Years ago someone had the great idea to let people pick they’re destination, price and dates on their own. Remeber how it used to be? You had to go to a travel agent and spend some time making decisions on best price and dates for your trip. And the price advertise wasn’t necessarily available. And maybe there were no tickets for those dates.
It was faster, though. You took less time to decide unless you went price shopping, in which case it would have been extremely time consuming.
Now you can check prices online, pick your airline, hotel, date, room, you name it. You can even tell this sites that you’re flexible on dates and they will offer your alternative pricing. Plus you can track certain packages and be notified when the price drops.
Super crazy competition. The consumer (or user) has the power… kind of.
So it was a big boom back then, but now not much has changed. While a lot of other online services keep getting better (interfaces, new social features, richer content) the travel booking sites got stuck.
The Travel industry is not the most forward thinking. This boom they had in the early 2000 (or late 90′s) was because of Expedia and all those crazy big guys who made the push. But it didn’t came from the travel industry, it came from the technology industry which found a hole there. The travel industry had to catch up.
Now no one seems to be interested in it anymore. It seems.
Forms are lengthy and annoying. Difficult to fill, no Ajax, no helpful hints or things to make your life easier. Forms are long and the process is tedious. Most of them have redundant fields (you get asked the same thing more than once). The search results themselves are nothing to call home about.
All this takes me to the most important stuff which is where this industry fails: customer service.
They are horrible! They can disguise their sites with bells and whistles, but that will never change. The whole travel industry is, and has always been, a mess. They have fees for every single extra feature you would like, and they will charge you for every single change you ask for after you booked something. They will never ever waive anything, and they lay the law as if they were God.
On top of that, travelling is uncomfortable, most flight attendants now a days are rude and airplane food (if you get any) sucks. So until you get to where you have to go, you won’t enjoy yourself. And sometimes, even when you get there, the reservation was wrong or you never got there in the first place because the flight was cancelled.
When any of these set-backs occur, the travel industry does the least possible, or worse, they get defensive.
How can you run a business treating people like that?
Well, you can’t. That’s why most Airlines and Carriers are almost broke and this industry is so fragile. They blame it on the economy, rising gas prices, etc… But the fact of the matter is that people only travel when they really need it because the “travel” process is not exactly a great experience.
I haven’t seen it, but I have to say I can’t get past the Jar Jar Binks aliens. On top of that, everyone says there is no story, it’s just a special effects trip.
And the cost? Rumours claim it ranges from 300 mil to 500 mil (NY Times which seems to think story is original)!? But they did get their money back because they’re making a ton of money. You can’t get a sit in an Imax to watch it around here.
Anyway, the other day I watched The Hurt Locker. A tense war movie about an elite Army bomb squad. I been wanting to watch it for a while but I couldn’t watch it on the cinema because I can rarely go there with my crazy family life.
It all happens in Iraq, of course. If Iraq would get royalties on all the movies that get done over there lately, they’ll be rich (Although maybe they are rich over there already, with all the petrol they have. It’s just the money doesn’t get on the hands of the poor, I guess.). But back to the movie. The story is really well written with some new fresh awesome talent (except for some small cameos). It’s beautifully shot and well directed and It probably costs 1/100 of what Avatar did.
Funnily enough, while I was watching it I was thinking to myself what a guy’s movie it was.
And then I learnt it was directed by a woman. And not only a woman but Kathryn Bigalow, who’s James Cameron’s ex-wife (Yes, that’s why I was comparing these two. I know it makes no sense comparing War movies with Sci Fi). I have to say, I’ve watched a couple of movies from her before but I never saw anything this good.
On the other hand, James Cameron just spent some ridiculous amount of money on a movie which is, mostly, computer generated. And in a couple of years it will be remembered as some shitty movie with great special effects, just like Titanic.
And I tell you, I’m a fan of Terminator (1) and Aliens, but the more money this guy gets, the worse his movies are.
Even more interesting is that they’re both running for the Oscars. But it’s interesting that Cameron’s Avatar won Best Drama on the Golden Globes (USA today calls it a Sci-Fi soap opera) while Bigelow’s Hurt Locker won Best Film.
(She’s not only smarter, she’s also prettier than him).
This is one of the coolest things from CES. An RCA battery charger which uses WiFi signals to charge batteries!! It’s called the Airnergy and hope it lands somewhere near me soon. They’re planning on building this technology (in the future) into batteries so you don’t have to charge, or you rarely have to, at least.
This doesn’t surprise me. It’s the reason I don’t buy Macs or iPhones. I love their software but hate their hardware. Not only they tie you in with their “you’re not getting a battery replaceable phone/ipod” bs, but their hardware has major issues too. I would have to admit this is mostly on the computer side, not the mobile one.
