Todd Sampson

I have no idea which agency is creating the new Audi television commercials; but they are doing an amazing job. The ads are hitting the right niche with the right message — and they are totally buzz worthy. I, along with most of the planet, was talking about the Audi R8 after the Super Bowl ad. But I think the new A5 ad, while not quite as sexy a product as the R8, is even better. Check it out…

So, my wife has finally gotten sick of my lack of updates on our Flickr images and fired me. (w00t!) She has been making great progress and almost has us caught-up through Christmas. Thanks Lissy!

On my flight home today (United Airlines Flight 954) from San Diego (SAN) to San Francisco (SFO) our Boeing B-757 had to do a touch-and-go landing. After taking off immediately again, the plane circled for about fifteen minutes and landed safely.

While circling, the pilot for our plane came over the radio and said that air traffic control at SFO had ordered the landing abort for our plane and the one behind us. He also said that he was not sure why the landing had been called off, but “sometimes the tower sees something we don’t see up here in the cockpit.” After the plane landed, the pilot announced that the tower was declaring the incident an FAA Runway Incursion by another aircraft; but he did not agree. He went on to say that he and co-pilot did see another plane, but felt it was far enough away for a safe landing.

This was a first for me. After looking for news about today’s incident — I found nothing four hours after it occurred — I did find an article about SFO having four Runway Incursion incidents in 2007. This was enough to put SFO on the FAA’s list of risky airports in the United States.

When the Runway Incursion incident is filed, you should be able to see the report online.

On my calendar for the next 10 days:

• Launch new MyBlogLog features and finish Project: MeetSpace event hack
• Head to Northstar @ Tahoe for Snowboarding (my first time!) Friday through Sunday
• Sunday afternoon head back to San Francisco
• Sunday night 10pm flight to San Diego
• Monday and Tuesday Dave McClure’s Graphing Social Patterns Conference
• Wednesday morning eTech Conference
• Wednesday afternoon fly back to San Francisco
• Wednesday night Jared Spool BayCHI event in Sunnyvale
• Thursday morning MyBlogLog catch-up work
• Thursday afternoon fly to Austin, TX
• Friday through Sunday SxSW Interactive Festival (also my first time!)
• Sunday midday fly back to San Francisco
• Sunday afternoon and night my son’s 3rd Birthday
• Monday start of a week of catch-up sleep (or more family time & MyBlogLog work)

Johnny Chung Lee, a CHI PhD student Carnegie Mellon University, has used a Wii remote to create an inexpensive multitouch display on any LCD monitor or flat surface — such as a wall or table. Even if you haven’t heard the term multitouch display, you have probably seen one in action on an iPhone or in Mark Coleran’s amazing movie visual effects.

Is it me or are tech hacks getting so much cooler every day?? Check it out…

Via O’Reilly Radar.

About nine months ago I hired a personal assistant from GetFriday in India based on a recommendation in Tim Ferriss’s can’t-miss book The 4-Hour Work Week. (As I told Tim, we were both speakers at the CommunityNext conference last year, his book really changes the way you look at life for the better. Seriously, if you haven’t read this book yet, stop reading this post now and go buy the book at Amazon. Or ask me next time you see me, I usually keep an extra copy or two on me to give out; it is that good. But be sure to come back here and subscribe if you haven’t already.)

I have actually had several assistants through GetFriday since I started with them, a seamless transition between assistants is part of the service, and for the most part they have all been great. My current, and probably best, assistant is Patrick. He has done a fantastic job on everything from obscure market research to tracking down a Nintendo Wii in San Francisco for me over the crazy holiday shopping season.

One of the favorite things I use Patrick for is making calls to various 800-numbers to make changes to my services (phone, cable, etc.) and ask questions so I don’t have to sit on hold for hours. This has worked out great every time, until my most recent request:

Hi Patrick:

I have a new task for you. Please read this discussion thread.

