Slowing and Heading Down

Our friends over at CAPA have been pushing out interesting data of late.

Much of their analysis is pointing to a more restrained world - particularly in the USA. They have recently shone their light on the seeming split in the US market between the big 4 and the "others".

I strongly urge you to reach this article as it is a good analysis.

At this point - the oligopoly of the US market is pushing prices higher and higher while capacity is being withdrawn.

I just wonder what the cost is to the US economy of the freedom the airlines have in the market to raise prices with seeming impunity. And who seems to be leading the charge to higher rates these days? Yup - Southwest. They have initiated more price rises this year than any other airline.

Cheers

Amadeus and Open Systems - Really?

So Amadeus is trying to promote its credentials as an Open Systems company.

You might want to just take the test and see their answers to their own questions. The one that really caught my eye was this question.

"Which of the following companies regularly use and promote open systems?"

The options were clearly contrived and the answer - well Google of course. Except the definition of Google and its behaviour might challenge anyone's definitions of "Open".

Google has been a great opener for new systems by making things free that used to cost. At the time everyone was in wonder of this capability. Now some are starting to question that openness.

Given Amadeus's current thrust to become Google's preferred supplier of content for air fare products - this might just be a nice way for them to give a compliment to the Googleplex. Perhaps Amadeus is striving hard to become the other "A" in the AGFA empires.

Just a little food for thought on Sunday. 

Social Seating Why I Think Its Bad.

Over on Facebook (on my wall and privately) several people commented on my stated aversion to Social Seating. I have my tweets set to appear on FB which given the number of tweets I do corresponds to a fair amount of daily traffic. Thus on FB and on Twitter I had a fair number of people see the post/rant.

Here are some examples of the comments I received:

On the positive side:  Could not agree more!

On the negative side:
(Humour)The professor will get seated next to John Candy
(Professor) Unlikely …But if I do.... then does that mean I get Darryl Hannah as my girlfriend?

And then there was Angry. I won't identify him.

(Angry) I call bullshit on your stated opinion, Professor. Are you trying to tell me, that given a choice (and please forget about the technology and labels), you do not want the chance to NOT sit next to someone that will piss you off? For example when travelling for business, I do not want to sit next to a kid, someone who has kids, and old lady, a fat guy, or anyone who wants to talk to me. If I have to interact with someone, I would prefer that they had something interesting to say ... and the only way to predict and/or influence the possibility of my preference is to tell the airline what that preference is. Another way to look at it: if you could hang around with all the other passengers in the lounge for a while, and choose who to sit next to after meeting and chatting with them, would you not want to make a choice? It's what we naturally do in life every day.

(Professor) Dear Angry

So let me call you on that. The assumption is an arrogant one to make. The situation is that its fine for some people but not for me. So I am making it clear I dont want social seating. For it to work - there must be FULL opt in (not casual) HOWEVER normally I am required to opt in as part of a larger package which is the way most opt-ins are handled). If there is a personal relationship - sure... but then I know that already and if I want to I can use other tools (such as Tripit) for this. BUT to blithely assume that I want to (choose my seat mate either explicitly or implicitly) is a bridge too far. The complexity of just the interaction of what happens if you dont like the person or if that person LIES in their profile (yes they do...) is too much of a risk.
Now shall we go even further... what about the liability of the provider?

‎(You told me to ignore the technology and the other procedural issues so I have done).

Your argument that someone will piss you off works both ways. So that argument is also completely spurious.

(Angry) So ... you would rather have no input into who you sit next to?

(Professor) Bottom line - I am ABSOLUTELY fine with having no input on WHO I sit next to. What right do I have to ask for it and what are the attendant issues of it if I did? - Getting it wrong and having to live with the consequences would actually make me want to be mad at someone - likely culprit? Oh yes the airline. The chances are that the components of the decision making will result in poor choices at best, IE results with VERY few chances of success. Let me enumerate them for you. Your analogy of choosing the person as a natural act is well BS. I fly on LCCs a lot. So I COULD potentially choose who I want to sit next to on these flights. Do I want to? Have I ever? Has anyone else wanted to do that with me?

