And by this I mean the very end or beginning of the month. You know ... when there are 100 people in line to get their monthly pass, and you only have 4 minutes to catch your next train? Well, as you can see in this photo, this is the typical line for customers of the monthly pass. Long lines at both the ticket windows and at the ticket machines. 

Well, here's the little gem that I might regret passing along. Every one of these people is getting their tickets at the same place -- either at the main ticketing windows, the nearby machines, or at the machines that are on the outward-bound tracks. The tip is to go to the inward-bound tracks (the ones heading into NYC) during evening rush hour (and vice-versa). There's no one heading INTO the city during evening rush hour trying to get a monthly pass. As you can see from this picture, there's no one there! That's how I get my ticket -- lickety split.

I recall spending endless hours soaking in Genesis's self-titled album "Genesis," and resetting that needle just to play it over again. And you'd listen to an entire side, if not the entire album, straight through. For one, albums were written back then to have a certain flow to them. Concept albums (recall Styx's "Kilroy Was Here") were meant to tell a story from start to finish. Second, it was kind of a pain getting up out of your bean bag chair to reset the stylus to change songs.

Now, I don't mean for this to be one of those old-fart-whiny posts about the good ol' days, but I do feel this has two consequences. First, I think it'll become even rarer that artists write albums in this way (thanks Green Day and the late, great Kevin Gilbert). Artists -- actually the record labels -- write songs nowadays just for the quick fix. It's formulaic. Throw together 10 pop tracks, 2-3 of which will be released as singles, and market the hell out of the artist until they're all dried up. Too many great artists have been consciously dropped from the marketing machine simply because they no longer have pop appeal (Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Bleu, Björk, et al). Second, because listening to music is no longer a past time, truly great music today will be reduced to background noise in tinny earphones during a commute or a tune you can sort of listen to while you play your favorite iPhone game.

That's no sort of life for Ben Folds Five.

After realizing that I had misplaced it, I roamed around the house with a cordless phone calling my cell phone. No luck. It was a busy morning, so I may have left the phone at either the gym, the bagel place, the dry cleaners, the Radio Shack, or the barber. I did not feel like retracing all of those steps, and then I realized I could just log onto my MobileMe account and have it find my phone for me.

When I activated it, I saw that it was still at my house but slightly off. Then I realized that I must have left in the car, which was parked two houses away. I told the service to send a tone to the phone for 2 minutes, along with a message that read, "Please give the phone to daddy." Sure enough, the phone was under the seat in my car. Must have slipped out of my shorts.

That service alone is worth the $99 a year I pay for MobileMe.

The same holds true for video as well. When people think of online video, two  sites come to mind: YouTube and Hulu. Indeed, both of those sites have a huge number of videos viewed per user (96 videos/viewer and 26.7 videos/viewer, respectively). However, a comScore study shows that more than half of the online video minutes viewed are being viewed on video sites ranked #26 and higher. The long tail of video site is garnering more than half the total online video viewing.

The important takeaway is that your online video strategy shouldn't begin and end with YouTube. As my colleague Paul Dyer points out, YouTube should be only one part of your video marketing mix. You need to be wherever people go to view video, and that isn't always YouTube.

One happy addition I wanted to mention has to do with PowerPoint -- the plastic spork in the utensil drawer of presentation software. Microsoft has finally decided to allow actual embedding of video files into a presentation. No more links to video files that get broken once you move the file or try to e-mail it to someone else. Apple's presentation software, Keynote, has done that since version 1. Apple knew then that people don't care that presentations are larger than 100 MB anymore. People have USB nail clippers that hold more than that.

Another welcome -- and inevitable -- feature is their offering of a free, lesser-featured, online version of Office. This is a direct answer to upstarts like Google Docs and Adobe Buzzword. Looking 10 years into the future, I think it's a near certainty that document management will be done via cloud computing of some sort.

The other late-to-the-table addition to the application line is the ability to create PDF files of your documents. As the New York Times's David Pogue put it, "Welcome to 2005 Microsoft!"

The struggle over the past 10 years for Microsoft has been the adoption rates of their new versions. More than 50% of Microsoft Office customers today are using a version that's at least 7 years old. People just seem to be happy with what works and aren't willing to shell out another $120 for a few new buttons. However, Microsoft predicts high adoption rates with Office 2010.

