Anyways, I look at the ‘TY’ tag and notice they’ve added ’2.0′ to Beanie Babies. Really?!? You think this is your second coming?!? Adding 2.0 to something doesn’t just make it the new buzzword and give your business a new chance.

I’ve heard of business 2.0 and web 2.0 and agree with the new name. I mean, 2.0 in both of these cases means the rules of the game have completely changed. The way business is done and sales are made has changed. The web is now social and it’s getting even more so every day. But how does Beanie Babies 2.0 work?

Did you completely change how Beanie Babies function? Didn’t look like it to me…same old fabric animals stuffed with tiny beans. Do they interact with a website? Is this your answer to Webkinz? This sounds like a last-ditch effort to me and I thought it was pretty lame.

If there aren’t any relevant ads displayed, they suggest repeating yourself or to continue rambling on until the system picks up your conversation. They’ve implemented a pretty neat click process – they transport you directly to the site with their Teleportation Technology. They also mention that you can opt to have the product placed directly in your hands, though they are not clear what kind of setup configuration is required for this.

I think AdSense for Conversations is by far the best April Fools joke Google managed today. However, I will admit that I enjoyed the fact that they admitted to using the e-flux capacitor to solve causality issues in Gmail Custom Time.

(photo credit: AdSense blog)

Some of you may remember last year’s Gmail April Fools joke – Gmail Paper. Basically, they offered a free service for you to print all your email and they would send it to you on paper. Where do they come up with this stuff?!?

So how will Gmail Custom Time play out? I’m guessing a ‘service’ to let you set times emails will be sent (I can actually see a use for this) or when an email should have been sent.

Here’s a shot from my Gmail account.

UPDATE: The link in Gmail is now live and it’s pointing to a page with a similar format to last year’s April Fools. The joke this year is a feature that allows you to set the time emails are ‘sent’ as I predicted above. Now I can tell my boss that I sent him that email hours ago even though I didn’t. “Hey boss, refresh your inbox, I know I sent you that TPS report.” Obviously this wouldn’t really work (it’s like printing “hundred of thousands” of emails and having them delivered)…let’s hope they have something else for us when I wake up.

I pull up the email and grab the tracking number a couple days later and navigate to usps.com only to find out that it couldn’t provide me an update.  It just said that they’ve received the ‘electronic shipping information’.  Great, so what does that mean to me…nothing.  Anyways, not totally out of it, I decided to sign up for email alerts.  According to the descriptions, they’ll email me when the status of my shipment changes.  Great, in theory!

I go on my merry way only to check it a couple more times, one of them this morning.  No change…what is going on with USPS and where is my package?!?  Apparently, their system only has a couple statuses – shipping information received and delivered because when I checked my mail this afternoon it had arrived.  Surprise, surprise…I didn’t receive the email from USPS until about three hours after the package was actually delivered.

Good job guys…I’ll be using UPS or FedEx from now on.

The only downfall I saw with iTunes was the navigation. For me to get more than the top 10 most popular songs I had to navigate to music, and then to the individual genre’s I listen to (I occasionally search the general music top 100 but prefer to filter out the music I won’t buy) .

Anyways, when I logged in this evening I found that iTunes has added a quick link section (image below) next to the music navigation link. This allows you to jump directly to the genre of your choice bypassing an entire step.  What a simple but effective enhancement!  Great job!

The only potentially negative impact I see for iTunes is the fact that now I will likely never search the general top 100.  I will likely navigate right to the genre’s I purchase and leave it at that.  I’ll continue moving down the music longtail by discovering music through iTunes recommendations rather than searching on my own.

After sorting through some of the specifics I found that if you searched for the words “annoying blocked prank callers” my post Prank callers are annoying is the first search result displayed.

