was challenging enough without that distraction), but if anyone on the Prince George's County Council would like to propose one, that would be a very good thing. Let's hope it doesn't take someone being killed or seriously injured before such a bill is put before a legislative body (but I'm not holding my breath).

Text Messaging for Grown Folk

OK, so text messaging won't help this little guy out... (is he on the payroll of the Farmer's Almanac, which is predicting mucho snow this year? Hmm...)

Text messaging has been in the news a lot as of late, especially the story about the teen in South Carolina who sent a distress call via text message from her kidnapper's cell phone, which proves that there are uses for text messaging that involve something other than passing e-notes in class.

Why should teens have all the fun? There are uses for text messaging that would benefit anyone, as the quick-witted South Carolina teen showed. One of them is a new (and free!) service from Google. A cell phone, any cell phone, can be used to access Google to obtain answers. Sweet! Best of all, it works--I used it a couple of time to get definitions, using Google's 'define' function. The only limitation might be your cell phone service's text message rates. I'm even getting faster at texting, although I won't be winning contests anytime soon.

Another grown-up use of text messaging, which you may have heard of, as it has received much recent publicity a few weeks ago, is the website www.ohdontforget.com, which is a text messenging reminder service. You type your cell phone number, desired date and time, and the message at the website, and at the date/time you specified, a text message reminder will appear on your cell phone. Nice! It's also free, although the program's creator accepts donations.

It's nice to hear good news from the computer world for a change, as so much of it consists of news about the latest virus or Trojan horse or other nefarious plot to make your system take a dive.