OK, So I Was Worried About this One...

You all know I love my brother, Perry, the Constable on Patrol (COP). He's told me how to stay safe while traveling, how to keep my computer from being pilfered and how to keep from having my noggin knocked in while walking downtown with my PDA and cellphone.

When he asked me to give him the phone number for a friend, I must say I was a little afraid of Officer Friendly. "Trust me, this will be cool," he claimed. My mind wandered back to all of the mischief I led him into when we were young. I told you: I was afraid.

Then, I got a call. The caller id showed the name of the buddy I'd forked over.

Cool.

Here's what I learned. There's a company called spoofcard.com that lets you use their calling features to call someone else using a caller id alias. This one took me a minute to try to find a nice neat business application. Found one. Say, I'm traveling or using my cellphone to make an important business call and I don't want people to see the other number I'm calling from (or for the cellphone, the "Blocked Call" indicator you get when using a cellphone). I enter my office line (which has my business caller id name) and place my call. I can record the call for later playback (very nice if I'm on the road and don't have a good way to write down the particulars of the call).

More soon as I begin to use the service.