Your mobile site, via Google
January 14, 2006
Google has added another weapon to its mobile artillery: a site which will simplify any other website for your mobile viewing pleasure.
Just key in the URL and it fires up a perfect (as far as I can see) mobile and pda-friendly version, with or without images.
Spotted on Digg.
Discount travel for bloggers
January 13, 2006
In his post prophesying imminent disruption to the PR industry, Silicon Valley Watcher Tom Foremski predicts the decline in many traditional PR practices.
At some point companies will realize that the ROI on being mentioned in a story in the Wall Street Journal or New York Times, or in trade publications, makes little difference to their bottom line. Press coverage might boost the egos of company senior executives but it doesn’t do much for overall sales.
Tom, some companies have got there already.
As I just commented on Morgan McLintic’s blog, a travel CEO recently told me:
“We used to kill for a feature about one of our trips in the Times. But we’ve looked at the results, done our sums and now it’s not worth much more than a classified ad”
In fact in many cases, it is worth a good deal less.
In the travel PR business, a decent feature in the Times or any national paper, often comes about as a result of a press trip, either solo or in a group.
Now even if an airline supplies the seats (increasingly rare) and a hotel provides the rooms and transfers, you still have to factor in the PR cost of arranging the trip.
Maybe even accompanying the trip (I have been on trips accompanied by no fewer than two PR shepherdesses whose job it was to make sure we didn’t get left behind or insult the hotel manager).
That’s when press trips start to make no financial sense at all.
So the answer is to take out a classified ad instead? No, it is to add social media to the game plan and to raise your profile on the internet (where a large percentage of your target customers have shifted their attention and are currently scanning the search results for vacations just like yours).
And the PR agency which can help you do that will triumph in a pitch against the PR agency who still barely knows how to use email.
It’s not hard for me to predict discounted travel for bloggers will feature in 2006.
It’s already on my agenda for a meeting next Tuesday.
Technorati Tags: travel, blogs, blogging, travelpr, media, press
Two new clients
January 13, 2006
January is not such a bad month. Really.
Glad to say I am providing consulting services to two new clients this month:
Discover the World - a great specialist tour operator
and
VisitScotland - the national tourist organisation
Technorati Tags: travelpr, travel, blogs, blogconsulting
My blog’s got a voice (and it’s not mine)
January 12, 2006
I just couldn’t resist - though I had a feeling the results would be pretty horrible.
Feed2Podcast provides a quick way to turn your blog into a broadcast.
Log in, supply your RSS feed and Feed2Podcast turns it into an audio file.
Like I say, I couldn’t resist. You’ll find the logos - for play now or play the podcast later - on the sidebar.
But I’ll bet you can’t bear to listen for more than forty seconds.
Help. Where did my dulcet Scottish tones go?
And what is Stephen Hawking doing reading out my blog?
Technorati Tags: feed2podcast, blog, blogging, rss, podcast
Enplaned: aero-blogger takes off
January 12, 2006
Discovered via Joel on Software, via TailRank, via Scoble (this is beginning to sound like an Oscar speech - “I’d like to thank my agent, my mother…)
Enplaned launched mid-November, intent on bringing the world of airlines and commercial aerospace to the blogosphere.
It got into its stride very quickly and is partiuclarly well written.
For example, take this post about Ryanair’s strife at Dublin (O’Leary Climbs Down):
One of Ryanair’s strategies is to beat up airports. It threatens to take traffic away from airports that raise fees or otherwise displease Ryanair. This works with small airports where Ryanair may be the only airline bringing traffic to that airport…
But it’s a totally different story at the big airports. Like it or not, there is only one Dublin, there is only one London, and the number of airports that serve cities like this is finite. In the case of Dublin there’s only one airport.
And IdleWild, the author, has a great line about Ryanair’s CEO:
Michael O’Leary is never one to use honey when he could use vinegar
No blogger ever spoke a truer word.
Mobile blog feeds
January 11, 2006
You thought we were about to enter the Year of the Dog. Well yes, but it’s also the Year of Mobile Applications (in the case of at least one of my dogs these are mutually exclusive concepts).
To that end, I have taken on board the barbed criticisms of the hyper-mobile around the blogosphere and forged a take-it-anywhere feed for this blog.
It’s over there on the sidebar. As with every other techie endeavor on this site, it is really just another excuse to see what works and what doesn’t.
LastMinute and its blogs
January 11, 2006
Loic le Meur just mentioned that LastMinute.com has launched its TypePad driven blog product, rather grandly entitled Lastminuteliving.com: the blogging community
“Soon to be available in five languages,” says Loic.
Let’s hope the other four have something more inspiring than the current UK offering.
OK, cheap shot. I didn’t mean it. Welcome to the blogosphere.
Shame though, LastMinute feels the need to talk to us all as though they were trying to lure yoofs away from MySpace.