Anyway, this is just iMac issues. I would like to know what the MacBook ones are. Half of the people I know how have Macs have had one issue or another. Spots on the screen, dead power supplies, problems with the motherboard, you name it.
Number one: Music – CDs and any other weird survivor like Vinyl.
There’s still people showing up at HMV stores, god knows why. New generations don’t know what the hell a CD is. I can’t see this getting through this decade. Maybe we’ll see some special stores to sell Beatles albums (in case you didn’t know, the Beatles music cannot be bought online… at least not legally) , but other than that I don’t know.
BTW, Beatles music not being sold online, not a good idea. When this kind of industry dodges innovation piracy moves into the neighbourhood. They did come up with this, which costs more than going to Amazon and buying the whole Beatles collection on CD (with pretty covers and everything). So this is just for crazy collectors.
I wonder if some financial advisor sat down with them and told them how much money they are loosing on pirated downloads. Do they really think that because their content is not online people are going to go to the HMV (which is 5 blocks away) and pay $24 for a CD? I wonder if the young generation even gives a damn about the Beatles. Maybe that’s why they don’t do downloads. Maybe their customers are between 30-90 year-olds and this people still buy CDs. I don’t know.
Number two: Movies and TV – DVDs and their daddy, (if you can still find him anywhere) the VHS.
This industry doesn’t get it. They really don’t. They are doing the EXACT thing the Music industry was doing. Well, not as bad, really, because they are bringing some content online, but they’re approaching it at a slow pace. They’re all scared, that’s why. They don’t know what the impact would be and they are going to wait until people start using everything online or they start ripping-off so much content that they will have no choice.
If it’s convenient people will pay. If you try to screw the consumer and make them pay for stuff they don’t want, you will suffer (like TV will or is).
Hopefully Hulu will take care of this. Now if you’re in Canada, thanks to all the protectionist laws which protect the companies which are buddies with the PM, we’re still going to get screwed for quite some time.
As for Optical media, I can foresee the end of that one. Who the heck buys CDs and DVDs anymore? Why is Blockbuster suffering so much? Online streaming, TV boxes which get you movies on demand… who had the great idea of BluRay? That is one technology that is trying hard to make it to people’s houses. Some few people have this massive players and now they connect to Netflix or YouTube. They don’t know how else to get people to buy that piece of junk of a format. But it’s going to die before it can even get any attention.
The BBC iPlayer offers HD movies. Hulu does some HD content. Maybe not 720 p, but at least 480p. Vimeo does HD. YouTube does HD. Cable and Satellite digital TV (free and paid) do HD movies on demand… so who the heck wants to buy a Blu-Ray player?
It’s funny because a couple of years ago, Blu-Ray titles had this bold price. It was more expensive than getting a DVD. Now you see the new ones for the same price as a DVD. The ones on sale go for $5 or $7 sometimes. The other day I saw a lot of different brands on sale and although it’s the end of the year, so it’s kind of normal, there still was too much on sale.
Number three: Books, Magazines and Newspapers… maybe.
Books are a tricky one. They are still convenient. You can claim there heavier than an ebook reader, but their nicer to the eye. They can handle misuse, you can walk with them under a bit of rain and it’s not the end of the world… hell, some people use the newspaper as an umbrella.
I can definitely see reference manuals and some technical books leaving the print domain. Specially those thick ones which no one dares to carry.
With Magazines I’m not sure. They still seem to have some charm but they are starting to feel dated. People read a lot of this stuff online now. They either read it or watch videos about it.
Now in the case of fiction books, I can’t see them being pushed away of the scene anytime soon.
Still, Newspapers are starting to see their end. They are trying to diversify, go online, blog, etc… But they are suffering a lot, that I know. How do I know? I sat for 2 hours listening to the complaints of a woman who was a writer for some North Carolina newspaper. She was telling us how blogs were not good news, how TV News get the news from newspapers, how Newspaper writers have sources and how important that is and how we should trust them with information and not anyone else.
When did I ever trust a newspaper? Blog or Newspaper, what’s the difference? You still have to trust what you read if you want to believe in anything. If you’re a skeptic it makes no difference to you.
I’m still trying to figure out which ones to buy. They seem to be an obscure thing still. I thought that by now it would be an easy thing to find, but no. it’s mostly for gamers and they’re not easy to find.
I was reading about the Astro A40′s on GDGT. They were also recommending the Turtle Beach Ear Force x41 (love the mixer).But they’re designed for gaming. My main use will be for watching HD movies or tv shows.
Does anyone out there has anything to recommend? Please post comments.
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Update Jan 5:
Tested the Logitech G35 Surround Headsets and they sucked. Sound quality was poor and price was high (here in Canada).
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Update Jan 11:
Here’s a comparison between the Astro A40′s, Turtle Beach Ear Force X41 Wireless and the Tritton AX 900 Pro
