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Don’t click this link and figure out if you are registered, how to register, how to update your address or how to get an early or absentee ballot.

Before all the good ones are gone…  (Make sure you sign-out of all Microsoft stuff first)  Get your account now.

Not that you need need another email account and not that I have any belief Microsoft’s “live” concept will go anywhere (cause it’s highly likely it won’t) but it’s good to claim your name, right?

Fuser.com consolidates all your email accounts (and Facebook/MySpace) into one slick interface.  I (like most) have several email accounts and upon registration and a little bit of use, I may start using Fuser quite a bit.  You can add pretty much all webmail services and even Exchange accounts.  Did I mention slick interface?! (though kinda sluggish at the get-go)

Mint.com is a service in beta which claims to have saved their testers an average of $1,000 by identifying and reporting on trends such as spend and interest rates on credit cards compared with national averages and/or other users of their service.  They are like Microsoft Money or Quicken but web based and reportedly more accesible and with analysis offerings the other services don’t have.  They integrate with 3,500 banks and credit card companies… you simply sign-up, use your various financial institution login information and it downloads and analyzes your spending.

I just signed up and while a little hinky at the get-go, it seems to be working now…  It’s currently downloading transactions from 6 of my accounts.  It’s very AJAX-y which is always nice I guess.  Their integration with financial intitutions is powered by Yodlee, which I’ve used for years and years.  Bank of America’s “My Portfolio” uses Yodlee as well and it’s a fantastic online offering for a means to aggregate and view all your various accounts.  Yodlee is very secure and reliable and since Bank of America started using it I switched from using raw Yodlee, to BofA’s “My Porfolio”.

Anyhow, I think Mint is very cool, not that it matters…  They’ll send you SMS on all sorts of stuff to help you manage and whatnot.  I’ve already wasted 20 minutes using it (and not working), so if it doesn’t save me money, it’s helping with my sanity.  That’s something!

YouMail, currently in beta, is a FREE services that replaces your current mobile/wireless voicemail.  They walk you through a few set-up things on your current phone so that unanswered calls go to YouMail and not your wireless providers voicemail system.

So what IS YouMail?  Well, having just completed the setup myself and redirected my phone I can tell you that it will be a permanent replacement likely.  YouMail allows you to customize your voicemail by caller.

So, any of my siblings could call, (I won’t answer the next call I see from you) and get the greeting I picked out for them to hear.  Anyone not configured will get my standard greeting.  When someone leaves you a voicemail, you’ll get a text message and an email letting you know its there.  Simply hold down your voicemail key on your phone to call and check your messages… nothing new there.

So why is it so advantageous?  Few reasons;

• I can keep my voicemails forever.
• I have my work mobile number on permanent redirect to my personal mobile (have done so for years so I don’t have to carry two mobiles…) and now I can have a “work” greeting play instead of my standard “this is ___ leave a message”
• I can put a personalized professional greeting of something like ”Hi Donna, I’m sorry I missed your call, please leave a message”
• If you don’t have a custom greeting, when you check your message, you can create one on-the-fly for that caller for the next time they call.
• I can assign “Ditchmail” to numbers I don’t want to accept messages from and they will be played a ditch message and hung up on.

The only thing you’ll miss by using this service, is that you’ll be getting a text message when you receive a voicemail, not your traditional voicemail indicator icon on your phone.  YouMail has a huge collection of “greetings” you can choose from or naturally, you can record your own.

They need to improve on the greeting assignment process a bit and allow you to upload a collection of greetings then allow you to apply them to one or more numbers… but I’m sure that’s coming.

Now, if GrandCentral (recently aquired by Google) and YouMail could get together, it would be great.  GrandCentral gives you a local phone number that acts in a preemtive way to screen and direct calls to your mobile, landlines or both AND provides custom voicemail greetings.  You have to distribute your new number for it to be effective though.  (P.S. If you want a GrandCentral invite then send me an email with your email address and I’ll send you one… since Google aquired them they went into private beta).