This is exactly what iNumbr does for phone numbers. The free, temporary phone number you give out simply forwards to a number specified by you and then it will expire or self-destruct when you want it to!

It is a proven fact that by providing a phone number you are much much more likely to make a sale. It adds to your credibility as well as it shows you care.

Let’s take a look at how iNumbr can help you in your eBay auctions, classified ads or even to give out to girls you meet at a club. Wow that’s a good idea – too bad it’s about 10 years too late for me. Kids today and this new fangled technology!

When you arrive at iNumbr you will see a site that looks like this:

Simply click the link that says Get your Free iNumbr. You will need an email address and a phone number to have iNumbr forward your calls. Once you click the link you will get hit with a little human verification to make sure you are not a spam bot or something similar:

After you hit submit on your verification you will be sent to a page to set up your actual free temporary phone number. That screen looks like this:

From this screen you can choose your preferred area code. Most major United States markets are included in the list. These are:

• Atlanta 678
• Boston 617
• Chicago 773
• Cincinnati 513
• Dallas 214
• Detroit 313
• Houston 713
• Las Vegas 213
• Miami 786
• New Jersey 973
• New York 347
• Phoneix 602
• Pittsburg 412
• Portland 503
• Salt Lake City 801
• San Diego 213
• San Fransisco 415
• San Jose 408
• Seattle 206
• St. Lois 314
• Washington DC 202

If your area code is not included it might be added in a future release or you could always email the developers begging pleading asking nicely for them to add it!

Next up you choose when should they disconnect the free, temporary phone number (you can change this in your control panel later):

Then after you are finished, submit the form and you will be sent to a page with your information on it:

So here you will see how long your number is active for, what number and extension the caller needs to dial, where the call will be forwarded to and how you can record a personal greeting, as well as your password.

Now when someone calls your iNumbr they will be asked for their name. Then your phone will ring with the name that they left.  You can then choose to answer it or send it to voicemail.

This is a really nifty service! Do you use this or something similar? We would love to hear about your experiences in the comments!

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• WhoCalled.US Tells You About That Call You Missed (US Only) (10)
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This web application is called S4ve.as and if you need to say it out loud it would be “Save As”. OK ready class let’s say it together now…. Save As.  Sorry I have been watching WAY TOO much children’s programing nowadays!

When I say no restrictions on uploading I mean that you can upload any file type or file size. But please note that the files are only saved for 24 hours and then they will be deleted. Also the files are temporarily stored on S4ve As’s servers and there is no security on who can or cannot download. So obviously this is not the place to upload your tax return files for your accountant to download. Keep that in mind.

Let’s see how Save As works. We will start by shooting on over to S4ve.as and we will see a simple dialogue box in the center of the screen. It wants to know what you want to upload.

Simply click on the box or the select file button. That will launch your built in Windows find dialogue box or another if you are on another operating system like Mac or Linux. I have not tried it with either of these operating systems but in theory it should work. If you try it out let us know in the comments.

After you hit Open the file name will appear in the box with an X next to it. Hit that X if you want to remove it and start again. The file’s size will appear below the box in a sentence that says press upload to being transferring x MB.

When you are ready hit the magic upload button and your file will start transferring into the clouds. The transfer speed I got was pretty awesome for a free service. I was uploading at almost 4 Megabits Per Second.

My upload was done in about 15 seconds. When it was complete I saw a new screen. It looked like this:

This window shows me a bitl.ly link to the file, a direct download link, a created date, expiration date and the type of file it is. Very, very nicely done. Once you have uploaded the file you can send the links on to who ever needs to download the file. Once they click the link they will get a file download dialogue box like this one below.

Again the download process just like the upload process should work on any platform. If you try it on something other than a PC shoot us a note in the comments to let us know if it worked, didn’t work or blew up your computer (just kidding…)

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Now we have discovered a service that does ALL the hard work for you! It’s called DinkyPage and can be found here.

All you need is content and if you want to use pictures, a place to host them.

When you arrive at the Dinky home page you have one large option and a smaller one below. You can create a new free web page or create a custom page with a custom name. This means your page’s URL will be something like www.DinkyPage.com/Name instead of www.DinkyPage.com/74u…

This is a great way to make the URL easy to remember and it looks better in an email. Create one of the links and move on.

If you choose the custom name for your page you will have to input it before your page is created. Next up you will find yourself looking at a What You See Is What You Get editor (WYSIWYG) – this makes creating the page ultra simple.

