A couple neat services that I use and think others should use as well…

• Tellme. This is a free 1-800 number that offers free news, sports scores, weather, stock quotes and movie listings via voice recognition. Very handy to have in conjunction with a mobile phone. I can call and just say “favorites” and it will start telling me the BoSox and Yankees scores, then the weather, then the news. Tellme also buy movie tickets over the phone via Fandango. 800-555-TELL.
• MSN Alerts on Demand. I also use this free service for my mobile phone — good for anyone with text messaging. If you login to their website, MSN can send your phone a text message that you save and add to your address book. Then the next time you are away from your computer, reply to the alert with N for news, S for sports or Q for stock quotes. You can add specific sports teams or companies to your portfolio with the command: S+ MLB BOS or something similar …
• MSN Premium. This service isn’t free – $10 a month, or $100 for a year – but I just joined and it seems well-worth it. For a start, it gives you access to MLB.TV, Major League Baseball’s Internet-TV service … which is actually $15 a month if you subscribe via their site! The quality is very good … basically, I can watch the NESN feed of BoSox games on my computer. MSN Premium also includes Hotmail Extra Storage, McAfee Virus Guard, and a number of other neat items…