In an impressive presentation Steve Jobs introduced the world to the IPad.
What influence will it have on travel? Some preliminary thoughts:
In the preamble Steve explained that Apple is by now bigger than Nokia, Samsung and Sony profitability wise in mobile devices…It may be assumed that it will be rolled out big 60 or 90 days from now.
- My main question is: Will you be able to leave your laptop (or eee netbook) home for an Ipad? If so, it is a must have. You can e-mail, write, calculate and make key note presentations with it, browse the web, watch photos and videos with it and listen to your music library. It will depend on its touch screen typing capabilities, but even if that is substandard Apple has thought about a docking station with type pad.
- It seems that by its sheer browsing capability it will enable the travel community to forget about the hassle of adapting their websites to mobile devices with various operating systems.
- One aspect is that -as Steve Jobs puts it “standing on the shoulders of Amazone’s entry into reading e-books with its Kindle – It incorporates e-book reading. On the basis of the well known Itunes shop model, Apple has lined up 5 major book publishers to sell books through a new IBook shop. As of yesterday it will be start negotiating with many other book publishers. Hurray, back to downloading the good old travel guides onto your Ipad before you go. When I go on holiday, I usually take a couple of good books with me. Now I can carry those in my IPad, which will spare me a couple of kilos weight in my luggage: Poor Airlines who are just trying to get us used to surcharges for our luggage.
- Apparently Apple is also trying making a dent into the augmented reality scene. With a built in GPS and leaning on Google Maps, it will be amazing how fast you will get a bearing and will be able to collect tidbits in an efficient manner about the location where you are.
- First I published this photo on my significant other blog because it shows clearly you don’t have to sit at a desk to play/work with your computer properly anymore. I see it as the same sort of liberation the mobile phone brought us. No more desk sitting to await a telephone call. Now you can pute in the park – provided the park has WiFi off course:-)
- And you know what? No more need for a paper photo album anymore…you’ll now have a wedding album/slideshow/video on your IPad..and can carry it around the world with you.
- Less travel by it’s undoubted future video conferencing capabilities?…no more sitting in studios for those…
- No more need for hotels to provide papers to their guests…
Interesting times.
Added:
- Excellent tool for on the road board games! Via Rembuco
- Would it influence the way News is spread? See Nieman Lab
Last edited by Happy Hotelier on January 30, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Via Cribcandy I came across this vintage nested suitcase installation. Cribcandy found it on Mocoloco and Mocoloco found it at Design*Sponge. It made me wonder what designers do nowady with this perfectly pratical idea. If you travel you can’t have enough suitcases, but at home those darn suitcases take a lot of space…what better than to nest them in storage?
I did a quick image search on Nested Suitcases, but couldn’t find any eye candy design. Did I overlook something or is the idea obsolete and am I only nostalgic?
Japanese wave after modeling the latest styles of adult diapers during a show in Tokyo Thursday Sept. 25, 2008. The show was organized to display the latest styles of adult diapers and to raise awareness of some of the issues facing the county’s rapidly aging population. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
I found this photo on Open Salon and thought it fit to use as an illustration of what I find one of the worst hotel amenities: plastic under-sheets.
Whenever I enter a hotel room, the first thing I check is the bed. Does the hotelier in question – like many of his colleagues – believe I’m incontinent and need to wear an adult diaper? If I find plastic under-sheets, I take them away and ask for extra towels to put there.
I hate plastic under sheets! They are soo uncomfortable. And you know what? Al matters hoteliers believe can be solved by them, can be solved by double cotton under-sheets, or maybe more correctly put a mattress pad. Much more comfy!
What do you think?
Screen shot of the present Haagsche Suites site
Screen shot of the new Haagsche Suites site in development
I’ve only one New Year’s resolution: to bring my main project for 2010, the redesigning of the Haagsche Suites website, to a level where it can work stand alone, as soon as possible.
After last year’s unfortunate computer crashes, server migrations and now the unfortunate hacking of two of my sites - all costing me too much of my precious time I’m underway again. I’m using the Thesis theme for WordPress which has a couple of wonderful features to change the lay out in a simply way.
Could some in the know please help me with comments either here,
- or there: about the general idea of turning the whole upside down: changing from a dedicated static site maybe with a separate blog into a dynamic site with an integrated blog. Am I stupid?
- or there: do you know of better alternatives for automatic machine generated translation?
- or there: the pros and cons of having dedicated “language” urls, or should I install WordPress MU?
Thank you for your cooperation.
Happy Hotelier has been hacked.
They call it a “Deface Hack”. It means that in one way or another the perpetrator got access to my ISP account and replaced the landing page of this blog by the following notice:
Thehacker
0wn3d !
You can imagine I was furious and got more worked up when my service provider didn’t deem it serious enough to answer my calls.
I noticed it at about 23.00 (11.00 pm) last night and concluded it had happened at around 20.00 hr (8.00 pm) last night.
I couldn’t get access to my FTP client on their server, but I noticed I had access to my other blog. Also I had access to my .htaccess file. So I redirected both blogs that were hacked to a post at Chairblog EU:
At around 10.00 am today I got an e-mail from my ISP that they had solved the matter. They had closed down the FTP access to all my accounts until they had solved the matter.
Due to other business it was only about 01.30 pm today that I was able to reset the redirections.
Luckily the site seems in order again and nothing lost.
Now I’m going to update that post on Chair Blog ….
Also I have rebuild both sitemaps as yesterday’s sitemaps were erroneous
But all in all I’m not satisfied with the isp who claims > 99 % accessibility…..
