Microsoft To Address Web Tracking

Score another one for the good guys. (Say what Microsoft a good guy???) In this case yes - definitely of the white hat variety.

The Wall Street Journal's By NICK WINGFIELD reports that "Microsoft Corp. said it will include a privacy feature in its Internet Explorer that would let users list websites that can't track them. It is similar to a key feature it dropped in an earlier version of the Web browser after a heated debate with advertisers"

The battle will now get more interesting

Cheers

Should Technology Define The Interaction?

I originally wanted to title this one "Does Technology Define the Dialogue." But you can appreciate the subtle changes I have made to challenge several precepts.

What troubles me are several elements about our interaction with people on the internet.

While the web can be a bit like speed dating in a dark room with no bathroom privileges there are these horrid terms and conditions that no one reads and everyone signs up to - or policies that give again huge implied consent to the website owner being able to do whatever they like with your data and the results of your interaction.

Sorry I think that is wrong. And disclaimers are just that a bunch of BS. If I don't want you to track my activity I should not be the one who has to opt out. Its my darn data and my persona you are messing with. (Are you listening Googleplex?).

However broadly lately I have been thinking that in too many cases we have let technology define the conversation not the other way round.

So my wish list for 2011 is to focus on more ways to have the consumer and user be given solutions that enable she/he to define and control the interaction.

And what is your opinion?

Cheers

De-Demonizing Of Airline Fees

Most people get all riled up about airline ancillary service fees.

They hate it and much prefer the simple all in one model that has persisted for the airline ticket since - well before there were airline tickets going back to the time of Thomas Cook.

Europeans and now just about everyone else in the world are well used to paying fees for unbundled services. Indeed one or two airlines offer Fee packages - buy once use many. Examples of this are United Options and Easyjet's annual Speedy Boarding pass. So the griping (me included) is beginning to subside and the stage of acceptance is creeping in.

Some are even embracing this.

Joe Harkey the veteran MY Times columnist actually wrote an article about it this week.

Have a read here.

Cheers



With Ack to Scared Monkeys for the great image.

R.I.P. RIM?

Oh say it ain't so!!!

None other than Infoworld long a supporter of and indeed for many the voice of the Crackberry Generation has served up a rather disquieting analysis of the state of Play - iPhone vs Crackberry vs Android.

I love my Blackberry. I have a Bold 9700. One of my team just acquired a 9780 from T Mobile and it has evolved a little bit more. I have played with the 9800 Torch and its very good but its not an iPhone killer. It still does what Crackberries do best. Better email, better security and its a reasonable Phone. Unlike its competitors which are useless in at least 2 out of those three.

For me - there is still a significant set of issues with Android devices. They are like an early version of Windows and Linux - unpolished would be a kind word for it. The HTC devices are getting pretty darn good though. Look for the next generation to be acceptable. iPhone is like all things Apple, beautiful, arrogant and expensive. For me its just way too expensive. Not the device but the business model that i have to pay for. Oh yes and the phone is useless.

The faithful are awaiting the Playbook - aka Crackberry Tablet - but by then the choice will be either the next version of the iPad or the Crackberry non-3G device a rough and ready companion only or Wifi product. However IF they can arrange for BBM to tunnel through so that there would be no roaming charges for Playbook usage - then it would have a winner. But that is my dream and has a zero chance of being adopted.

Come on RIM - don't abandon us yet. Don't be the Nokia or Palm you are heading to be.

Hawaii Comes Back ... Perhaps

Hawaii Tourism is starting to return it would seem. According to the Hawaii Tourism Authority's preliminary statistics for October, total expenditures by visitors who came to Hawaii during the month jumped 24.7% when compared with October 2009. In total, travelers to Hawaii spent $961.5 million in October, or $190.6 million more than they did during same month last year. October numbers were up all round continuing a trend that has been building for a while. Average daily spending by visitors statewide increased nearly 10%, to $188.70, and total tourists to Hawaii were up 13.6%. Among the destination's top four markets, arrivals inbound from the U.S. West rose 21.4%, while those from the U.S. East increased 6.1% year over year. Visitors from Canada surged 17.2%, and even arrivals from Japan inched up 1.6%.

