San Francisco

Skydeck

Grow comfortable with technology and it'll make life easier, but get cavalier and it'll screw you -- just ask poor Pete Townsend, who was merely researching his autobiography. Curbing blasé cellphone use, Skydeck.

San Mateo-based SD's a free service that pulls data directly from your mobile provider to collate the minutiae of your phone use into an interface as intuitive as your Outlook (where "Get something done" is always a day overdue). Import contacts from Outlook/Gmail/Mac/whatever and hit "inbox" to bring up an email-like field containing all recent call/text activity (who, when, duration, and cost), which you can then make notes in for follow up, and filter by the above criteria or any given tag (e.g., client/family/person I think cheeky texts will make want to do me). Your "address book" ranks everyone from most to least contacted, with graphics showing general call/text frequency and who's hollering at who more -- hard evidence that this "Mom" character desperately wants into your Fav 5.

SD also offers a daily/weekly update email that includes remaining minutes, plus a list of your phone's "winners" (those you call most/talk to longest) and "losers": people you never call back, like your doctor, who only wanted to tell you your cellphone's given you a tumor.

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