I consider myself lucky: I was let out of my contract after a several-month long dispute over AT&T’s quality of service (or lack thereof). Look above; that picture shows what I saw every day: zero to one bars of service within a 1-mile radius of my office. Anyone who’s been on the phone with me me has earned the purple-heart-of-patience award for tolerating my dropped calls (sometimes as many as 2-3 times per chat). And this phone is my only phone, the one I depend on to run my business.

I expect I’m not the only one with this problem. I’ve spoken with you too; your reception sucks.

How did I do it?

I don’t mean for this to be a how-to for those who wish to sneak out of their contract. Mine was a legitimate problem of poor service. If yours is too, here’s what you can do:

• Call AT&T (1-800-331-0500 or 611 from your wireless phone).
• Ask them to open a support ticket. It’s important that you start documenting your problem.
• Remind them that they have the data to confirm this issue: call start/end times and dropped call logs. (Updated: Thanks, Paul)
• Wait at least a month. Let them try and resolve the problem—it’s only fair.
• If they can’t resolve your problem, demand compensation or to be released from your contract.

Seems like common sense, eh? It is.

An open support ticket is the key; it’s your documentation that there’s a problem, and proof that it hasn’t been resolved in a sufficient period of time.

Remember: it’s reasonable to expect that your service works; reasonable to ask someone to repair it if broken; and reasonable to leave if it can’t be fixed.

Good luck.

• Choose slide direction (left or right)
• Custom width slides
• Modal slides
• unobtrusive
• Mutiple slide definitions on the same page
• Fully supported with IE7+, FireFox 2+, Safari 2+
• Minified version included!

The widget that I created–TinyFinder–looks for rev=canonical links in a webpage, and displays them in the statusbar of the browser window. Rev=canonical links are meta tags that are used when a website wants to suggest a preferred tiny url to use. For example, the Flickr page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/srobbin/3533142101/) can also be accessed by Flickr’s own tiny url (http://flic.kr/p/6odh48). Of course, you could always use one of many url shortening services, but Flickr’s custom URL suggests what you’ll see on the other side of the redirect: a photo/movie. Several services are starting to employ their own custom tiny urls:  Dopplr, Threadless, Songza, and many more.

If the web page you are looking at does not provide its own tiny, custom URL, you can always click on the statusbar widget; one will be created for you and automagically copied to your clipboard.

I love music. Every since my parents let me pick out a few cassettes from our Columbia House ‘12 tapes for 1 cent’ mail-in order, I’ve been hooked. (I chose Thriller, Weird Al’s ‘In 3-D’, and the Flash Gordon soundtrack.) That’s why, when Aza approached me with a project he had been working on, I was so excited to join in. The concept: provide a way for people to legally listen to and share music, and do so in an incredibly user-friendly way. Flash ahead to the present: Songza has grown into a robust website that’s enjoyed by millions of people around the world. I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve done, appreciative of the opportunities it has presented and thankful for the community that has supported us.

So why am I leaving? I’m working on a new project: a social network that allows people to send status updates to their friends, telling them what they’re doing…in 141 characters.

But seriously forks, I’m leaving so that I can return to freelance work with clients and to start a new project. The details of the new project are hush-hush for the moment, but I’ll be sure to announce them here when it’s ready to go.

Thank you to Humanized (Aza, Atul, Jono and Andrew–collectively and fondly known as The Humanoids) for all of the support that you’ve given me; to my friends and family for listening to me ramble on about Songza ad naseum; to my friends in New York who’ve welcomed me with open arms and taught me to completely obliterate my liver; and above all to the Songza community for making the past year and half of my life so wonderful.

Balsamiq’s Mockups is a great tool for designers/developers who lack good drawing skills, but still want to pencil-out their ideas (*blushes*). Additionally, it provides all the convenient features of application–drag, drop and undo–for those who could otherwise take pen to paper.