Oliver Siodmak’s Rants & Raves

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Many years ago I was sharing a cab with a friend who had too much to drink. As we were getting out of the cab she stumbled directly in front of an on-coming car. I jumped out of the cab and pushed her out of the car’s path. When I was sure that we were safe I turned around and noticed that the cab we were in had taken off. About a half-hour later I received a call from a man asking if I had “lost anything?”. I responded “no” and the caller proceeded to describe the contents of my attache case. My shock was audible when he mentioned my day timer (life before a PDA) and my plane tickets (life before etickets) for my flight the next day. Fortunately the caller was honest and realized the bag he found in his cab was accidentally left there. Rather than rely on the cab driver to return it to me he left the cab with my bag and called the number on the name tag. I was able to pickup the bag from his doorman the next day on the way to the airport. The good Samaritan refused to accept any sign of my appreciation. I am still very grateful by his act of kindness.

It was this experience that made me pause when I read Tech Crunch’s latest public services announcement reminding everyone to double check for their personal belongings when exiting a cab. According to a Telegraph survey, 10,000 phones are left in the back of a cab every month. From my personal experience I can tell you how easy it is to do. Especially when we are increasingly forced to multitask while traveling.

A colleague I know recently left their laptop in a cab on the way to the airport because he was too focused on his conference call. It wasn’t until he was going through security before he realized his bag with his laptop was missing. Fortunately he had the cab receipt and immediately called the cab company # and reported the item missing. His and my story are some of the few stories I know of where a person’s property were returned to them, laptop included!

Since it is hard to simply “refrain” from focusing on only traveling when traveling, it is important to take a moment when getting out of a cab, limo, bus, plane, rental car, etc. and double check that you have all your belongings with you. As Smokey the Bear always says, “Only you .. can make sure you have all your stuff”.

Thanks to Digg I stumbled across a really great Mac program for capturing notes, thoughts, ideas, etc. It is called Journler. The donationware program allows you to capture text, emails, images, video using a simple interface. Items can be tagged for easy retrieval. With Journler you don’t have to struggle to get all your thoughts and ideas organized. Through the use of Smart Folders, you can use the program to help filter and organize all the information you have captured. By grouping Smart Folders inside other Smart Folders you can create Smart Families (tiered filtering). The “child” folders immediately take on the filtering characteristics of the “parent” folders. By moving folders around you change the filtering criteria. It is really quite ingenious.

Since Journler is donationare (i.e., if you like it you can make a donation to the developer, Philip Dow) take a moment to download it and give it a try. To download the program or learn more about the program, check out Journler.com