Thursday, January 03, 2008

Happy 2008!!!!

The year is already off to a good start based on a very successful Christmas Holiday. I received all the presents I could have hoped for, and was off from work for the entire Christmas week. I didn't gained any weight, mostly because I had a cold for the first few days I was off. I finally got to play golf and found myself quite rusty rounding out 18 holes at a shameful 108.

The family trips were uneventful and everyone got here when they were supposed to. On the way home, however, American Airlines once again disappointed and left my parents stranded for 8 hours with a broken down plane resulting in a transfer of airports from Ft. Lauderdale to Miami via taxi. $104 complements of AA.

The family visit was just wonderful enough that now my sister and brother-in-law are frantically looking for jobs in the Jacksonville area as they cannot wait to come enjoy the great weather and cheap housing opportunities that the Jax market has to offer.

On the Web front, 2008 has been declared the year for online marketing by the President of Forbes.com. Here is the excerpt:

NAME: Jim Spanfeller
TITLE: President and CEO, Forbes.com
2008 PREDICTION: If history looks back at 2007 as the tipping point for interactive media and the ad dollars that have migrated to the Web, pushing it to a position of prominence as a central media platform for advertisers, 2008 will be the year of the Interactive Marketer. CMOs now get the Web and have personal experience around its ability to power their brands, activate their customers and fuel their data analysis and marketing allocation optimization. The Web is still only at the beginning of its evolution and will remain a source of media innovation for some time, but the focus going forward will be less about the media and more about the marketer. The digitization of media will continue to disrupt the traditional media model and we will see more “late to the party” web acquisition and initiatives from major media players. From this perspective, 2008 will be a make or break year for companies like Time Warner and many of the major newspaper companies in the country.

The bottom line is that if all goes as plan I too shall benefit from the Web in 2008. Hope you have a healthy and wealthy 2008. May your worst day in 2008 be your best day of 2007. Stay Tuned...

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Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Travel Sites

With the holidays soon approaching, it seems I'm getting a lot of calls from relatives and friends about booking trips. Of course, these all comes about because of our recent relocation to sunny Florida.

I typically turn to the usual suspects when it comes to researching flights and tickets, Expedia and Travelocity. These sites are designed to be easy to use and with the user in mind. Their designs and architecture are always improving. The most recent of updates is the ability to quickly search nearby airports to the destination or departure cities.

A new travel search engine is, however, on the rise. Kayak.com is designed to allow the user to not only get the cheapest tickets, but to run comparison of nearby airports. The site also allows you to use its interface to compare prices on Expedia, Travelocity and Hotwire, all with the click of a three checkboxes. The site also remembers your previous searches in order to save time on future searches. As you type in the city or airport code in the search boxes, a drop down similar to that of the Google toolbar comes up to aid you in locating your departure or destination cities.

Kayak is also designed to present a very user friendly results page which quickly allows you to select if you prefer nonstop, one stop, or two stops flights. As well, you can narrow down via flight times and price.

The bottom line is that I can now understand why Kayak.com is such an up and coming site, after all they have now achieve an Alexa ranking of 1782. Competition promotes better features and alternatives, while providing the best prices for consumers. Kayak.com is also a great example of conveniences presented to users. It is amazing what great design and information architecture can do for a site. Expedia (Alexa of 542) and Travelocity (Alexa of 781), better get up to speed on the technology back end or they will loose their placing among the travel sites.

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Monday, June 04, 2007

Why I hate American Airlines

A while back I wrote about my frustrations with American Airlines when the plane I was traveling in caught on fire.

I just received an email that truly is enraging. I was kindly notified that there is a change of a policy change in the way miles are now awarded and also that they will begin to expired within 18 months unless there is activity in my AAdvantage Card.

Since the fire incident I decided that I will not travel with American. About a month after the November 2006 fire incident, my cousin was in route to Miami, FL and her place was forced into an emergency landing as the pilot's windshield cracked open.

Recently, my boss was flying back from Chicago to CT and the right side engine in his place exploded during take off and they were lucky to be able to have a very skilled pilot to safely turn the jet around and land the plane.

It appears to me that this airline is simply bankrupt and they are making further cutbacks with the mileage program. American Airlines should apply this savings to new planes as obviously their planes are simply too old and are falling apart.

The bottom line is that if American Airlines truly wants to retain their customers they should be offering enhancements instead of announcing cutbacks. I have enough miles for several plane tickets and would rather see them go in the trash than to flight this defunct airlines. I recently had the joy of experiencing Jet Blue and let me tell you this folks, regardless of their past delay experiences during the spring ice storms in NY, have customer service down!!! I heard you can use miles to buy goods, but all I keep seeing is how to earn more miles, has anyone a clue as how I can rid myself of this miles and trade them in for some useful goods?

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