But let me continue…
The algorithm of matching people is likely to be poor until it works on very large numbers and will also be inconsistent based on the type of trip I am taking (Think Pandora).
The requestor and the requestee would have to give enough data for it to be meaningful far beyond what is in our profiles today.
The terms of reference would need to be clearly understood by all concerned.
The opt out complications would be hard to manage and most people would give up before agreeing to it.
We have to remember that this is just ONE of many elements that go into the decision making of the particular seat and flight. - FOR example I really want to sit next to a young attractive girl who will make out at the drop of a hat AND wants a window. So that means BOTH of us want a window. Which would be MORE important - the window or the young lady?
So frankly I dont think the obnoxious person who sits next to me (and of course the people who think I am obnoxious) really wants to be sat next to. The RISK REWARD equation is not in balance at all.

Let me also go back to the technology piece which I was not allowed to use in my argument. I think that does not represent much difficulty at all. But the procedural ones do.

The point above about the window is just one. I could go on with all the other choices that I could be making. For example I really want to sit next to Steve Jobs but his personal hygiene habits and food fads would piss me off on a 12 hour flight. So how would the airline "choose" between me and the other people who wanted to sit next to late departed head of Apple?

How about the roulette challenge? Single or multiple people on the same flight wanting to connect. Well that would be hard to make happen just due to the numbers involved. Currently for example there are 830 people  signed up for SeatID. Assuming each takes 10 trips a year then the chances of them intersecting on any given flight is
3.45833E-06

Not a huge number – even if all these people decided to do this and then SeatID was able to increate the number to let's say 10 million users of whom 10% actually wanted to do this AND flew 10 times a year. The chances are still so infinitesimal  (0.4%) that it makes no sense. Oh yes that is the chance that two people would actually BE on the same flight before ANY other consideration happened.

Today there appears to be several airlines who are offering this service in some shape or form. KLM, Malaysian, Estonian. Air Baltic.  One who actually does the opposite. (Air Asia X). There are several sites that attempt to offer this.

• Satisfly, http://www.satisfly.com
• SeatID http://www.seatid.com
• Facebelt http://www.facebelt.com
• socialseatmap http://www.socialseatmap.com
• Plainly http://www.planely.com/
• and even MakeMyTrip has had a stab at it with its trip along product https://www.tripalong.in/tripalong/landing/landing?utm_source=mmt&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=mmt_home_banner
• And of course let's not forget the dating site Miss trip http://www.misstrip.com

Even if you tool ALL these sites uniquely and tried to get them to give you the number of passengers – it would still be less than .1% of all flight trips.

I fly a great deal and I get resigned to being seated in coach in SBC (Screaming Baby Class). Knowing this and all the opportunities – would I go out of my way to find a solution to choose a seat mate? NO? I am decidedly not the target market. Even if I was – I would be looking at sleep and work as the more important factors along with location and convenience. All this WAY before I was interested in a seat mate choice. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093748/ even John Candy is an acceptable hazard.

Cheers

Dark Clouds and Hostage Data

Senior IT execs in the travel industry are starting to see dark clouds gather over  the always-on world of cloud computing, mobile apps and big data. Like Cereberus the three headed monster who guards the underworld there are three major threats that are beginning to rear their ugly heads to guard the gates to hell (or is it nirvana?):

·       Shifty Cloud Store Providers

·       Greedy Telcos

·       Data Hoarders

These threats need to be considered when moving travel technology infrastructure away from traditional service capabilities. So lets look at the situation piece by piece, assess the threats and then make smart decisions.

These Clouds don’t have Silver Linings

Part of the problem with cloud stores, which are still relatively new, are bad contracting, poor SLAs and vendors who have not done a good enough job on creating backup paths for the data and apps stored within the vendor’s cloud environment. Further, early cloud vendors have obviously been reading the GDS playbook and created contracts that make exit  or migration to another vendor very tough.