Here is small screenshot (click here to view current search results – note, these may change and I may not currently be the first listing):

Apparently there is a scheme where callers constantly dial your number (in Jenn and my case it was about every half-hour for a couple hour block each day), hope you say something or get upset and then hangup. Occasionally, the prank caller mumbled a couple words but I could never understand them. After a few very early morning calls I decided to call the phone company and see what I could do to stop this from happening.

The phone company didn’t say they could stop it on their system but the lady on the phone did offer up a couple suggestions for blocking the caller with a ‘starcode’. Starcodes are codes you can enter on your phone to perform special functions. Most people are probably familiar with the *67 (block your number) and *69 (call the number that last called you) starcodes.

To block a number, dial *60 on your telephone. When prompted, select 1 to turn the service on. Once you’ve turned the service on, select the option to add numbers. Dial the number as it appears on your caller id and follow instructions on the device.

If you missed the link above, here is a link to the some additional starcodes. I also found this while browsing the web, it’s the Privacy Rights Clearing house webpage on stopping prank callers.

Hopefully this information is useful!

It starts snowing just before lunch and almost immediately I get an email from United that all their afternoon flights have been canceled. Honestly, it kind of shocked me a bit because their automated alert system has never worked for me in the past – but I guess at least I knew now. I jump through all kinds of hoops to get on the only US Air flight out (which was ultimately canceled) and get on my way to the airport.

I work about 20 miles away from the airport and it took me three hours to make the trip. They hadn’t done hardly any kind of plowing and oh, everyone else in Hartford was on the road trying to go home.

The drive wasn’t actually too bad. It gave me some time to sit back and think in a decently quiet environment and enjoy some music. At least until I hear a loud ‘boom’ with about seven miles to go and realize that my windshield wiper motor blew. Now, I don’t totally know what happened but I do know that my windshield wipers immediately stopped working and I had to drive the rest of the way with limited visibility and my hand out the window with an ice scraper as my very manual wiper. I probably should have called the rental car company but that would have taken at least two hours with all the weather.

One nice thing is that I was just confirmed on my flight and was upgraded to first class. I guess if I don’t get to go home on my regular day, at least I get to go home today in first class…hopefully!

Well I’m signing off to get some ‘real’ work done before catching my flight.

Update: Here are some photos that I took on my phone of the drive. Don’t worry, I was stuck in traffic when I took these. Click them to enlarge.

I guess first of all, this week was destined to be a long week. I didn’t get home from Connecticut until Friday evening and had to turn around and leave less than 48 hours later for Texas (I had to go to one of the warehouses this week). I know one more night may not sound like much but taking that Sunday evening away from relaxing and turning it into travel really makes a difference. It probably didn’t help that once I landed in Dallas I had to drive two hours.

So I finally land in Richmond around 10:15 PM and head to my car. I get out of the airport and maybe 5 miles down the road I get a flat. Great! I guess it’s not a huge deal, but not something I wanted to deal with after a day of travel. I get the ‘inconvenience tire’ (more on this later) on and get back on the road.

Not more than 10 miles later I get the same rumbling sensation on the driver side of the car and get off the interstate. Luckily, I was able to get to a hotel parking lot. It turns out that my spare has now gone flat (not completely so it leads me to believe I hit a bump or something that deflated it). I call Jenn and she comes to pick me up – she’s great!
Cut to Friday…

I take Jenn to work so that I could have her car and deal with the flat tire debacle. I pull out of her office and end up getting stuck in traffic for an hour and forty-five minutes. It was unbelievable. I was obviously frustrated but since I have the ability to get my email and calendar information on my phone I sit there quietly and do some work. I’m still cranky but at least I’m being productive.

Well, needless to say, it was a very long 24 hours late last week but things are on their way to being cleared up. Car is at the tire shop now!

Until next time ladies and gentlemen.

I’ll be posting about random topics ranging from family news to upcoming events, from life to technology and business and probably everything in between.

That’ s it for now but I’vegot a couple posts that I need to get started. It’s been a busy couple of weeks!