There is always more than one way to use most things. And no I’m not going to tell you about the 101 uses of vinegar.
Today I’d like to share some of the ways I use things to achieve different results than you would normally expect from using them.
Take Twitter, for instance. I followed a random French person just to brush up on my French. You see I studied it in school, lived there on and off over a number of years and quiet like speaking it. Living where I do doesn’t give me much opportunity to speak it, but I don’t want to lose it. So now, every so often, I get a French Tweet into my stream.
To find said person I used Twitter Advanced Search and in the ‘Places’ query I put in Paris, hit search and then when the results page showed up I had a quick look at the tweets and also used the translate button to determine who to follow. I picked someone whose tweets I could just about understand and who also tweeted in English occasionally.
Google is another tool with heaps of uses apart from just being a search engine. One such use that I always get a kick out of is using the reverse phone number search. Basically if I have a missed call on my phone I sometimes put the number into Google and hit search.
If there is a listing on the web somewhere for that number, such as a business name, then I have a fair idea of who might have called or why they might have called. I can then prepare to make a follow up call armed with the knowledge I now have. If they are a potential customer I can be ready to answer their questions and can have solutions to their problems already formulated in my head.
We are all accustomed to caller id on our phones, so you know the benefits of knowing who is calling you (whether to answer or not, should you put on your ‘telephone voice’ etc.). I would love a piece of software/application or something whereby I could route my phone line through the PC and if it wasn’t a number stored on my database, it would Google the number instantly and give me some idea in advance of who was calling.
It would be like having every number in the world stored in your phone (apart from blocked numbers or ex-directory I suppose). Maybe such software already exists, maybe somebody reading this will create it, either way, I’d love to have it.
There are a number of uses for Irish Whiskey other than drinking it. But as I don’t condone such wastefulness, you’ll not be finding out about them here!
What is it that you use in a different way than most?