After you do, please call Verizon Wireless and ask them if there is any way to allow the @ “At Sign” in SMS messages as the post from the Twitter representative says. Also, please confirm when my contract with Verizon expires while you are on the call. [[I really am ready to get my new iPhone, but don't want to pay a ton to break the contract since I am so close to the end.]]

You should have my Verizon Wireless account information on file from a previous correspondence. Just in case, my phone number for Verizon Wireless is xxx-xxx-xxxx.

I believe that this task should take no more than 2 hours — depending on hold time with Verizon.

Thanks,
Todd

That’s it. Short. Descriptive. Yet I completely fail to get the point across apparently. The gist of the response from Patrick is:

The Verizon representative says that you can use the @ sign in your SMS messages by pressing Function button and “D” on your model phone.

Oh well. I can easily take the occasional message lost in translation for the improvement the service has made in my life. Patrick, without request, has even taken over my self-affirmation. Here is a message I received Monday morning:

Dear Todd,

Have a cool morning and a rocking day out there!!!

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” - Helen Keller

Please let me know if I can be of any help to you today, we at GetFriday go to any extent of legitimate means to make your life smoother and better.

It’s a new day and YOU are a NEW MAN!!

Cheers,
Patrick

I guess Patrick had been keeping up with the takeover/layoff craziness at Yahoo! over the previous week. And while the entire MyBlogLog team is intact, it has been a bit of a nightmare to deal with. This definitely helped to kick the week off on the right note. Thanks Patrick!

I just saw this post by Bijan and figured I would help him extend his vacation. A quick screenshot with Skitch, a search for Greasemonkey Google logo replacement scripts, and a few minutes of code modification later Bijan (and anyone else that wants to install it) are back in The Bahamas — on Google.com anyway. You can install the script here (be sure you have Greasemonkey installed first):

http://www.toddsampson.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/google_bahamas.user.js

And that’s it. Visit Google.com to see the results.  Enjoy!

So funny (and scarily accurate)…

Check these out… Vot3r and Fast3r, the first two beta sites from former-Yahoo Lowell Goss’s new startup Loud3r, have just gone live.

Essentially, Loud3r sites use community and some special algorithm magic to help you keep-up with topics that simply have too much information to follow by drinking from an RSS topic feed — in this case a very well-timed voting site and all-things speed related. As you would expect from a Lowell project, the sites are beautiful and easy to use. And my boys from Cloudspace worked with the Loud3r team to get the platform built — so you know it is solid.

Great stuff guys. Keep up the good work. I can’t wait to see the next sites go live and how the platform & communities evolve over time.

Iconoclast (n.) One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions.

Icococlasts (n.) A Sundance Channel series produced by Robert Redford where two iconoclastic personalities interview one another.

I originally saw Iconoclasts a few years ago during the first season when producer Brian Grazer interviewed media mogul Sumner Redstone. I thoroughly enjoyed it; but didn’t manage to see any further episodes until recently.

The series is now in its third season and looks like it is still fantastic. Over the last month I caught three episodes:

• Makhail Baryshnikov and Alice Waters — I can’t believe that I have lived in San Francisco for a year now and still not made it to Chez Panisse. (I had a reservation for last November, but my son got a cold so we never made it.)
• Mike Myers and Deepak Chopra — I know this sounds like a crazy celebrity pairing, but it was fantastic.
• Wynton Marsalis and John Besh –As a long time fan of Marsalis Family and New Orleans food & life in general this was great to see.

If you are ever in need of inspiration, you can’t do much better than Iconoclasts. If you don’t get the Sundance Channel, I did see that Season 2 is available on iTunes.

Further, if you are a Jazz lover, I highly recommend checking out Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s Congo Square; which was featured on the Wynton Marsalis’s Iconoclasts episode. The Congo Square performance from the 2007 Montreal Jazz Festival will be released on DVD next month. The album is available now on iTunes by searching for “Congo Square.” And if you have young kids, there isn’t a much better introduction to Jazz than Wynton’s Jazz ABZ: An A to Z Collection of Jazz Portraits picture & rhyme book.  Great stuff.