Are you hostage to your cloud computing vendor? The Washington Post's CIO Yuvinder (Yuvi) Kochar thinks you well could be and he is on a mission to get that changed. Three years ago, he spoke  with tech media site CIO Insight about the need for coherent price and license schemes for cloud services  http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Expert-Voices/Washington-Post-CTO-Yuvi-Kochar-Wants-Cloud-Vendors-to-Give-Him-an-Exit-Strategy-624540/?kc=CIOMINEPNL07112012  Now as the first few multi-year licenses have come up for renewal, Kochar raises concerns about ensuring open contract provisions are in place, which would help ease a migration from your current vendor to other vendors who may have new and innovative service provisions. We know that these provisions are a sore point for many a GDS user who has tried to ease the currently difficult migration from one vendor to another.

But that is not all, as many cloud users found to their dismay on the night of June 29th 2012, when a violent storm on the US east coast knocked out several large cloud providers. The cloud infrastructure, like any other hosted facility, can and will go down. But wasn't cloud computing supposed to be the end of all that risk, the panacea for users who were sick and tired of the vagaries of computing infrastructure?  So much for non-single point of failure.  http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57464342-71/modern-life-halted-as-netflix-pinterest-instagram-go-down/?utm_source=Room+77+Newsletter&utm_campaign=db60e7f0ba-Room_77_Outage_Update_6_30_20126_30_2012&utm_medium=email

Hotel newbie Room77 was one of the first to let their customers know about the problem. But this was a wake up call for all concerned that has sent users scrambling to look a their contracts and SLAs, because these contract and service provisions matter much more in a cloud environment.

Telecommunications Vendors as Robber Barons

Mobile users and BYOD (bring your own device) has generated a big swing to mobile (and by that I mean non fixed location) services. Just as everyone gets behind this – the users, the equipment manufacturers and the applications are all taking advantage of an unlimited wireless world. BUT there is that small matter of mobile data plans.

Consumers and business users alike are being besieged by greedy telcos who are  charging exorbitant rates for data roaming plans.  (Albeit this is subtle as most users have not seen the changes occur. The mobile providers change their contracts with such frequency that the users are truly confused and in the end most of them have not cared). This is caused by the twin problems of poor understanding by the user of their data plan pricing and very high levels of expectation set by – yes you guessed it – mobile telecommunications vendors. No TV commercial these days worth its salt will exclude the promise of steaming video to your mobile! How many of you have been stung by the problems of:

·       Slow mobile speeds

·       Blank data spots

·       High data plans costs

·       Usurious rates for international roaming

My point is clear – these are the real world and the promise from the mobile operators is far from realistic and of it can get course VERY expensive.

It's Mine (Data) and You Can't Have It!

The value of mining big data is seeing everyone  who is a data processor (and his mother) trying to get protective about the large volumes of data that passes through their infrastructure. In turn these data processors now think of their custodial duty no longer as just a cost but also as a money spinner for them

Data was once considered to be so difficult to mine that holders of data didn't mind sharing. Now that there are affordable and effective tools for manipulating big data, all of a sudden those controllers of data (note not the owners) are being really protective about access to  this data. They are hiding behind "privacy" and "security" concerns when what they really mean is that they want to get the commercial value from the data, and not give it to the ones who are smart enough to think of ways of using it. I don't want to belittle the issue of privacy and security concerns for personal data but there are very easy ways of managing those concerns.

As an example look at large scale data processors today who make considerable sums from the data they are processing. Imagine the chagrin of the GDS vendors who are about to see their current cash cows of MIDT contracts (the sale of travel agency behavior data back to the airlines) go out the window to newer smaller companies now able for far less cost can both capture and create useful information from this raw data.