HOWEVER be careful in reading this as the be all and end all of the situation. Remember that capacity remains constrained. The US Carriers are not that keen on adding capacity for which their yields are poor. Mexico's woes started to kick in with a vengeance in October and therefore a lot of people diverted from Mexico to Hawaii. Continuing a trend that I have seen for decades.

That said Hawaii's #2 long haul carrier in terms of flights is soon to be Alaska Airlines. Yup the plucky guy from the Northwest is expanding his footprint and bringing the Proud Alaskan with the Lei tail to the islands big time.

New routes consist of the following
San Diego (SAN) - Kahului, Maui (OGG) 10/01/10 1x Daily
Portland (PDX) - Kona, Hawaii (KOA) 11/12/10 - 04/09/11 Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat
Seattle (SEA) - Kona, Hawaii (KOA) 11/11/10 - 04/07/11 Increase to 2x daily Tue, Thu, Sun
Bellingham (BLI) - Honolulu (HNL) 01/07/11 1x Daily
Oakland (OAK) - Lihue, Kauai (LIH) 03/28/11 Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat
San Jose (SJC) - Lihue, Kauai (LIH) 03/27/11 Tue, Thu, Sun

This gives the islands:

Kona 4 routes
OGG 5 7 routes
HNL 4 routes
LIH 4 Routes

2 Years ago these did not exist.

Travelport vs AA - Round 1 (Postponed)

According to those in the know - the first round was supposed to be last week (December 2nd) with a hearing on the Temporary Injunction against AA.

This has been delayed to this week and into next week Dec 10 and 13 respectively.

Seconds out....


With special thanks to DarmnMalaysia for the image.

What Else Did The Internet Kill?

I used to live in Southern California in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was a great experience.

Late night TV in LA was a trip - quite often literally. Channel surfing on the Goddess of Cable - Theta out of the Westside while overlooking LA out of my apartment window. It was magic.

One of the expressions I would love and became attuned to was the local car sellers hawking their wares. The expression was often spoken in homespun speak from guys dressed as cowboys or often even more exotic eccentric ways to get you to "Come on Down!" Whatever happened to people like Cal Worthington....his famous expression was "Go See Cal". At age 89 he is still out there... click here to see his current website.

I was thinking the other day as I was channel surfing that there was a distinct lack of cable TV ads exhorting you to "Come and See".

Instead they have been replaced by web sites.

Hmmm - I wonder what else the web has killed?

Cheers

Confessions of a Webaholic

I stand before you proverbially naked. I am prepared to make a full and complete confession in public.

I have sinned - I am eviil - Yes - I am a webaholic.

I have been a secret webaholic for years. I sneak peaks. Even for no apparent reason or when I have no business being on the web. Yes I am an addict.

And you know what REALLY pisses me off? Bad website User Experience.

When people ask me questions on the web - just like my use of the web - I answer the first thing that comes into my head. For me speed isn't just part of the process - SPEED IS EVERYTHING! This is just so you don't think that when I tell you stuff in surveys you wont think that I am telling you the truth. Like all Webaholics I LIE. In my humble opinion look at my behaviour don't look at my words.


And yes I am SONIC!

Don't make me think about the process - the UX has to be completely intuitive. If there are more than 5 choices on the page other than the results then I get nervous and I will choose the first one. Listen up you web designers - the first answer is the one I will go with. Even if I am wrong - I would rather get a viable answer than to have to spend all day figuring out the way you made your site SO DARN COMPLICATED.

Gerry McGovern seems to agree with me. This week he makes the point. In one paragraph he neatly sums up the problem...

"When people are on the Web they are instinctive, impatient, impulsive, in a hurry. They click on the first link that looks in any way right. They search with the minimum number of words possible. Only when they get bad search results do they add more words to the search string. I have seen tests where people preferred to get poor results quickly than invest a little more time and effort and get much better ones."

Just think about this and do me and yourself a favour. Quite with the extemporaneous crap you dump on to your website. Group things nicely. And then give me a place to get help.

If you don't then remember one thing. it is just as easy to click out of your site as to click inside your site.

Sorry got to dash - I just saw some thing bright and shiny over there....

Who You Are + What You Do

Its Saturday - time for a little lighter point rather than dull old travel.

