When going out to eat, there's nothing worse than being told the wait time is 45 - 60 minutes and the restaurant is so over-crowded with customers that you can't even make your way to the bar. Unfortunately, the only choice customers have today is to crowd in and bear it since the paging systems used by restaurants have such a limited range. This is especially trying when you're at a restaurant that's in a mall plaza where other shops, bars, or coffeehouses are only steps away. But instead of being able to kill time in the bookstore, for example, customers have to wait, bored and crowded, in the restaurant's entry way.

ReadyPing solves this problem and does so without the need for restaurants to invest in additional hardware or software. Instead, the system allows for text messages to be sent to the waiting dinner guests. To use the system, a host or hostess enters in the party's name, number of guests, and a mobile number. When a table becomes available, the host clicks a button to send out a customized text message.

The cost of using the system is a flat $34.95 per month for unlimited messaging and there are no setup fees. At the moment, ReadyPing is U.S.-only, but there's no reason why they couldn't expand to other parts of the world at a later point.

Potential Issues

There is a potential drawback to using a system like this - and that's the restaurant customers themselves. Given free range, people will likely wander off much farther away from the restaurant than before and that could delay the time between the text's delivery and their return by several minutes, possibly even five or ten. This would dramatically slow down the seating process and would frustrate those on the list behind them.

Before a restaurant implemented such a system as this, it would be necessary to retrain hosting staff so they understood the potential issues. Perhaps instead of waiting until a table was actually ready before alerts were sent, ReadyPing users could anticipate ahead of time that a table was about to become ready. This would give customers the additional time needed to return to the restaurant from wherever they had ventured off to. Perhaps staff could even work out a system where awaiting customers were pinged as current customers were brought their checks. Further integration with restaurant POS systems to do so would be even better, but something like that may be beyond ReadyPing's capabilities.

Another potential drawback to ReadyPing is that some customers would be hesitant to give out their phone number, despite assurances that data is secured. For those customers, backup pagers may still need to be used or they may need to wait the old-fashioned way - listening for the hostess to call their name aloud.

Real-World Mobile Technology

In any event, the ReadyPing system is a great example of an application that solves a real-world problem which so many of us can relate to. Thanks to mobile technology, we expect to see more everyday, useful solutions like this in the near future.

AwayFind is a clever solution to the email overload problem. It lets you step away from your email without missing the most important messages - the so-called "email emergencies." That addresses one of people's deep-seated fears of email abandonment - the fear that some piece of critical information is going to arrive and we're not going to see it.

Basically, AwayFind is an auto-responder on steroids. You can configure its outgoing message to your liking. That message includes a link which allows people to get your attention if they are, in fact, emailing you about something urgent.

Your message could read, for example:

But What If It's Important?

Those who really needed to reach you can click the link to be taken to a web page where they can fill out a quick form, the results of which will be sent to you.

The form is not too cumbersome to fill out, but it has just enough fields to cause people to pause and consider whether or not it's really worth their effort. It also includes a CAPTCHA at the bottom to keep the spammers at bay. The form can be configured so that messages are categorized by the sender via a drop-down box (e.g. "Personal," "Business", etc.) and then those messages can be auto-routed to the appropriate person(s). In other words, AwayFind can automatically delegate your email for others to deal with.

When someone fills out the form, you're alerted based on the settings you chose during AwayFind's setup and configuration. You can receive a text message (SMS) or you can specify to be alerted at a different email account - that secret address you created for emergencies only. You can also check AwayFind's online inbox via the web.

With AwayFind, you can finally enjoy that vacation, to be sure, but you can also set up day-to-day templates to manage the everyday onslaught.

Pricing Info

The AwayFind service comes in two pricing tiers - a free version and a Professional version. The upgraded plan is $4.95/mo or $34.95/year and comes with a few extra features like a branding option which incorporates your logo, SSL security, integration with your web site, international SMS support, and more. It works with Gmail, Yahoo mail, Hotmail/Windows Live Mail, Outlook, and others.

Now that you have all that extra time on your hands, you should probably read AwayFind's guide to not checking email (provided for free upon registration), as it will help you stick with your new plan. Remember, breaking email addiction is something we have to fight one day at a time.

Adam Pash over at Lifehacker unearthed this extension for a post about three as-yet unapproved ("experimental") Firefox plug-ins. We didn't find the other two Pash highlighted especially inspiring, but UrlbarExt rocks. Here's what it does.

• Copy the URL you're on to the clip board. A whole lot faster than click, drag to highlight, right click, select "copy link to clipboard." A lot faster.
• Create an instant TinyURL link in the address bar. Super fast and smooth. We do wish this button used our favorite URL shortening service, the semantic-web lovin' Bit.ly. We also wish we didn't have to click on the copy link to keyboard button after creating the TinyURL - what else are we going to do with that shortcut if not paste it somewhere?
• Perform a Google site: search inside the domain you're on. Awesome, we do this all day long and this is a big time saver.
• Go up one level in a page's URL, or double click to go to the root URL. How often do you find a page on a site through search or a link and want to visit the home page? You can usually click on the logo or a home link, but why mess around looking when you can just double click? We're not sure how much we'll use this one, but we'll see.
• Add a tag. Ads tags to the local bookmarking in your browser. Seems kinda silly.
• Anonymous surfing. Reloads a page you're on and subsequent pages, through a proxy server. Pretty cool idea. We'd like to know more details about which service this is using before we trust it too much.

We're not able to access any settings options for this browser extension but the plug-in page indicates that future iterations will include more user control. It's a simple tool, but simple is good and this will make many of the things we do every day on the web faster and easier - meaning that we can focus on something else.

You'll have to create a Mozilla account in order to access UrlbarExt, because it's still in the "experimental" section of the plug-in site - but we think it's well worth it to do so.