Start by naming your page in the page title area. This will show up in the web page’s header. Below that you have a text box to enter anything you want. Type in some text and then highlight it. Click the globe with a paperclip in the toolbar to create a hyperlink. This means when your reader reads this page they can click on this line of text to go somewhere else. The link will appear underlined. Go ahead and try it out.

The dialogue box looks like this:

For a normal link just leave it as is, but if you want to make the link a Mail To: or link to another portion of the page pull down the link type box and choose accordingly:

Now like I said before if you want to add images to your site they need to be hosted elsewhere. You can hotlink to an image by right-clicking on the website it is hosted on and selecting properties. Copy the image’s full URL and paste it into the URL box. The image will appear in the preview box on the right.

Hit OK and your image will appear with your text like so:

So below you can see my page with some text, a hyperlink and an image. I then hit the Publish Changes button in the upper left hand corner and the site is now live on the world wide web. You can see this page here: http://dinkypage.com/74u.

This is what your page looks like online. Not too shabby for a few minutes of work.

And if you used a custom name for your URL it will look something like this:

If you are feeling adventurous you can click on the HTML mode button in the upper right hand corner and edit the real deal HTML of your page. This is awesome for adding other code into the page or pasting in a ready made document.

Do you have another method of creating a free web page to get information out on the internet quickly? We have previously profiled how to create a disposable webpage but we would love to hear your suggestions in the comments!

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• Use S4ve.as to Store and Share Your Files For Free & Auto-Delete Them Afterwards (5)
• Top 4 Web Tools to Create Free Websites Instantly (26)
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• Quickly Create Temporary Email Addresses with YopMail (21)
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Maybe you need to fill in an email for a one-time registration that, you are sure, will only lead to spam. That is where temporary email services come into play. Today we will talk about 5 of those that I highly recommend.

Here they are (in no particular order):

Mailinator

Mailinator is definitely one of my favorite temporary email services. Besides providing the standard temporary email, Mailinator offers RSS feeds, a widget for use on your website, the ability to delete messages – just in case someone else is using the same email, alternative emails for each individual email, and 7 domains to use that all redirect to the same email (just in case someone inconveniently blocked @mailinator.com)

YopMail

YopMail has a more advanced user interface than most other temporary email services that makes it look almost like a realistic webmail. Of course there are many features, including: RSS feeds, ability to delete messages, widgets, a realistic email viewer (with all of the functions of a full blown webmail), and the ability to send messages to other @ yopmail.com accounts. Read more on Yopmail at here.

MintEmail

MintEmail is another extremely simple and easy to use temporary email service that definitely makes temporary email fast. Simply click “Create New Mailbox” and immediately you have a new, randomly generated temporary email address for use anywhere on the web. Emails are kept for 3 hours, but can be easily extended. Another great feature of MintMail, is the ability to forward emails to any other email address for a certain amount of time to get only the few emails you need without having to constantly check MintMail.

FilzMail

FilzMail offers the standards of many temporary email services with RSS feeds, clean interface, and a long-lasting email – in comparison to other temporary email services (24 hours). You can either set your own temporary email address or get a randomly generated temporary address that is automatically updated.

10MinuteMail

10MinuteMail offers users the ability to use a randomly generated, free 10 minute temporary email address that should definitely fill the need of a fast, simple, and one-time temporary email address quite easily (and it automatically updates too!).

What do you use for that quick temporary email service? Tell us in the comments!

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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• 5 Ways to Protect & Hide Your Email to Stop Receiving Spam (20)

Disposable services are incredibly useful when you just want a bit of anonymity online. Can’t trust a website that looks a little dodgy with your real email? Use a fake one which you can gain access to later.

Disposable services are also good for cases where you just need something to exist for a limited amount of time and not reside in cyberspace forever, for example files you want to share with your friend, or in this case – a webpage which expires after a certain timeframe. Below, I’ll show you how to create a disposable webpage in a matter of seconds.

Why would you want a disposable webpage?

The aptly named service is called DisposableWebPage and is completely free. What it does is that it creates an instant wiki for you to edit, share and perhaps collaborate with your friends. This also means you reap all the benefits of a wiki system with rich text editing and collaboration built directly into the system – plus you have version control so you can easily revert back to previous forms if something goes wrong.

These web pages can last up to 90 days or less, and can be very useful for event based discussions, for example, party or travel decisions – where it’s important to get everyone’s input but you don’t need to have the details stuck online after the event.

With this service, you don’t have to worry if all your friends use Facebook, Friendster, or whatever social networking service to organize and plan an event. Everything is on a single web page, accessible by all.

You can also put in photos, and even easily integrate sticky notes, and maps to make the page more dynamic.

Finally, you don’t have to worry about the site expiring without your knowledge. Every time you visit the page, a countdown timer to expiry is prominently displayed.