Question - what is the one man made object that you interact with/touch more than anything?

The answer is at the bottom of this post. However if you were to ask the question 40 years ago the answer would have been a packet of cigarettes.

I was intrigued by a Forbes Article on Celebrities and their phones of choice. It must have been a slow news day. Obviously I don't care about Celebrities (OK I do occasionally pick up People magazine in the supermarket) but what phones and how they are used does fascinate me.

Regular readers will recall some of my rants about the iPhone and Apple's business Model.

I was finally able on a day trip across my State to catch a TED Talks. I was a significant Genesis fan in my day and now enjoy listening to them with more of a nostalgic sense. However I admire Peter Gabriel and his focus on doing good. Particularly on the WITNESS project. Check out this video on his motivation behind WITNESS. How the camera phone has now revolutionized citizen activism is pretty well known. For those of us who live in western style democracies we take these freedoms for granted. (If they are indeed freedoms - let's call them Liberties instead). Those who live under some more formalized totalitarian type governments where deviation from a set norm is frowned on or worse are not so lucky. There are indeed some countries that have banned camera phones and others that ban cameras of one type or another.

SO as you pick up that thing today - think about that.

Cheers





Answer: Your mobile Phone.
And I dont know who to thank for the great picture of a Blackburry Bold 9000 with stuff on it.

VRMA Wants Independence Via a GDS Like Switch

There is an interesting debate over at the VRMA - the Vacation Rental group.

They are seeking independence by promoting the concept of a switch. Head over to their site and read all about it.

It is interesting that they would ask the question now and promote the idea when at the other end of the travel scale - Airlines are trying to drive their wagons out of the GDS environment.

I suggest that you read up about this debate. I am not convinced that a Switch is the right answer to their issues.

I welcome feedback from people on this one.

Cheers

Should Airlines Be Forced To Provide Ancillaries Info In GDSs?

LAst night, I was at a pleasant dinner with some non-travel people.

The discussion turns around as it does to Way is Travel so complicated. this was too good an opportunity to miss. So I described the issue of the GDSs and the lobbies trying to force the Airlines to display the information in the GDS.

One of the people round the table who is involved with charities asked a question which was so fundamental - I am not sure why I didn't ask the same question myself. We were all struggling trying to find analogies. So my friend asked:

"Isn't this a bit like the newspapers and the TV and Radio stations demanding that news be transmitted via the traditional media at the same time as via the web?"... And then trying to get the FCC to legislate this?

Stunningly simple questions....

Cheers

RR - All A380s Fixed by "end of 2011"

According to Bloomberg today - RR told investors yesterday that they will have all the fixes in place by the end of 2011.

No further comment necessary.

BTW QF is slated to take 3 of the behemoths this month.

Cheers

I Swear Washington is Listening to the Professor

After my rants on privacy - it seems that a "Do not call" list is likely to be applied to the web.

The FTC prodded by the excesses of the Rapleaf too as used by Facebook and others wants to create an opt out list. This opt out list will be in the form of a do not call list.

According to the NY Times the FTC : "the government’s top consumer protection agency on Wednesday advocated a plan that would let consumers choose whether they want their Internet browsing and buying habits monitored. "

Unfortunately this does not go far enough for me. In my view there are 3 stages to the tracking process.

Acquisition of the data, Monitoring the data and then using the data. The assumption is that if you restrict the monitoring of the data then you can prevent the manipulation. However while that is obvious - I believe that there should be no acquisition of any data to prevent the use obliquely of the data and meta data.

We shall see....

Cheers

Outgoing Chairman of Senate Select Subcommittee Raises Googleplex Acquisition of ITA.

Sen Kohl who is the outgoing Chairman of the US Senate Subcommittee,
He has written a letter to the Administration on the topic; In this letter he raises his concerns to the acquisition. It is more of a re-hash of the existing complaints by the FairSearch. Org group.

More formally his title is : HERB KOHL
Chairman, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights (D-WIS). His is therefore the right person to raise this - although as a Democrat he is a lame duck and will be replaced by a more sympathetic Republican.

