I’ve used services such as Mailinator in the past to get a temporary, disposable e-mail address when I didn’t want to give out my actual e-mail address. But what about when you don’t want to give out your phone nubmer? Well, Craigsnumber is a service that will give you a phone nubmer that automatically forwards to your real phone number and expires after either one hour, day or week (your choice).
Why use a service such as this. One suggestion is when you’re trying to sell or give away something on Craig’s List and you don’t want people calling you after the item is long gone. This is probably something I’ll be doing in the next two months in preparation for my move to NE, so I’m thinking I’ll give it a try. I’ll report the results when I have them.
About Michael
Michael Sauers is currently the Technology Innovation Librarian for the Nebraska Library Commission in Lincoln, Nebraska and has been training librarians in technology for more than 15 years. He has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller. He earned his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael’s tenth book, Blogging & RSS: A Librarian’s Guide, Second Edition was published October 2010 with three more books to be published in 2012. He has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs Web sites for authors and historical societies, takes many, many photos, and reads more than 100 books a year.
William Gibson gets closer. Now for a disposable phone good for for 30 minutes – Tokyo to LA. (“All Tomorrow’s Parties”? I forget)