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”.
UK’s The Sun newspaper pokes a few friendly jabs at Apple and other handheld devices as it celebrates it’s 40th year of publishing. In the video The Sun highlights that they have built in games (with “pen” interface), 26″ color display and easily shareable content. The video is very humorous and reminds us all that print isn’t completely dead .. yet.
This trick has been out there a while but I only recently rediscovered that you can actually send an SMS message to an AT&T cell phone using @txt.att.net as the email address.
So if your friend’s phone number is (917) 555-1212 and they are on the AT&T network, address the email to “9175551212@txt.att.net”. Then simply type the message in the subject field. Since phone companies used to limit the message limit to 160 characters (20 longer then a Twitter message), it is best to keep your messages brief and to the point. Also the entire email (body content including signature) is sent in the text message, you may want to delete any body content before hitting the send key.
Over the years I have been involved in the design and development of a lot of different web sites. Part of that design process includes developing error pages to handle errors that either the user or system has produced. While these pages normally follow the branding (see the Maghound.com example below) they rarely exhibit rolling in the isle humor. Smashing Magazine has a great article highlighting some of the more unique and stylish 404 Error pages on the internet.
One of the more memorable quotes from Barack Obama’s Inauguration speech, “America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”
