Dealing with phone companies, insurance companies, banks, etc has caused most of us to become so accustomed to terrible customer service that when someone actually does it well it feels like a tremendous breath of fresh air…something worth shouting about, even. So, that’s exactly what I’m doing.

I just had one of the best customer service experiences of my life with Dreamhost, the service that hosts this very blog. I’d been having some weird technical issues, and not only were they friendly, human and fast in their responses, they went way above and beyond the call of duty to get everything straightened out for me. So, if you’re ever in need of a hosting service for your site, definitely check these guys out. They’re great.

Like they say, customer service is the new marketing. I don’t think that’s necessarily a ‘new’ development, but otherwise this blog post is definitely proving that point.

Rhian stopped by the other day to show off Austin, the first baby ever born to a (female) Mozilla employee. Kind of a cool milestone for the company…

Brands are fundamentally very abstract things…they exist in people’s heads more than they do in any well-designed logo or fancy style guide. On his new Brand Tags site, Noah Brier starts with this notion and adds the Web 2.0-ish twist of letting people tag various brands with whatever attributes they see fit. It’s really a pretty fascinating experiment.

Of course, maybe I just like the site because Firefox comes across well…the Firefox Brand Tag page is dominated by generally positive associations, like “Internet”, “browser” and, my personal favorite, “awesome.” On the flip side, Internet Explorer doesn’t fare as well.

My only quibble with the site is that I’d love to somehow know more about the demographics of the people doing the tagging - obviously this is a fairly narrow sample so it’d be interesting to know who they are, exactly. Overall though, it’s an awesome site - and don’t miss Celeb Tags if you’re feeling a little more lighthearted.

(Thanks to Asa for the heads up on the link.)

Anyone who spends more than about 10 minutes around me these days knows that I’m totally obsessed with the Wire. If it’s not the greatest TV show ever, it’s certainly on a very short list. So, pardon the diversion from Mozilla-related topics for a minute…

My wife and I recently finished watching the Wire’s final season, and during the letdown period that inevitably follows the end of anything really good, it struck me that what the world really needs is a way of determining who is the toughest and most bad-ass of all the characters on that show. After all, there was a lot of ‘muscle’ on the Wire, but if they battled it out, who would win?

Purely for my own amusement, I’ve concocted a March Madness-style bracket of the Elite Eight of the Wire’s tough guys. After a highly unscientific seeding process, here’s how the first round matchups break down:

1. Omar Little
8. Michael Lee

2. Chris Partlow
7. Snoop Pearson

3. Wee-Bey Brice
6. Slim Charles

4. Brother Mouzone
5. Sergei Malatov

Any thoughts on how things play out from here? Let me know in the comments section…