I was in need of a 4-foot length of garden hose to replace the one from my spigot to the garden hose reel. Naturally -- and in hindsight perhaps foolishly -- I went to Home Depot and then Lowe's for the hose. Neither had the item I needed nor did they have knowledgeable personnel to assist me.

When I wised up and drove .3 miles to my local hardware store, the proprietor likewise didn't have the item, per se, but he did offer a solution that worked just fine: a washing machine hose with a double-male coupling. A great solution that both Home Depot and Lowe's technically offered, minus the added smarts.

In the end, I got what I needed, spent 4 minutes of my time and perhaps only a dollar more than I would have, had I gone to one of the hardware super stores. Well worth the value of my time and lack of hassle.

Remember this story the next time you need to spend. Spend local.

But how have theaters managed to stay ahead of this trend? By raising prices. Anyone who's been to a theater lately knows this to be true. I remember when we crossed the $10-per-ticket barrier with much disdain. It was an outrage ... at the time. Now, tickets for the final installment of Shrek are going for $20 each to see it in 3D IMAX. Unfortunately for the theaters, this is the only way they can hold onto revenue. Look at the facts.

While movie theaters' gross receipts are up year over year, actual attendance is down. Movie attendance over the recent Memorial Day weekend was down 22% from last year and marked the lowest total since 1993, according to Hollywood.com. What that shows is that theaters are squeezing the sponge even tighter. The down side is that there will be nothing left to squeeze, as movie watchers realize they can get a similar experience on their 50" flat-screen while saving $50 for tickets and food.

Reality: Movie theaters are clutching onto an old model that's slipping away (like the record companies did and like print publications are doing).
Solution: Make the experience of going to a movie theater more valuable than the experience at home. Don't simply charge more.

Starting today, I am with WCG (aka WeissComm Group), where I'll be Director of Social Media for their New York office. It's an amazing opportunity to work with a forward-thinking communications firm who is making huge strides in the technology and strategy of social media. Perhaps the best part of this new venture is that I'll be working for the inimitable Bob Pearson (yeah, that Bob Pearson). I am so excited to work with a true visionary in this space. Plus, I'll be reunited with some old friends from my days at Porter Novelli.

Starting a new chapter in your life is always a daunting yet exciting thing to do, but I am really looking forward to it, and you'll still hear from me here and on Twitter and on LinkedIn and pretty much anywhere else where you Google "mattsnod."

It seems that Apple's vision for the iPad -- neither a tablet nor an iPhone -- is coming true. I see that people are starting to accept the iPad for what it is ... well, an iPad. It's truly a new type of device. That presents some pros (new market, new applications) and cons (may canibalize sales of MacBooks, fierce competition to come), but so far, I'm liking what I'm seeing.

The potential future applications for such a device are truly endless: sales force, doctors, hospitals, assembly line, presentations, etc. While I'm still holding out for the eventual next-gen iPad, I am impressed with this first version. What do you think?

I saw inklings of trouble when Adobe continued to not fully optimize their CS suite of applications for Mac's Cocoa OS framework throughout most of this past decade. And when the iPhone was released without Flash support, you felt there was trouble brewing. But now, it's getting ugly.

Apple and Adobe have gone tit for tat on the subject. The latest have involved Steve Jobs's open letter regarding Flash, and now Adobe has published founders' Chuck Geschke and John Warnock's open letter in response.

My take ... Is Apple right for not allowing Flash to run on their devices? Yes, it's their device, and Flash is a resource (battery) hog. Is Apple right for restricting creation of iPad and iPhone apps to Apple development platforms? No, that's just plain selfish; Apple's not the only one who knows how to make apps. Is Adobe right for whining about others trashing Flash (which they didn't even make, by the way)? No, Flash is showing its age in an era where computing is becoming more and more portable, where the need for battery life exceeds the need to play Farmville.

And Adobe's argument that Apple should support Flash because it has a 99% install base holds no merit. I'm sure the manufacturers of asbestos had a 99% install base at one point. That didn't make it a good thing. (Okay, that example was harsh, but you get my point.)