Heading out in the car but don't want to get pulled up by cops or caught out by speed cameras? Speedwarnings offers an SMS update service; text a regional shortcode to receive regular updates on police and camera activity in your area (as tracked by parent company Road Info; there's a phone number for ringing in your own reports). The site also offers the slightly less socially questionable option of fuel price updates for cheap service stations in Mebourne, though at 55 cents a message you'd want to be getting a big discount to make the subscription worthwhile. Speedwarnings currently covers Victoria only. If your GPS supports it, another alternative for general road information (including traffic levels and unexpected accidents) is the SUNA Traffic Channel.

Web-based information manager MyGADs lets you create, share, and retrieve important bits of information like flight confirmation numbers, birthdays, phone numbers, and more. Store address books, calendars, tasks, and notes in personal or public "GADs" with text messages, instant messages, or using the web site. Need to remember Uncle Billy's birthday? Instant message it to your GAD. Forgot when it was? Ask your GAD. The interface is easy and conversational. Set GADs permissions so friends and family can edit and/or view your GAD (i.e., Mum sets the schedule, kids can check it.) Kind of like a lo-fi cross between Sandy and Google SMS, MyGADs isn't just limited to retrieving information you have already fed to it. Queries like "Weather in New York", "Population of Britain", or "Who is Albert Einstein" will return relevant answers from sites like Wikipedia or the national weather service, too.

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Kwiry, the text-yourself-a-reminder service, has added a potentially neat feature for shoppers, urban adventurers, and anyone who wants a visual element to their memory-activators. Snap a picture on your smart phone or standard set, email or text it to Kwiry with some explaining text (i.e. "Must check out this restaurant soon"), and it'll come up with your reminder when you head to Kwiry's renovated mobile site to dig through reminders. There's a lot of uses here if you buy into Kwiry's system of forget-me-nots, and it's a free place to store phone pics for any reason.

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We've already shown you how to shutdown Windows via SMS with Outlook and how to do the same on a Mac using Mail.app, but a user on the Hak5 forums demonstrates how to setup a similar SMS shutdown using the venerable Thunderbird email client. The method requires the Mailbox Alert extension and a little configuration, but once you're done you can save some power with a quick text message next time you forget to shutdown your computer. The tutorial is Windows-specific, but I'm guessing you could mesh the Mail.app method with this one and accomplish the same thing for OS X.

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US-centric: Health web site Diet.com's Nutrition on the Go service provides nutritional values for food items on popular restaurant menus via a simple text message. To use it, just text the name of the restaurant and the menu item... Read More »

Find and buy items from your cell phone with the new Amazon TextBuyIt feature. It works like this: Say you're out shopping and you see a book you want to buy. You figure you could save a few bucks getting it at Amazon, so you send a text message to 'AMAZON' (262966) with the title, author, or even the ISBN code of the book. Amazon sends a text back to you with search results. You pick the result that best matches your search, and an Amazon robot voice calls you with details and asks for purchase confirmation. The first time you try TextBuyIt, you'll have to link your phone with your account, but from there on Amazon wants to make it easy to find and buy products wherever you are—and hopefully you'll save some money, too. TextBuyIt is surprisingly easy to use, but if you give it a try, let's hear your thoughts in the comments.

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Save your most important text messages for posterity with web site Treasuremytext. The site setup is simple: After signing up for an account, you just forward the messages you want to save to the Treasuremytext number that fits your region (for the US, that's 203.434.0893). Treasuremytext will archive the SMS message and even give you options for organising your saved texts. As more important communications take place over SMS, SMS apps will inevitably need to improve text management and desktop backup. In the meantime, Treasuremytext fills the gap nicely. As a bonus for iPhone users (whose SMS app does not offer forwarding), there's a Treasuremytext iPhone app that runs on jailbroken iPhones.

Qantas has announced that it will open up the use of SMS and email on some domestic flights on Boeing 767 and Airbus A330 aircraft. The announcement comes after a trial into the use of mobile phones in-flight. Users will have to have flight mode capable mobile phones or PDAs with international roaming set up on their mobile accounts.

According to the Qantas website:

"To send and receive text messages, customers will require a tri-band or quad band GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) mobile phone with an active account with a telecommunications service provider who has a roaming agreement with AeroMobile and International Roaming activated with their service provider.

To send and receive emails, customers will require a GPRS equipped phone, PDA, or laptop with an active email account."

As Dan Warne commented over at APC, global roaming could equate to very expensive.

Qantas also offers in-flight SMS, phone calls and seat-to-seat phone calls on its B747-400 and A330-300 services. They charge $US1.90 per SMS. I'm guessing these craft serve international flights only - if you're a frequent flyer and confirm this, please leave a comment.

Qantas, Emirates push in-flight cell phone use (CNET)

Dear Lifehacker,

I've found myself many times en route to the airport to pick up someone wanting to check if the flight is on time. I typically have to call a friend to check this online. Are there any services that offer flight arrival info by phone?

Signed,
Airport Pickup

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