How to set up your own disposable page

What I really liked about it is that it’s pretty much quick and dirty. You don’t need to register in order to create a page, so your disposable web page can be set up in just a matter of clicks. To show you how easy it is, I’m going to walk you through making one for yourself.

Step 1: Go to DisposableWebPage, and click on the big red link, and name your page

Step 2: Your page is created! Now you can bookmark it right away, start editing it, change the timer, or send editor keys to your friends so they can edit this page as well.

Step 3: After you make the changes you want, send it to your friends so they can collaborate as well.

That’s all there is to it! Simple, and flexible for quick and dirty solutions where you need a web page which expires after a certain amount of time.

Do you use disposable tools? If so, tell us which ones you use in the comments!

Photo Credit : Wok

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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To get started, just download the addon for your browser. If you’re using Firefox or IE, download and install this search addon. Once it’s installed, just select YopMail.com from your search drop-down list. Enter in a random string of characters, and that will become your @yopmail.com email address. Hit enter, and you’ll be taken to the mailbox for that address. Couldn’t be easier!

Opera users can download this widget. Once it’s installed, open the widget and click the “lightning” button to generate a random address. Then click the Mailbox button and Opera will open a new tab and display your newly created mailbox.

Creating random temporary email addresses is perfect for those web signup forms if you don’t want to get hit by spam mail. If you value your privacy online, these browser addons are perfect for creating one-off “use them then toss them” email addresses.

You might also want to check out 5 “DISPOSABLE” Web Accounts to Keep Your Identity Safe by Aibek and Get a Grip on eMail Spam Before It Gets A Grip On You by Tina.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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I. Organize your eMail accounts

This is the most difficult part since it requires some serious thought and discipline. Set up different accounts for different purposes. Use one for friends and family and never post it online. Try to do the same for work. Use other accounts for shopping online, social networks, chat friends, message boards etc. It’s tedious at first, but if you’re using Pop mail, it’s easy to manage multiple accounts.

When creating your eMail address be creative, don’t use words found in a dictionary, combine with numbers or letters. The reason is that most spam doesn’t reach your inbox because your address was extracted from a dubious source. Rather you are being spammed randomly by so-called dictionary attacks on your eMail provider.

II. Mask your eMail address

Fortunately, most spam bots are stupid. For example they don’t recognize eMail addresses typed with spaces or displayed in images. There are several excellent tools that may help you to protect your eMail address and keep it spam free:

1. Hide your eMail address in an image.It requires some level of intelligence to copy text from an image.

Tool: Spam Proof eMail Generator

2. Hide your eMail address behind a CAPTCHA.

Again, whoever wants to access your eMail address needs to be smart enough to pass the test.

Tool: MailHide ReCaptcha

3. Hide your eMail address in a contact form.

This will not reveal your eMail address at all.

Tools: Kontactr, ReachBy and Contactify

III. Use temporary or fake information

How many times a week do you sign up for something new online, and how many times will you keep coming back to that service? Temporary eMail addresses are a great solution to avoid sharing your eMail address in the first place. Should you decide to stick with that service, you can still give them your valid address later on. Again, there are numerous sites to consider.

1. Spam Motel.

My personal favorite. You sign up a permanent account with them and create temporary eMail addresses as you need them. Mail is being forwarded to your real address. Once spam finds you, you cancel the address it’s coming through and start over. There is a similar tool called GishPuppy , however the signup form didn’t work for me.

2. Spamgourmet

It’s one of many similar services. It creates a disposable eMail on the spot which automatically expires after having forwarded three messages. You need to sign up with Spamgourmet to use it.

3. MintEmail

Here you can create a temporary address that will expire after four hours or after three months. What’s cool is that the four hour address is automatically created and saved to your clipboard once you enter the page. The page proceeds to constantly check for incoming mail on that address. The concept is awesome. However, while testing my test eMail had not arrived after over one hour. Hopefully a temporary issue.

4. BugMeNot

Step out of the vicious eMail cycle and use disposable login data, including an invalid eMail address.

IV. Filter Spam

Chances are you have an eMail address that is already being spammed but you don’t want to part with it. Depending on how you check your mail you can either manually teach your mail program to better recognize spam or, in case you’re using POP mail or IMAP, you can use a tool that sits between your eMail provider and your inbox to filter incoming eMail.

1. Writing Mail Filters

This article from Spamnation gives excellent directions on how to decrease the amount of spam that reaches your inbox with a step by step guide.