So be warned out there. It looks like there is a new set of guardians on duty as a Gatekeeper. And we had all better take care. Be prepared to make the journey through the underworld to the blissful state of contentedness that the promises of Big Data and Cloud Computing should be taking us to. And that nasty looking puppy just might prevent you from getting there.

Cheers

Why Technology Writers are ALL Wrong About the Blackberry.

The Professor's 8 Point Product Enhancement Programme

I have been a Crackberry Addict for a very long time. I have written before that there are some fundamental issues that make the iPhone at best a toy and at worst a boat anchor. PLEASE Blackberry do not make the same mistake that Symbian made. Trying to do too much. In the end that was what killed Symbian. The venerable Psion Organizer was arguably the progenitor of the mobile hand held device. I only used the Psion 3 but it was a NEAT device and worked very well. The Blackberry replaced it because of its communication capability.

Don’t get me wrong I love the flashy platform  and apps (with all its quirks) that are on the iPhone. I have access to two of these devices but cannot break the chain with regard using my Blackberry as a professional device. So this is neither an "Homage" to the crack berry nor is it a funeral pyre homily .  Yes Blackberry has stumbled badly with an arrogance befitting a certain WW1 Austrian Corporal. This happens in organizations. It has definitely happened to Nokia and looks like it is also happening to Microsoft.

So lets start with the functionality. The value of a Blackberry is and always will be that of a communications device. It does email and text based communication better than any other device. It is an all round machine for communication. It took them a while to get the camera right but it works faster and more accurately than any other device out there. Making it great for the normal EMAIL and Social Media interactions. It also has the right business model for consumers. IE those of us who have to pay for our comms welcome the way in which the Blackberry model works for email NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE. The choice is yours.

It prevents some of the more stupid mistakes that iPhones and Android devices have.
I have an Android phone and I am far from happy with it. I have tried many different Android machines (I am on my 3rd generation of the device). I find it confusing at best and darn right annoying. Google seems to be quite happy to let us figure things out for ourselves. Lord knows how regular folk deal with the crappy UX. On the other extreme is iPhone. Yes its St Steve's way or no way. Even if it is inconsistent and darn right annoying… the faithful eat it up. I keep looking at the iPhone and wondering where the cool aid outlet is.

So lets try and see what Blackberry could do to redeem themselves.

Here are a few quick and EASY FIXES.

1. Dump QNX. You are not ready for it. Its too hard to get it to work in the small device.
2. Make the GPS free. Heck you are not paying for it anyway
3. Keep the keyboard. The soft and hard variety. The Torch 2 is probably the best communication tool that ever existed. Just keep making it better
4. Fix that AWFUL browser. Adopt something like Opera but please do a better job than what you have now
5. Create a new function that lets you soft migrate from public data nets to local data nets. This would be a world beater and bring loads of people running to your door. (The telcos would be none too happy but what the heck they are no friends to you either)
6. Enable a multi-sim capability. Again a world beater that is really required for many especially in APAC where swapping SIM cards is a way of life.
7. Absorb in to the basic OS – FB, Twitter and other such services available in each country. AND allow messaging to go out to multiple Social Nets at the same time. If you can't just join them smother them!!!
8. Demolish the App store and make it free. Developers can pay for a "verified by RIM" service.

Yup that's it. A world dominating product.

Please pay attention.

Thanks

IATA Wakes Up To Benefits Of Distribution

In Beijing last week, at IATA's AGM the announcement of its NDC (New Distribution Capability – see press release here) initiative does seem to hint at fabulous things to come but before we all get carried away, it’s time to consider at least some of the major implications of IATA making this move.

The tablet toting Tony Tyler, IATA’s General Director and CEO, has thought about this problem but probably not spent much time looking at the implications of the revenue bucket system; he described the GDSs as 1970s technology. In reality it’s from the 1950s. I recall a major carrier's CIO lamenting that IT's biggest problem is that there were only 23 usable letters in the Latin alphabet for airlines to use. We have a really arcane system of revenue management that makes no sense to man nor beast, except for one thing - it is designed to obfuscate the price.