Here for example they exhort us to share the glories of our photographic collections :
all your snaps can be on your blog so all your firends (sic) can see what you have
been up to. Are you sure you wanna do that?
I dunno. Do I wanna? I dunno. Do you wanna?
I just flicked through a handful of member blogs (that’s a thought: do we have a collective noun for blogs?).
One which caught my eye was called Lastminute Critic.
It begins with a cryptic post:
I can’t help but wonder if Lastminute actually understands blogs, and if they
will try to delete this one. We’ll see
Yes, we will.
But first we will also see if you manage more than one post.
Technorati Tags: lastminute, loic, blogs, Typepad, blogging, pr
Tweaking TypePad
January 10, 2006
Another day, another design.
I am not trying to put proper web designers out of a job.
In fact the main reason I play with this blog’s design so much is so that I can have a better grasp of the issues when I commission work for more serious projects.
Hope you like it.
I would say tell me if you do - but the comment preview page is still behaving oddly.
I have posted a help ticket.
Update: It seems I am out of luck. According to TypePad:
Right now, the comment preview/error page is just a standard format for all users. We are aware that this standard format doesn’t look the best in all Advanced designs, and our team is working to make adjustments on this. At this time, we don’t have a template in our Advanced Template sets to allow Advanced Template users to configure this page.
Oh dear. They suggest I could try and use a CSS hack to improve the previews appearance but at the moment it looks a mess. Sorry.
Online travel magazine
January 9, 2006
When I visited World Travel Market at the end of last year, along with the usual tour operator detritus, I picked up a copy of Travolution, the new on-and offline magazine from the publishers of Travel Weekly.
It is a handy read for anyone interested in the online travel business though their blog, which got off to a promising start seems to have stuttered over the last couple of weeks.
This evening I read a piece by Simon Powell called “Online growth driven by people power” in which he is enthusiastic about the state of online travel.
No shock there. I first met Simon in the late 90’s when Comtec was just a two, maybe three, man band polling late deals from the UK’s top 20 tour operators and packaging them to sell through third party sites. His service was just what we needed (at that time) for Expedia UK and a deal was done.
Now Comtec is the leading supplier of online travel distribution services in the UK.
The quote I particularly wanted to preserve, as much for my own records as anything, resulted from a recent research by Amadeus (who now own 20% of Comtec). Simon says:
Travel companies now compete in a marketplace where the online channel is the most important information source for consumers when planning and booking trips for pleasure. More than double the number of consumers browse for information and advice on travel agent and tourism sites compared with those who contact an agent (59% compared to 24% for their last leisure trip).
Nothing new there. Just another nail in the coffin of the offline travel agent.
Technorati Tags: onlinetravel, travel, travelpr, comtec, travolution
Mid-air movies
January 6, 2006
Do airlines have rules about what sort of movies you can watch on your laptop at 30,000 feet?
Sure the choose their in-flight offering with care - I don’t remember ever watching an airline disaster movies from seat 15K.
But is there anything to stop you watching something which just might scare or worry the woman next door if you happen to have downloaded it onto you personal laptop?
This occurred to me as I read a piece in Wired News. They say San Francisco International Airport plans to sell movie and tv wi-fi downloads to passengers to watch at the airport and, eventually in-flight.
“The hope is (to launch in) the first half of 2006 but it is more likely to be the summer/fall time frame,” said John Payne, the airport’s chief information officer.
The service will be much like watching TV at home, Payne said. There will be a wide range of TV channels available for full-screen viewing, and viewers will be able to pause and rewind shows — just like with a digital video recorder.
The big stumbling block is currently the fact they haven’t sort out the licensing deals from the tv companies.
Perhaps they will consider a new rating: “suitable for viewing on a 747″.
Travel feeds for your photo frame
January 6, 2006
A couple of days ago, Niall Kennedy told us about a new digital photo frame with built-in wifi and which takes RSS feeds.
Can you imagine an upscale travel company offering a branded version for sale to its most most passionate customers?
A safari camp could send through daily pictures from the waterhole. An adventure cruise company could post changing photos from the Galapagos.
Something for your customer evangelists to show their friends.
Technorati Tags: travel, travelpr, photos, feeds, rss, customerevangelists
Hands off my sickbag
January 6, 2006
Best blog read of the morning goes to the ParentHacks site for its suggestions on how to keep your kids happy on a flight:
Make hand puppets out of airplane sick bags
Absolutely. I just love the idea of small children running round the airplane recreating Bart and Homer out of everybody’s sick bag.
And then, of course, you hit a 15 minute pocket of turbulence…
(but keep an extra for its intended use, just in case)
Sure. Right. Has anyone ever see an extra sick bag in front of them?
Thanks to no-frills services we may not see them at all and you’ll have to pack your own.