2. Spamihilator

A free Windows tool that works with POP3 and IMAP accounts. Spamihilator claims to identify more than 98% of incoming spam mail. You can help to increase its success rate by customizing the settings, such as adding words to the Spam Words list, enabling the DCC-Filter to recognize unsolicited bulk mail, add your friends’ eMail addresses, and install plugins to further improve the overall performance.

Standard mail programs are recognized automatically (although it can take ages), those that are not supported can be set up manually.

The online documentation for every aspect of the program is very thorough and clear.

V. Use Gmail

Gmail comes with a few nifty features that can make your life a lot easier. First of all the default Gmail spam filter is pretty good. Then you can use a single Gmail account and have multiple eMail addresses with it. Just sort them into different folders to effectively separate spam from real mail. You can track and block spammers by adding cue words to your eMail address when signing up anywhere. Read more in Aibek’s article 1 Awesome Gmail tip You Don’t Know about. Seriously.

How much time do you spend digging through spam and how do you fight it?

(By) This post was written by one of our regular authors, Tina from Recommended.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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The Fake Name Generator. However it goes a little farther than merely giving you a fake name. The website can generate names according to the nationality you choose, it gives you an address for the country you choose, gives you a website for your ‘fake self’, an email address, a phone number, mother’s maiden name, a credit card number (with the date it expires on) and even a social security number. Cool or what?

If you are in the US and you happen to need a fake identity while away from the Internet, no problems just Text FAKE to 41411. Following is a test run:

I know what you are all wondering, “What? Why are they doing this? Isn’t it bad? It can surely be misused”. If you were thinking along similar lines I say: “Be constructive, see how many positive uses it can have:

1. Quality test data can be hard to come by, especially with laws (such as HIPAA) preventing use of real data. So it can be used for testing.
2. Many websites, such as message boards, are poorly designed, making it difficult for visitors from foreign countries to sign up for accounts. Using fake information, you can easily fill out the sign up forms and log in to the site.
3. Use fake information when filling out forms to avoid giving out personal information.
4. You can generate a false identity to use as your pseudonym on the internet. This allows you to keep your real life and your internet life separate.
5. You can get ideas for names to use for characters in a book or story.
6. Generated credit cards can be used to test basic client-/server-side validation techniques without accidentally processing a real card.
7. Generated national identity numbers can be used to test basic client-/server-side validation techniques without risking disclosure of real information.

If you are indeed going to use it for testing purposes which I suggest you should, you can generate bulk data and download it in csv format. There is however a minor point that I will like to mention that the names are generated by randomly matching a first name and a last name so there is a thin chance that the name it claims is fake is not really fake and someone, somewhere has that very name. However using it with the other information that is generated will make it a less likely clash with someone alive or dead.

As for the credit card number it’s not real, it just follows the format and the expiry date is a date in the near future so hard luck you guys who thought you’d hit the jackpot!

I would reiterate that you should only use this site for legitimate reasons. We at Make Use Of don’t encourage the illegal use of such sites and also because we don’t want to you to get into trouble and lose you!

Have fun, use it for testing your databases, your applications, your scripts or whatever you decide it to use for.

(By) Varun Kashyap – A programmer, tech enthusiast and a blogger who believes in living it “REAL” but loves to find stuff like this. He blogs about such things and tips, tweaks, tutorials and walk throughs on his TechCrazy Blog

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Disposable email account

Mintemail – Instant disposable email for any ‘fishy’ registration form or sign-up. Go to mintemail.com and a random email address will be automatically generated and copied to your clipboard. You can either bookmark the location of created inbox and use it on a regular basis or always use a new one.

Highlights include: Automatic eMail verification, email forwarding, option to set custom expiry times (from 1 hour to 1 month) and more.

Disposable phone number

Numbr – This is a really good one. Basically, Numbr gives you an anonymous disposable phone number that can be set to forward all incoming calls to any provided landline or mobile number (US only). Absolutely free. It’s an ideal solution for times when you want to keep your phone private but want to list your contact number in places like classifieds listings, social networking sites, blogs, etc.

Along with the number, you also get access to dozens of cool functionalities, i.e. forward to voicemail, ability to activate/deactivate nr. at any time, etc. Read more: Numbr – Disposable Phone Number.

Disposable login details

BugMeNot – Here you can get disposable login details (username/password) for a huge number of popular news/review/download websites that normally require users to register.

For example, let’s say you clicked on a link that points to an article on a popular media website (eg. NYT). Usually instead of landing straight on the article page you’re asked to signin or register. Maybe there is a good reason behind it, but what’s the point of signing up if that is your first and only visit to that website. When it comes to BugMeNot, it instantly gets you a number of “public” login details that can be used to access the website. It’s fast, it’s convenient and you don’t have to worry about getting spammed. Check out full feature list in BugMeNot review.

