It’s so simple really, and not at all new. It’s the original Facebook model, before it became huge.

Twitter is about proximity. Over the past year I have sent about 100 Twitter “tweets”. Over the past week I doubled that. Why? All the people who I am following, and who were following me, were all in the same location (at SXSW conference in Austin).

Proximity changed everything.

Previously, I would have argued that if you saw my tweet “Going to Stubbs for some BBQ” it would provide you with a topic of conversation for the future. When you see me next, you can ask what I thought of the famous Stubbs ribs instead of just approaching me with a broad question like “How are things?”.

But proximity adds another layer. Now, you can join me at Stubbs if you like. I broadcast I would be there at lunchtime, and if you were to come, you would find me there and you can trust that I would welcome the company (because if I wanted to be left alone, I wouldn’t have broadcast where I’d be to the world).

I wasn’t in college when Facebook came onto the scene, but I imagine this was how it originally became huge. Students, on the same campus, updating their activity (late for class, in the dining hall, studying in the library) so other students on the campus could find them.

For years, my Delaware Shakespeare Festival had a central phone number, but did not have a central office or operator. So many calls got lost or responded too well too late. It was an unfortunate shortcoming that we could not find a (cost free) means of forwarding that one number to a different or even multiple other phone numbers to actually answer.

A few years late, here is GrandCentral.com. This service does exactly what I was looking for five years ago, it will give me a phone number to give out, and that number will ring any or all of my other phones (home, cell, work, wife’s cell, etc). I can program which numbers to ring and when. I am still kicking the tires on this service, but if it works as well as I anticipate, I think this is the death nail for my home phone, which I pay $35 a month to essentially have a non-cell phone number.

They are only in Beta, but I have a few “Recommend a Friend” opportunities available if you are interested.

Has no one ever wanted to display a slideshow in the order they choose?  This can’t be a new idea.  Yet, unless you are uploading your slideshow onto the web or importing it into Powerpoint or Flash, this is unachievable.

-Windows Explorer will not save your custom order, once you leave that folder it reverts to the sort by name or date.

- Picaca 2 will allow you to create an album and set the order, but does not provide a means for saving that album.  Trying to export the album will result in a new order that is not only not your intented order, but not sorted by date or name either.  It’s a completely random new structure.

Perhaps one of the Apple apps has a solution, but for me and my PC, we are left with having to rename every picture (A001.jpg, A002.jpg…) so they will be forced to keep the intended custom order.

This can’t be the best approach.  What have you discovered?

At the CVS at Farragut North three cashiers stood idly waiting to serve someone in the line. Five feet to the right I stood at the photo counter awaiting assistance. The inevitable resolution was that I need to go walk through the cashier line to get a clerk to walk back over to the photo counter to get my pictures. Protocol and structure are important in a business, but so too is knowing when to deviate to improve the customer experience.