Update 9/3/2010 The title of this article has changed, it was crowd sourced on Amplify.com and via comments on the post. The winner is “A 2 Dollar Communications Solution” which was inspired by @mediacollective and finalized by @mistrtim. I want to give a special thank you to the Amplify community for their participation in this effort. Please check out the entire thread if you want to see how engaging and helpful they were! Below is the original post:
Today was a crazy day, even for a Monday. Monday’s can be a little challenging you never know what can go wrong with technology over the weekend. People arrive to their businesses to discover that one of their computers won’t power on, or perhaps there was a sustained power outage and something isn’t working. Typically for that reason I don’t schedule appointments on Monday, they sort of schedule themselves. Today was an exception, I had 2 things scheduled – a meeting with a new prospect at 11:00AM and an Amplify.com community chat podcast at 1:00PM.
When I got to my desk at 7:45AM I noted that extra issue #1 had already arrived via Email, within 10 minutes I was on the phone with one of my clients about a computer that had been moved and was not quite functioning right. By a little after 8AM the immediate issue was resolved but I had added another stop to my day for 10AM. By 9AM I received a call from another client, evidently one of their machines did not check in to work. I now had zero time windows long enough between 10AM and 2:30PM to run to Oakland to see to this latest issue. While in route to my 10AM I called to confirm the Amplify.com community chat with Eric Goldstein, thank goodness Eric wanted to postpone – there were big changes due out Thursday and we rescheduled the chat to Thursday afternoon. The next couple of hours were just a flurry of activity. By the time I realized I had to notify everyone on Amplify, Plancast and Blogtalkradio of the change I was sitting in line for a quick on the go lunch at Burger King.
Being the IT tech guy that I am I hopped out of my car and grabbed my backpack out of the trunk and set it on the passenger side floor of my car. I pulled out my small netbook, a USB cable and made sure my Droid Phone was handy. With my laptop tethered to my Droid phone I powered it up. My passenger seat was not the best desk but it would have to do. After jostling around while still inching forward in the drive through line I managed to type in my super complex password.
“Warning …. Low Battery Life…..”
Oh snap, you’ve got to be kidding me. I would have to find an alternate solution. While driving on the 680 Corridor I did a voice search on my Droid for a Peet’s coffee, why Peet’s? Because their wifi doesn’t require a login, just a simple code that is provided by the cashier. I have not tested Starbuck’s since they went free wifi, so it may work the same way. Didn’t find a local Peet’s that way, so I tried Panera Bread. Same story. Finally while driving through LaMorinda I used the Places app and chose Coffee Houses. There’s a Peet’s! Thank goodness Honda’s let you plug stuff into the Navigation while driving, I pulled off the freeway and had the address set before I got to the stoplight. It was right around the corner – Score 1 Location Based Search.
Needless to say Peet’s was a welcome environment I was able to plug-in and get all the updates put into place and quickly get back on the road. It cost me $2.00 for a coffee that I didn’t need but I thought to myself as I was driving down the road I could always buy a shirt that says “Powered by Caffeine”.
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