Last edited by Happy Hotelier on January 5, 2010 at 2:07 pm
I’ve put a sticky post in front of this blog that reads Please Read This Before Anything Else which links to my Rules of engagement for the use of this blog.
My language or writing may not the best of the world. So these Rules of engagement may be subject to changes from time to time.
And no I didn’t take legal counsel on it (In the US I would, but not in good old Cloggyland)
Several incidents have brought me to formulate these rules.
- There is that incident of the blog of a ranting Dutch Journalist who had mentioned the name of the employee of a Dutch telecom company too frequently, whereupon a Dutch judge fined him for defamation of the employee. It happens to be one of my most read posts because it contains a reference to nude pictures…
- The case of the amateur blogger in Sweden who was forced to shut down her blog, because she didn’t have a licence for doing “business” in Sweden, because she was a foreigner without a working permit…
- In the beginning of 2009, a British Travel Blog got sued by a law firm on behalf of an airline, because the airline didn’t like what was been published about the airline…
- The case of the Australian blogger who simply wanted to share Australian Immigration procedures and was threatened with fines, because he allegedly was giving immigration law advice which was the sole prerogative of specialized lawyers
- A Travel blogger has been threatened with legal action by a travel company because he let slip through a comment that could be construed as libelous under Anglo Saxon law. The unfortunate rule of that legal system appears to be that the onus of proof in that case would be on the shoulders of of the blogger, while I would think that it is the person who makes the comment rather than the publisher who is liable.
- Recently here on Happy Hotelier I got a request to delete a post which originally I had posted on request of the person who now asked me to delete it, basically because a comment pointed to sites that put same person in a lesser shade of daylight. I changed the post after the request.
- On one of my other blogs I’m faced with a frustrated designer, whose work I’m not publishing (yet maybe), because I want to know more about him. Now he is trying to get attention by frequent comments that sometimes go over my line.
- I could go on and on with many examples, but the incident that “triggered” me is the one about the Subpoena of Chris Elliott for publishing a TSA security directive to disclose his source.
Update:
There was that attempt by a Nigerian rascal to blow up a flight 253 from Amsterdam Schiphol to Detroit. The Amsterdam airport Schiphol security guys were left with a lot of egg on their faces. Luckily the attempt was stopped by another Dutchman to save his countrymen from the embarrassment. I’ve refrained from posting about it, partly because I missed it and partly because it has been covered so widely in the press that my thoughts wouldn’t add a iot to it.
Now following up on the event the US Transportation Security Administration issued new security directives to all airlines. These were sensitive and therefor prohibited from publication. But Chris and another blogger published them. Then a Kafkaesque theater unfolded.
Here are some links:
Tnootz, a startup as of September 2009 has become a powerhouse of travel news in itself. I had planned a more elaborate post about them, but didn’t find time for it. Therefor instead of a separate post devoted to them I’ll honor them with their links only about this story (they covered it very well imo):
- Northwest 253 – How European hubs and airlines differ on comms strategy
- After Northwest Airlines terror incident, new TSA restrictions and lots of questions
- TSA plays hardball with airline blogger over security directive
- Chris Elliott submits objection to DHS subpoena over security directive disclosure
- In reversal, DHS withdraws subpoena of journalist Chris Elliott
- Did TSA ghost-write @FlyingWithFish tweet? Twitter coercion?
- TSA issues new security directives for all flights inbound to the U.S.
Ha! And then laugh with me about the TSA representative who’se notebook was discovered in public place…talking about security…
The latest off course is now that a British Journalist has established the weakness of Amsterdam Schiphol security because he could take an injection needle with him in a plane headed for London, while for the UK as destination Schiphol’s security rules are totally different than those for US bound flights.
My fear is that soon nobody will be able to fly until he or she is thoroughly frisked in the private parts area ….
So now you’re set to read the whole story.
I didn’t feel like a journalist yet, but Den Schaal pointed it out to me loud and clear that I have an obligation to protect my sources…Sorry Den :-) .
Update:
I’ve changed the sticky post status in a normal status and replaced it with a widget.
Last edited by Happy Hotelier on January 5, 2010 at 11:40 pm
The following Rules of Engagement apply here on this blog. This post will remain here.
I’ve changed this for a widget which is a better form I believe, but it’ll stay on the blog.
Happy 2010, the start of a new decade!
A new web 2.0 social media hotel review project:
Amsterdam counts 350 hotels and Vincent Van Dijk starts his dedicated blog Amsterdam Slaapt (i.e. Amsterdam Sleeps). Each day of 2010 he will tell us about his adventures in one of those 350 hotels, as each day of 2010 he will be sleeping out of his suitcase in one.
As Vincent uses to live and work in The Hague I’m really curious what his experience will be. Especially as my slogan is always: You should party in Amsterdam, but you should sleep in The Hague!
Nevertheless it is an interesting initiative which I will be following closely as he seems to plan to be reporting in Dutch only.
Here is Victor’s first Tweet as @AmsterdamSlaapt
“On January 1, 2010 I’ll start start the hotel project Amsterdam Sleeps in
the stylish Parkhotel Amsterdam.
About Vincent van Dijk
Vincent van Dijk is a food and life style trend watcher and co owner of The Hague (Scheveningen) based ad agency HBMEO. He is a restaurant spotter for the Dutch Restaurant Guide SpecialBite err SpecialBite.com.
Sources in Dutch: Een jaar slapen in A’damse hotels – AT5 Nieuws and Misset Hotel.
