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Thanks

Feels good to say "thank you" today, so I will.

Thanks to all the readers of this blog, my family and friends, my job and my lovely wife.

More thanks...

• Skypof's An Ode to Thanksgiving
  
• JamBase's Thanksgiving thanks
  

if you're still craving more, Wikipedia has a solid entry for Thanksgiving.

Thanks,
Andy

Morning in San Francisco

Mmmm....touristy

Bermuda Highway

I just learned how to play the My Morning Jacket song Bermuda Highway on the guitar. It's It's fun to play, especially the Em chorus part...

Enjoy this vid of Jim James from 6/3/03

A Use For Snail Mail

With the advent of fax, email and automated bill pay, I was starting to seriously question to the value of regular postal mail. Except of course for Pottery Barn catalogs and NetFlix (until Tivo gets around to on demand delivery), I'm having a hard time justifying all of the junk mail.

Late last week we got an overdue notice in the regular mail from the water company. Note to travelers: pay your bills before leaving the country. As soon as I got the notice I hopped online to the water co's website to sign up for auto bill pay. Upon completing the registration form, I was met with a rare sight. A notice that said "Thank you for registering, we will be sending you a temporary password via regular mail."

WHAT?! Regular mail!? How could they!? My instant gratification alarms were going off immediately. Then some other random event occurred which took my mind off of it and I had pretty much forgotten about it.

Today the letter came in the mail. Very nicely written, the temp password was even bolded. I went to the website, popped it in, voila! Instant access to my account and I could pay my bill right there.

It wasn't until I got the letter that I realized the value of this process. They really really really NEEDED to know it was me who lived here. What better way to confirm someone's physical mailing address than to send them an actual letter. I can imagine all of the conversations and meeting that must have resulted in this letter being sent to me. There were probably brainstorms and whiteboards devoted to ideas on how to streamline the process: Put a code on the water meter to enter, put in my phone number and call me at home, verify my information three times...I guess I figured that since I got the late notice in the mail, and they would know my account number, then it would be a breeze...but whateva.

Kind of interesting to go cross-medium from web to regular mail and back on the web like that.

Update: It looks like people have figured out an even deeper way to integrate the online and offline mail worlds: Remote Control Mail: Check Your Postal Mail On the Web -- WOW!

Jam Factor: 8.5

About to head home for the night when I got a text message that traffic was heavy. Google'd "Traffic" to see what came up.

First result: Traffic.com - a Web 2.0 ajax-y site that looks fun, loads quickly and let's you customize your map view to get the most clear cut details on Traffic in your area. Complete with "My Traffic" personalization tools, alerts and 'send to friend' features, i think this one might earn a spot on my coveted firefox quick link bar.

My favorite part of the site: Jam Factor Explained

Sllllllllllllow Down!

I just had two phone conversations (one called me, I called the other) in which the person on the other line was talking at a mile a minute. It was nerve racking, and I had to ask them to slow down and even over compensated my own speech speed so they'd take the hint.

One of them was a Customer Service Rep for a major airline.

Safety tip to all of you out there on the other end of the horn - try not to drink 3 cups of coffee before getting on the phone, it freaks us out.

Instincts

It's likely due to my lack of professional training, but I feel like many of the decisions I've made throughout my short career have been based simply on instincts. I'm not necessarily talking about the stuff you're born with, but the kind that exist in the moment of deciding, when it matters most.

Sure, we can be the most well trained, educated or rehearsed member of society for whatever our particular role may be, but nothing makes up for having the right stuff when it counts. All those hours or preparation simply serve to help us stack the deck at the moment of truth.

They say experience is the best teacher, this might be what they're talking about. Going through something sure gives you the context to recognize what to do the next time something like it comes around. It's hard having the foresight to make a hundred correct decisions in a row, learn from the 'wrong' ones (no wrong decisions!) and then grow, evolve, move on.

I guess I've been thinking about this a lot lately because for the past few weeks I've gone through a rash of questioning my own instincts. It's a hard place to be, because I don't have much else to go on. It's a combination of taking control of certain things while letting go of others. Knowing which is which and when to sit down or stand up. In the end, it'll work out for the best but for now I'm just trying to go with my gut and surrender to the flow of things.

At least, that's what my experience has taught me is the right thing to do...

Musicovery

Here's one of the cooler things I've seen a while: Musicovory combines the visual mapping of MusicPlasma with the taste-based internet radio concept of Pandora (although i can't tell if it's actually using/mashing-up either services directly.

Pick your mood, select a year or range, Hit/Non-Hit/Discovery and then watch it go. I'm listening to Very Calm, Slightly Dark non-hit discovery music from 1950-1960, because, well...that's what I'm feeling like right now. Nick Drake is currently blessing my speakers.

I've been a huge fan of the Rhapsody personalized radio service, where you put in up to 10 bands you're into and it creates a dynamic radio station of their music along with other similar artists.

I think it's all about giving people easy to use controls to manage their discovery. This also has the added benefit of showing you what its going to play next and allowing you to skip to the next track as you look ahead.

On first impression, Musicology can be a very powerful (and fun) music discovery tool which takes all of the concepts to the next level...

Thanks to Digg for the alert...

Home Again

Just got back from traveling in Israel for eight days. Amazing experience (more to come later). After more than 26 hours of travel, it's time for some rest.

I will say this, however - airline baggage customer service people don't get enough props. People only come to them when there are problems. Nobody ever walks off the plane, gets their luggage and just stops by to say, "Hi, I got my bag fine, everything worked out great!"

Thanks to the nice folks at El Al's Newark office our lost bag should hopefully be arriving tomorrow.

Web Based Applications

The last several years have seen the rise of many web-based applications (as apposed to desktop applications). As everything goes online, it will be interesting to see this trend.

Here's a few of the things I find myself continually referencing online:

Gmail

Google Reader

Feedburner

NetFlix

What I'm still looking for is a personalized News page - Google News has a personalized setting, but what I think I'm really looking for are outlets or topics that are very specific to my specified interests being present on one page. Netvibes has something like this going on with RSS, and I suppose the iGoogle Personalized Homepage is a step in the right direction.

We'll see where the evolution of Personalized, Contributed, Shared content goes in the coming years...oh wait, I mean Months.

Special Comment

Olbermann's Special Comment (11/1/06) on Vimeo