Thanks giving day is a couple of days away, what will you be doing? How do you spend your Thanksgiving? Do you even celebrate it? Unfortunately, I will be at work, waiting till the clock ticks to quitting time. Which will be past dinner time so I’ll miss all of the dinner parties.

Thinking about thanksgiving, I started wondering if there was anything tech related that I would give thanks to.

You know

If I was actually with family and friends, and we were having that age ole discussion about all of the technical wonders we all are thankful to have….Ok Ive never actually had that discussion, Im guessing most of you haven’t either. But lets have that discussion.

What are things that you are thankful for? Tech related of coarse. It is hard as I sit here and think about it, but here are some that I am very glad has happened and I am very thankful exist.

Online Bill Pay

This is one thing that I have come to look at as the norm is being able to pay my bills by going to a website. If it isn’t offered I get really aggravated. I can pay my electric, gas, mortgage, car note, cable bill and many others, online. I remember when I first started to pay my own bills having to worry about stamps, and envelopes- the time lag between when you mail something and when they receive and credit your account. Waiting in lines if you decide to pay the bill in person because everyone in the city has the same due date. it was awful. I am very great full for online bill pay and hopes it never goes away.

Turbo Tax / Tax Cut

The first time I had my income taxes done, I payed $100 bucks to HR block and got $219 back. Not only that, but I had to drive out to HR block, wait in line, and share all of my personal income information with a complete stranger. Thanks to Tax software, I can now sit at my computer and have my taxes done in about 30 mins, for only $29-$39 bucks. And I don’t have to worry about the HR block rep snickering at my laughable yearly gross. I can hear him/her now  "Im guessing its Ramen Noodles tonight?" while I lower my head and whisper yes.

MapQuest

Well, I actually use Google maps mostly now-a-days, but it all started with Mapquest for me. I don’t know how many times Ive been on the highway heading somewhere with a Mapquest print-out sitting in the passenger seat. Its one thing that I kindof take for granted now, but it sure has made things a lot easier.

Voicemail.

You know what I really hated? Calling someone, they pickup and as soon as they say hello their answering machine start giving you the "im not home" message. Now you have to wait till the answering machine finishes, then for the next couple of minutes your conversation with that person is being recorded. Or even more so, calling someone and they just let the machine pick up and listen to you start to leave your message before they decide to pick up the phone. Voicemail eliminated all of that. Now you get either Voicemail, or a person. No confusion. No ease dropping on your message before they decide to answer. No having the first 5 minutes of your conversation recorded. Now its simple, and Im thankful for that.

Napster

Do I even need to tell you the reason behind this. All i have to say is Apple, Rhapsody, Creative, Microsoft, Sandisk, the Pirate bay, Bittorrent…A whole lot of later technologies has been created because of  MP3s and file sharing popularity, which Napster had a big part building.

There are others that I could name but that is just some that I thought about to start things off.

What about you?