CORRECTION WHILE THIS SESSION IS LAME DUCK - THE NEW APPOINTMENTS FOR THE NEXT SESSION HAVE NOT YET BEEN CONFIRMED. AS THE DEMOCRATS RETAINED THE SENATE - IT IS UNLIKELY HE WILL BE REPLACED. HIS IS ONE OF THE SITTING MEMBER FOR WISCONSIN

The war continues....

Russia and Qatar Get Next World Cups

Say what???

Russia for 2018 I can understand - but Qatar for the 2022 World Cup. Well more power to them - they clearly made a big play and won the battle.

Britain is clearly miffed at having lost out to bringing the game "home".

Don't forget Brazil will host 2014.

Cheers

Rhetoric Up, Sadly Common Sense Down. The AA vs Travelport War.

While I am not exactly a disinterested party in the AA vs Travelport war - I am amazed at just how many parties want the status quo to remain.

I have asked the question before but let me ask it again - to misquote The Bard - Why does the Lady protest so much? Why do all these parties such as Travel Agencies, GDSs and OTAs scream about this as being a travesty of monumental proportions. When such an outcry is heard - I always question the motivation. Healthy Skepticism is ABSOLUTELY required.

Perhaps one of the more balanced analysis I have seen comes from Peter Harbison at CAPA. I recommend reading this analysis because it is (in my humble opinion) thoroughly insightful and balanced. This is in contrast to the hysterical rhetoric that is coming from the kitchen tables of BTC and TCA. In my view they are both acting as surrogates for the GDSs without giving the balanced view that perhaps their organizations should provide.

ITSA's submission to the DOT is an exercise in - well - obfuscation that one would normally expect from politicians. It makes you wonder why politicos spout so much BS - when you read the input it becomes clear. But I digress....

At the moment if you judge reading the press - both trade and consumer - the battle is characterized as a way for AA to leverage Travelport, being the weakest GDS, into a pricing battle submission. IE that AA will win and Travelport will lower its prices.

I think this is very far from the truth and the main issue at hand.

This is not a battle exclusively about cost/price although it is very easy to characterize it thus. The broader issue is that the airlines have a complex product and they don't want to be commoditized easily. Almost every other industry in the web era has moved away from commoditization with independent shopping tools provided to simplify the search and shop experience. One of the few places where this has not happened is in books. But books are a simple product slap a SKU on it and away you go. Travel is by definition very complicated in addition to being one of the more expensive products purchased on an annual basis.

Where the OTAs and the GDSs - who have a symbiotic relationship as reflected in their joint industry body - ITSA - have systematically failed is to improve the quality of search for the consumer. So frankly their arguments about consumer value and protection are spurious. The financial incentive to keep the OTAs using the obsolete technology of the GDSs has made the OTAs fat dumb and very lazy. As Rich Barton - one of the co-founding team of Expedia put it - and I paraphrase - dont put your money is advertising, put it into technology. Well his alma mater (and mine) has not done that for the air search process. Nor have the others - Orbitz (owned 49% by Travelport) or Travelocity (owned 100% by Sabre). But that cozy relationship is about to be torn apart because Mr Big (aka Google) is going to blow everyone out the water with taking a better search tool (ITA's QPX engine) and at least comparable supply access to create as they say "a better customer experience".

So we are clear - Google will be able to bring a heck of a lot more expertise to the search process not to mention customer data to make that experience more generic. If you like Google can do a much better job at commoditization of the travel product that the GDSs and those that they power have done. However navigation and manipulation by the consumer will be so much better.

Note - I didn't say best here! I believe that there are others who have different solutions which may be better in part or in whole.

My synopsis therefore of the situation is that Travelport is fighting a rearguard action with AA and this is not a battle that they can easily win. Indeed they have to some extent admitted this by allowing Southwest to offer their products via the uAPI not via the GDS. IE acknowledging that not only is an airline not a commodity product but that their core mainframe technology does not support the proper search facility.

At no point in the above mentioned PR release does Travelport state that you can shop Southwest in an integrated display. So if I get this wrong ... please tell me and prove it with a display. Because then there is another issue...

So let's have some common sense here and learn to get along. The GDSs should be investing in better search and removing the financial "handcuffs" that they have placed on the Intermediary community. And yes - that does benefit my position. But its also more honest. Would you not say?

I suggest also reading the ITSA submission to the DoT here
And the Airlines Response here

Cheers