Today's connected and social world makes the principle of obfuscation less attractive, something the legacy carriers have yet to cotton onto. Their efforts to do away with it have been met with derision and failure but perhaps now is the time to rethink everything. The core architecture of PSSs and GDSs have changed little in many, many years. The elements of one way messaging and handling were models of efficiency in the 1950s. Today with anywhere/anytime/always on, this doesn't hold true. Other factors are more relevant. Consumers are fatigued at being gamed by the systems. They trust little and engage in practices that are a direct result of the lack of trust engendered by the airlines and their games. Why else would the average consumer search 22 sites (US figures), which is increasing? Each monetisable transaction for an airline is at the incredible 1,000+ interactions (and rising). This is hardly the model for efficiency or value to either end of the chain but a cash cow to the infrastructure in the middle.

While the airlines must accept their obfuscatory principles as the core of the problem, their chosen instruments of implementation – namely PSSs and GDSs - have become the gatekeepers of the arcane model, as evidenced in their resistance to change by their contracts to airlines and intermediaries alike.  IATA is to be applauded for taking a stand for change. Tony Tyler is definitely singing a different tune from his brash Italian predecessor. The message in his speech is one of "partnerships" rather than confrontation.

But the problem remains. His wish for the GDS’ to join with the airlines in making this progress flies in the face of their cash-cow business model. Amadeus's company reports recently have started to hide the yield they get from both airlines’ IT and the GDS. Surprisingly the former is generating more profit yield than the latter. However any business that is making profits in excess of 40% when the stakeholders are struggling with a 7% target they have never achieved smacks of advantaged position, which the Spanish Company's shareholders love but customers, and ultimately consumers, hate.

A further challenge exists in that the processes of IATA are themselves arcane and not suited to the speed of business as in other sectors of the economy. It was against this backdrop that the US airlines founded Open Axis. (www.openaxisgroup.org), nominally designed to focus on driving faster change and adoption of airline-specific messages in the travel community. The OpenTravel Alliance (www.opentravel.org ), the broader industry W3C body was considered not attractive enough for the airlines. However, while the two organizations have grown closer together in recent months, IATA's move to take over the standards brings a third party to the game might be a spoiler. Don’t get me wrong – I am a huge supporter of standards. But this process of trying to get the GDSs into the tent has failed before and will fail again. In my view unless the airlines put muscle behind the commercial model the effort to bring about change in standards will be window dressing.

Not all parties are waiting for this new initiative. Privately many airlines feel this is a total waste of time. A few big airlines believe that they can exert control over the GDS’. Singularly they cannot and collectively they have proved to be incapable of working together There is palpable fear that the GDSs can and will cause the fragile airlines’ bottom lines damage unless the airlines play nice with the GDSs. What is missing from this debate is that the consumer doesn't care. He cannot understand why this complexity exists. He laments the lack of transparency.

What is likely to happen? The new standards groups will indeed get formed soon. And will take years (note the plural use of the word) to bring about any standard that is ratified and even more years before they are adopted/implemented. By this time the subculture of disrupters funded by venture capital will move aggressively to undermine these efforts. Airlines will lose their initiative (more accurately fail to regain initiative) and will have to find new players to blame.

The GDSs are slowly sinking. Mr Tyler's numbers he presented in his speech are off. Our analysis indicates that GDS distribution for ALL airlines is now around 40%. He claims 60% for the IATA members. If that is not a telling statistic then I don't know what is! Both Open Axis and OpenTravel will happily continue their cooperation with new tools that will result in the technology community moving ahead (and faster) without the ponderous IATA committee system.

The longer it takes to get change in place the fatter the GDSs’ bank accounts will become and the poorer the legacy carriers will be as a direct result. If IATA doesn't see that and make a radical change in how they approach the problem (particularly the commercial model), then I for one will be a naysayer in this effort. I do hope for the industry's sake that I am wrong. At least one GDS has developed a scenario that allows for the collapse of the GDS model in favor of their PSS charging model. And they like what they see. Let's hope the airlines wake up and see the issues for what they are.