Disposable name and address generator

FakeNameGenerator – Fun tool for quickly generating fake but totally sound names and contact address. Cool part about it, not only you get to choose country of residence but can also specify what kind of name you’re looking for, i.e. Chinese, American, Indian, etc.

Disposable file sharing

File.io – Anonymous file sharing service where you can upload and share file/s (via password-protected URL) for 30 days. Once 30 day period is over, all shared files will be automatically deleted. Read More: File.io – Disposable File Sharing.

Are you aware of any other ‘disposable’ web service ? Share it in comments.

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(1) OpenDNS – A quick way to add to your web speed. In simple terms, OpenDNS allows you to speed-up domain detection process which is normally handled by your ISP. There is nothing to download or install, but a couple of changes to your connection settings. Among other things, also includes domain typo correction, phishing protection, and domain blocking. Demo video.

(2) KeyXL – One of the best ways to make the most from your favorite web apps is by utilizing available shortcuts. Almost all popular apps come with its own shortcut set. Whether it’s Firefox, Gmail, or Google Reader, they all have shortcuts. And KeyXL is the place to get them, it provides a huge database of keyboard shortcuts both for web and desktop applications.

(3) MrUptime (Firefox) – Simple Firefox extension that comes in really handy when you come across a website that’s experiencing down time. It allows you to add such websites to the watchlist and will alert you as soon as the website is back online. Demo video.

(4) Read It Later (Firefox) – I learned about this one from Mark. ‘Read It Later’ allows you to add webpages to a reading list so you can follow-up on them later. Far better alternative than keeping ‘to read’ pages in tabs. Once installed, it will add ‘Read This Link Later’ option to your right click menu. See how it works and some of its other features below

(5) Mintemail – So far the best disposable email service I have seen. No need to register or create any kind of account. When you need a quick one-timer email address just visit the mintemail.com and a random email address will be instantly generated and copied to your clipboard. Even better, it will confirm all ‘verify your account’ emails automatically.

(6) PassPack – Finally, there is a PassPack is, a feature-rich online password manager. PassPack can be accessed from any browser and from anywhere (work, school internet cafe, etc.). As long it stays open in one of your tabs you get a one-click access to any of you web accounts. See full feature list here.

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In that spirit of laziness, lots of bookmarklets have been developed by internet users to help cut down on the amount of work we do on the keyboard and live life as a slacker to the full. Since that describes me perfectly, here’s five of my favourites -

1. Gmail This!

Do you have a Gmail account? If so, do you want to email someone but you can’t be bothered to do a couple of clicks and properly launch Gmail in a browser window? Instead, why not launch the Gmail This! bookmarklet?

Pressing this bookmarklet button will quickly fire up a new Gmail email window, without having to open Gmail first.

Obviously you have to be logged into your Gmail account first, and this particular bookmarklet captures the weblink of the page you are on. But with a bit of tweaking, you can remove that feature if it irks you.

Using the Gmail This! email window, you have access to your auto-complete email addresses and sent emails are slotted automatically into your Gmail sent folder.

2. TinyURL

I’m sure you’ve often emailed a URL to someone and that URL takes up three lines all by itself. If Murphy’s Law has its way, that URL will be broken into several pieces and totally unusable by the time it gets to the other end. Plus doesn’t a long URL look really messy? Then what you need is the TinyURL bookmarklet.

Just go to the webpage URL that you want to send and click the TinyURL bookmarklet. You’ll then get a nice short URL to send on to your email contacts.

3. BugMeNot (see under ‘Menu’)

Most websites with regularly updating content (especially newspapers) require you to register before you can read the story on their webpage. But I don’t want to have 20 different registrations for 20 different publications – and be spammed to death as well! So this is where BugMeNot has stepped in to save the day. BugMeNot has set up registrations at websites all over the net and you can use one of their ID’s to bypass the registration page. This bookmarklet automatically fills in the fields for you and signs you in.

4. FormTextResizer

This is quite a neat little script that fixes one of the most niggling problems on the net – how to write in a website text box which is as big as your thumb! This bookmarklet allows you to stretch the text box to whatever size you want so you can write whatever you need to in comfort.

5. View passwords

Most websites, when you log in, don’t allow you to see the password you’re typing and instead you see ********. But how do you know if you are typing the correct password?

In a time when most websites only give you three log-in attempts before locking you out, this bookmarklet will reveal your password on the screen so you can see what you are typing in. Just be sure that no-one is looking over your shoulder with a pen and paper in their hand!

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