The United States Postal Service is a 'sunny day friend'. There for you when days are bright and trouble is out of sight, but when something goes wrong they want none of it. They have managed to lose a package with a one of a kind item bound to a customer between New York City and Morristown NJ (some 35 miles) with tracking/delivery confirmation paid for. It's now been 15 days since I sent the package, that was shown as delivered on day later and then the following day shown as "Undeliverable return to sender" on the USPS tracking website.

15 days on now, several phone calls to an automated serviced in search of a human, two calls to the morristown nj post office, 2 face to face conversations with postal employees at two different post offices later all anyone has told me is that the other guy has he package and that I should contact them. Two of the three postal employees I have spoken with have taken my phone number with the promise to call me before the day was out, but my phone has not rung, except for my intrepid customer who went to the Morristown NJ post office at which the tracking showed the package to be where he was told it was not there it had been sent back to me in New York.

Have I mentioned that was 12+ days ago. At my local post office where the return address pointed I was told that the parcel was likely at a returned mail facility and that parcel post gets slower handling than other mail there - odd the package I sent was 2 day priority. Everyone is quick to agree that because there is tracking on the package that it should be scanned every time it moves, but seems to find no contradiction in the idea that the package is not where it's tracking says it is but somewhere else. Every postal employee has passed the buck and refused to own the problem.

The punch line of this story is, the US Post Office owns the domain LostInTheMail.com. I found this out because I wondered if there was any sort of watch dog site that I could go to and list my tracking number as one that was lost. Some aggregator of dissatisfaction where I could lend my story to what must be thousands of others just like me. Obviously someone needed to build - LostInTheMail.com. Well a quick flick of the browser and there I was, nothing. A quick hop over to godaddy.com turns up it's already owned by the US Postal Service.

Love Yelp. Love the promise of augmented reality. Unfortunately it only works in the 3GS. Thanks to Ben Parr and the folks at Mashable for this.

EASTER EGG: Yelp Is the iPhone’s First Augmented Reality App Yelp’s new iPhone app is now the first iPhone App with Augmented Reality. It takes Yelp information and overlays it into the real-world. It’s actually a secret easter egg (discovered by Robert Scoble), which may be why Apple didn’t reject Yelp’s augmented reality app. We have screenshots and a demo video to show you what this is all about.

Been getting more spam than usual lately that slips through, but this one caught my eye:

Women will bake you pies because of your mega size. The whole galaxy will be yours with the size like that.

I do like pie.

Isn't that how the advice goes to musicians. Regardless of how obscure or little known your band is, when justifying your popularity - or just talking smack, I think the line is supposed to be "We're big in Japan". Actually, ShopSavvy for iPhone and Android is made by a shop called "Big in Japan". I have no association, but I do like ShopSavvy for the Android. I have yet to try it on the iPhone.

This isn't what this post is about. Apparently, I'm actually big in China - and by big I mean, i got one visit. But it was a fairly interesting visit. Apparently Amazon MP3 Clips widget". Yeah, weird. Not a great claim to fame, but I'll take it.

Heard them this morning on CBC Radio 3 New Music Canada Track of the Day Podcast (yes Canadian Broadcast Company). I think they were featured on February 25th. At any rate, head on over to their MySpace page to hear the track I like (so far) Drawn in Crayon

Oh, I guess you can buy their EP on iTunes... I'm looking for another outlet. I don't buy from iTunes if I can help it. DRM Yo. Let me know if you find anything about them.

So I want to document here and for all humanity. Tonight, after months of looking for a clear and simple unsubscribe link in the bottom of the useless and unwanted email I get from classmates.com, I signed on to their cursed site (hate them slightly less than evite.com) and unsubscribed from everything. What I realize now I should have done is munged my information and email to be something like youmissedthesocial@networkboatyoufools.com. Then curious I wanted to see what their traffic was like. So I bopped over to Google Ad Planner and looked them up.

Classmates.com Demographic Data on Google Ad Planner

So then I got to thinking 17M Uniques Worldwide (Nearly all of which are US) doesn't suck, but I wonder how it compares to say another their's to lose early player in the social network space, Friendster.com
Friendster.com Demographic Data on Google Ad Planner

So I guess there is some consolation for the craptastic classmates.com - they are handily beating friendster.com in the US. Now, why all the hating on classmates.com?

• They violated the I-give-you-my-email social contract of the web by not having an easy unsubscribe link in their email
• They are not remotely relevant to me, their demographic sweet spot appears to be women just shy of my mother's age who started but did not finish college
• With the information I've given them they should be able to tailor a marketing message that remotely piques my interest?
• I am never going to become a gold member! - stop asking

Finally, because it wouldn't be laughable without including the email here it is below. Note, the "One Sweet Day" reference... To my point above: Are they really asking me if I blared "One Sweet Day" in the school parking lot? The song that came out a couple years after I graduated High School sung by Mariah Carey featuring Boyz II Men. At any rate, I'll be sure and let you know when the emails show up again. I don't believe for a minute that my email-confirmed-your-settings-are-saved interaction will stick.

Surfing the NY Times on a ridiculously gorgeous July 5th - don't worry I'm on my way out. There is an interesting piece about how Twitter has turned up as something useful. Turns out the savvy brands are watching their names on Twitter. Have a look for yourself:

PRACTICAL TRAVEL

Twitter Comes to the Rescue

By MICHELLE HIGGINS, Published: July 5, 2009
From bad airplane seats to poor room service, customers are getting surprisingly fast responses to their tweets.

New album from KGW (whose work was largely unknown to me) until I checked out their stuff.  Graham Smith works at the same company I do and while I fancied him a multi-talented guy, I had no idea he was that good.

You can cop a listen at kgw.me track 17 man at his saddest might be my favorite.  Will require another full listen.

Thanks Laura, this is pretty great.