US Airways... Are You Insane?

OK so let me see if I can get this right. I am an airline who is in trouble because my costs are too high. Costs are too high for many reasons such as from bad contracts, bloated staffing etc etc.

 I enter bankruptcy to correct this situation.

My largest cost base doesn't want me to cut his benefits and staffing levels. (Understandable on all sides).

An external suitor who still hasn't got his house (like sorting pilot seniority lists) in order, makes deal to keep said cost levels high. (At the same time screwing his own unions).

Did I miss something?

Just for clarification - I don't doubt the sincerity of all concerned. It just seems to be illogical. 

Cheers










(Picture taken from AA 757 over Lake Michigan)

Glass Ceilings, Women in Travel and Agism

I have been thinking about the way our industry is constituted - gender and age wise - and I am noticing something that should start to both worry and encourage me.

The trend is the composition of the personnel in distribution. A field I know pretty well.

Legacy distribution is populated by a pretty diverse group as one would expect for a mature business. I always felt it was a very good thing that the Distribution business had a good representation of diversity. Particularly in the male/female split. But one that didn't apply to the agism issue. There was never a real encouragement of young people into the fold.

With the emergence of the web and e-commerce particularly in Travel, it was good to see innovation coming from younger people with little or no historical connection to the traditional distribution businesses.

However the downside was that the number of females who emerged from this group was few and far between. Yes, there are good examples of women entrepeneurs who have made their mark but I am speaking in generalities.

One of the leading proponents of expanding our diversity in Travel and the web is Siew Hoon. And here she goes again. Next week she will have a conference dedicated to Women in Travel.

WITX Women+in+Travel

Sadly I cant attend but with an all star female cast - this will be a notable event.

Now if she could only do something for old folks maybe she could include the old Professor!

Cheers
 

OTA transactions shoot up in January

After experiencing a constant under-performance for all of 2011 - the OTA market in the USA came alive in January 2012.

As post Christmas blues were banished with excitement for the summer and already seeing tightening of supply, consumers shopped till the dropped ONLINE for airline tickets.

However given that discounts are going to be few and far between for the summer months as the impact of the United merger and the general tightening of supply becomes more apparent, the likelihood is that this is an aberration not a trend.

I could of course be wrong - but I doubt it.

Agree with me?

Only time will tell for sure

Cheers

The End of GDS Isolation. New Era of Openness?

Maybe its just me but I note a distinct change in the GDS rhetoric of late. And this is good for everyone.

The latest moves by the Legacy GDS players follows years of isolation by each of the GDSs who had developed different protocols for each user interaction from the basic IBM TPF/ALC command set. There has been a lot of prior art involved in the GDS interaction commands. I believe there is even a patent or two out there concerning how interaction with the GDS takes place. In 1988 I led a team that developed PARS Manager an application that allowed screen highlighting it was originally developed for any GDS but was implemented for PARS. IBM’s PC Travel was actually a neutral application with different command sets for each airline and GDS. PC Travel was replaced by ACSA (here is a reference to it http://www-01.ibm.com/software/htp/tpf/news/archive/v6n2a08.htm )

So this is not new. What is new is that the GDSs themselves are now promoting their “Open”ness. The GDSs are coming into the market joining LUTE’s CommandPRO (sm) in offering flexible command sets inbound any host direct or indirect based on Farelogix’s Hawkeye Opensource licensed product.

First up is Tripcase from Sabre http://www.tripcase.com/travelsmarter/. This will take in ANY itinerary object in the same way as Tripit and others already do. Sabre is promoting this and has already signed several agents to work with this. At the Travel Technolog Europe/Business Travel joint shows in London HRG revealed that they were a customer of Tripcase. Over on the other side of the hall, Travelport was not to be outdone. It was out there calling a spade a spade. Damn the torpedoes full speed ahead. The Smartpoint App now offers any GDS input talking to the Travelport Hosts. http://www.travelportsmartpointapp.com/ An yes.. they still have 3 of their own that need to be spoken to. These are Worldspan, Apollo (US) and Galileo (Rest of the World).

