While excitedly awaiting my MacBook Pro 17" (BTO, built to order), I hung out on the MacRumors thread where people would exchange ship dates and such. This linear exchange seemed so inefficient; I wanted to be able to find patterns in the ship dates, so I created a spreadsheet (and marketed it aggresively on the thread), so that everyone could go there to give updates on their . In just a day, we were up to 40 entries. I suppose we even chatted on the spreadsheet since I told someone "I'll be on the spreadsheet if you want to talk." We all worked together to figure out which FedEx flight our Macs were on. I loved this feeling of community, and I liked that I had been the one to create the spreadsheet in the first place. We ended up with 92 people entering in their info.

read more