Month: March 2007

Dutch Design (7): It drives and flies: PAL-V

PAL-V

PAL-V stands for a hybrid of a car, a motorbike and a gyrocopter: a Personal Air and Land Vehicle or a flying car. PAL-V is an initiative of Dutch entrepreneur John Bakker. John takes the Carver Technology one step further. The Carver technology has been developed by another Dutchman, Chris van den Brink.

Carver 01

Carver One is a closed fast three wheel tilting vehicle. The first production model has been on show at the Geneva Motor Show from 7-18 March 2007. Unfortunately they had to apply for bankruptcy in 2009. Some Carvers were produced however. and Carver Technology seems having survived.

The PAL-V project is yet in its first phase: looking for investors. Not a bad idea.

Dutch Design (6): The Hague Tram Tunnel

The Hague Tram Tunnel

Sometimes you have to sit behind your computer screen and read a Blog post of someone far away in a foreign language (0300VD) to become a little bit proud of your own city where with a lot of difficulty a piece of the infrastructure has been knitted together and now attracts attention because of its architectonic value 🙂

Sean Dodson started Blog Idle Jottings

Sean is a journalist who writes for the Guardian a weekly column “Best of the Net” and who has started a Blog Idle Jottings in January. Not much content there yet, but that will be difficult when you are bound to give your best to the Guardian first and for all. I hope he will devote more time to it when he comes to speed.

The Leage against misbehaving Guests

Thanks to Back of House in DBX, a startup Dubay hotel employee’s Blog [ED: and since dissappeared] , I noticed Guests Behaving Badly in Australia:

Guests Behaving Badly Pty Limited (GBB) is a member based organisation designed to minimise the occurrence of anti-social, intimidatory and destructive behaviour that currently affects guests, service providers and their staff within the hospitality industry.

Our members are hospitality providers who offer short-term lettings and holiday accommodation of various types. The GBB Online Register is used by our members to identify guests that have a recorded history of inappropriate behaviour. Additionally members have the ability to lodge a complaint against a guest, which once verified by GBB, can be accessed by our other members via the GBB Online Register.

GBB seeks to identify individuals who have demonstrated antisocial behaviour whereby the well being of other guests and staff has been jeopardized, or alternatively have behaved in a manner prejudicial to the operation of that facility.

Not a bad idea, but in the Netherlands the laws on privacy would probably not allow such a register. On the other hand the Dutch police is nowadays actively seeking damages if someone from the general public attacks them, causes them harm, or simply mutter a not so nice word…..Local hotels here in The Hague usually only send out a warning for non-paying guests….

Last edited by Happy Hotelier on March 2, 2010 at 12:34 pm

Travel In Blogs : A new travel community?

Recently the blog Travel in Blogs seems to have started a sort of Travel Blog community. From the outset it seams a great idea, but there is hardly anything available on the site about the site, about who does it and why they do it.

What do you think?

Added 15 March:

The basic idea is that Bloggers submit stories that can be voted upon like the Diggs and Del.icio.us es of this world. In one view you can get the hottest posts. But there are many other alike initiatives. For the moment I am reasonably content with the Google reader which loads very fast and gives you a fast means of browsing the blogs you like to read. Another issue is that the admin (whoever he may be) seems to get his ideas from a blog that looks as if it is a pure scraper or maybe even a Splog. I wont mention it here because I don’t want to grant it a link.

It is registered in the name of a thus far undisclosed person at the same address as the “aggregators” or “scrapers” i am referring to:

DreamHost Web Hosting
417 Associated Rd #324
Brea, CA 92821
US
+1.2139471032

Record created on 2007-03-09 18:34:56.
Record expires on 2008-03-09 18:34:56.

Added after the comment of David of Travelhorizons:

There are some ramifications here why I am still not sure.

I suppose if it would be non – human, they would have programmed the spider bot so that it would publish posts (I submitted 3 or 4 myself) as soon as possible and would not leave them unattended for 48 hours or more. No attention is much more human than bot alike I would think.

Furthermore, I believe that I have seen Albert Barra making a comment somewhere that he had to do with this Blog. But I can’t reproduce the comment anymore. That would also explain why there is a Spanish section. Ah, wait, it was not a comment I can reproduce what I thought I had seen: it is this post More about the T-List, on his Blog, but my Spanish is insufficient to understand what he tells in his post, even if I use Alta Vista Babel Fish.

Also it is notable that as a comment on a post by self proclaimed spin doctor Martin Schobert, of the Austrian Blog in the German language, Kulinarisch Reisen (i.e. Travel Culinary) about The T-List a certain Danay asks attention for the Blog in question:

Can the T-List go Web2.0?

We have recently launched TravelinBlogs.com.

TIB is a social network for the Travel and Hospitality Community. This site allows you to submit an article that will be reviewed by all and will be promoted, based on popularity, to the main page.

We encourage all Blogs of the T-List to sumbit their content and get additional traffic to their blogs.

Best regards,
Danay

Danay seems human and like me not a native English speaker (“sumbit”).

So again: is it a hoax of for real, what do you think?

Update:

I’ve taken out the link as, sadly, when Albert tried to move the site to another server, he lost all of it. Later I met Albert at WTM in London. He is a very likable person.

Last edited by Happy Hotelier on February 25, 2010 at 9:14 am