So far no word from Amadeus but Amadeus One could easily be adapted with a neutral set of command inputs.

Perhaps we should have Kirk and Spock as the spokepersons for these new apps . I think we can have the universal desktop/api - er I mean - communicator!

Let’s hope that this results in a better service for agents and thereby a better service for the consumer at large?

Am I optimistic? I dont think actually that this will happen. It takes a VERY LONG TIME for a Leopard to change his spots.

Cheers

The Professor's 2012 Wish List

OK so you have had my predictions and my Grinch list. I have even done my top 10 secular holiday season songs. 

Now what would I REALLY like to see happen in 2012? I have reached into my file of things that I really want to change. I want to solve world peace but don't have the time or the temerity to deal with this. But I do have a few ideas. So here is my list of changes I want to see implemented in 2012.

1. The Cookie Tax – the ultimate solution to equitable wealth redistribution. Facebook, Google and Apple (as well as just about everyone else) get hit with a Cookie tax. For every cookie loaded the cookie placer has to pay a tax of 5 cents per cookie. The Cookie tax can be avoided if the provider gets a cookie free certificate. This would certify that the company does not use Cookies.
2. Ending Abuse of Surveys. Survey Monkey (and all survey questions) comes with a university or college degree in how to ask questions. No one can use Survey Monkey without a degree in Applied Research or Statistics. Websites are allowed to ask one survey a year. If they want to do more they have to pay their users $10 per survey completed.
3.  A “Do Not Abuse My Data” Registry. This enables you as a consumer to register the company that you do not want them to control or use your data in any way other than for the company itself you signed up with. IE no advertisers can share or use the data. Also the registry will tell you HOW you can see all the data that any company has on you. All breaches are punishable by death or $1 billion per instance whichever is less convenient for the company concerned.
4. A control spam application. This is a freely available app that lets me choose who sends things to my email. Anyone caught abusing this is liable for a life time of being hung upside down from the Space Needle in Seattle.
5. Fixed price mobile phone service. No advertising – a public utility service – that can be provided by any player with no long distance changes, no caps on data and no caps on text or call minutes. All for less than $50 per month. A surcharge of $20 per month for international roaming.
6. Guaranteed QoS service mark that can be appended to any online or offline service. If the QoS metrics are breeched then the provider has to refund any service fees attached to it. For example if you have to pay for a bag and it arrives damaged or late you pay a fine.
7. The Guaranteed Service bundle. Every provider of a service is required to offer a full bundled service offering (as well as the unbundled pricing). For example an airline would be required to offer a bundled fare not to exceed the lowest fare by 50% which allows me to select a seat (other than middle ones please) check a bag and get from A to B without paying anything else.
8. Revised Do Not Call Registry. A true “Do not call”  registry that includes – “thanking me for my service”, political ads, robo calls of any time, charitable causes and annoying neighbours who are bored. As part of this service the true name and contact details for the person calling you will be displayed or available after the call to you.
9. The anti Bovine Law. Regulation that says any airline that exceeds 80% load factor must provide extra flights until the numbers reach 80% again. Same for hotels etc etc.
10.  A new Bill of Rights. A new United Nations citizen charter of rights. This includes banning of all lies by politicians. A pain tax – however much pain is inflicted by the politicians on their electorate they have to pay out of their own pocket this includes banning all influence peddling. Enforcing existing anti-competitive regulations etc etc. … there are many more like this!

With that I wish you an excellent 2012. If you like this spread the word and share with your friends (and enemies alike). Send to your favourite politician. There are a few others I would like to see. Like breaking up of Google but that will keep for another day.

Peace, Love and Understanding

Cheers

The Professor.