Outside the box

There was no wi-fi available at work today, so the sit-at-the-picnic-table plan didn't pan out. Instead I used every wired Internet capability at my disposal to escape the office for a bit. Yes, I would love to tell you I drove to the airport and got on the first available flight to a warm beach. Someday I'll pull that stunt.















But today, you see, a really big airplane was going to land at our little international airport, and after missing all the weekend's air festivities, I wanted to see something cool, anything.

So I called upon my friends Twitter and Google and hosted a little search party. Quickly I found out the approximate landing time, best observation area, where to park, hash tags for future Tweets, where the plane was going to taxi and park, and which runway it most likely would use.














Everything went as planned, and I had photos of the A380 posted to Twitpic and Facebook an hour later. Half a day later, here they are for you. Sorry, no live-blogging today.

This little social media/web project is right in line with what we're doing at work, so I'll call it a field trip. My observations:














After editing, posting, and re-posting some of the same photos, I need to look into social media integration applications. And an iPhone. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

On the other hand, the photos I picked for each outlet were specifically selected for that outlet. You don't see any photos of people on this page, but on my more-tightly controlled Facebook photo album, there are tagged faces in front of the Airbus.

Within seconds of posting to Twitpic, I had 40 views of my photos. Gotta love saved searches and hash tags.

In conclusion, I did a little research outside the box at work, got outside the walls, and finally got to see a cool airplane. Further justification: The rest of the staff was at a golf outing. Driving golf carts. Need I say more?















Don't think I can justify watching it take off tomorrow. Can I?