4 Annoying Things and 2 Good Ones
September 3rd, 2009 Posted in General, Leffel projects, Travel industry1) I have years of personal family photos stored on Kodak Gallery (once Ofoto), but add up the megabytes and they wouldn’t fill a $4.99 memory stick from Big Lots. So why is the company sending me an extortion e-mail saying “Spend $19.99 with us by the end of the month or we’ll delete all your pictures”? Didn’t they get the memo that data storage is almost free now? Apparently getting $20 from me now is more important than losing me permanently to Shutterfly, Snapfish, or any other similar service with less onerous policies. After all, I still have all the photos backed up on my own portable hard drive, ready to be uploaded elsewhere when I want prints. So even if I pay it, I’ll be pissed off at them for life.
Funny enough, I was just reading the book What Would Google Do? and saw this: “When I think of pictures today, the first brand that comes to my mind is Flickr. Others think of Google’s Picasa. I also think of my Nokia camera phone. Who now thinks of Kodak?”
2) Perhaps it’s not just an American trait to be too tied to your possessions. Most of the slum dwellers in the Baja Peninsula of Mexico refused to leave their shantytowns this week even though hurricane-force winds were about to hit and the stream running by the tin shacks would become a river. Why? They’re afraid of looting. Hey, I know it’s hard to lose your stuff, especially when you don’t have much, but you can’t watch TV from a coffin amigos!
3) Since U.S. airlines are now making most of their profits on extra fees grudgingly paid by passengers with checked luggage, they’re now seeing how much further they can push it.
* For US Airways, fees are now $20 online, $25 at the airport for the first bag.
* Continental just raised its international bag fees, to $45 online or $50 at the airport for the second bag.
* Virgin America is getting in on the act too: each bag checked will cost $20 for travel starting September 10.
* Southwest just added on a $10 fee to its menu, but it’s not really annoying because it’s one many busy people will gladly pay. Add ten bucks when you book your ticket and you are automatically in the A boarding list no matter when you check in, online or off. Otherwise, they’re still fee-free unless you’re carrying a pet.
4) I’m still tired of seeing Italy listed on the cover of every travel magazine and I’m getting even more tired of bloggers and lazy travel editors who make every post/article some kind of list in a blatant attempt to grab more click-throughs. Look at these two screen shots from sites that will remain nameless to protect the guilty and tell me, when do we hit the overload point? I fear it’ll only get worse: I found out last week that one of the biggest blog networks—part of a Fortune 500 company—even pays their writers extra for making their posts into lists.
Yeah I know, this post itself is a list too. But that’s why you clicked on it, isn’t it? Must… fight… trained… chimp… reactions.
Good thing 1 – For a while this week the Kindle version of The World’s Cheapest Destinations was the #1 travel reference book, beating the pants off whatever the established New York book publishing industry is pushing right now. Having a #1 Kindle book in a specific category is probably right up there with being the #1 bathing suit salesman in Greenland (and just as profitable), but I’ll take it. If you were one of the purchasers, muchas gracias!
Good thing 2 – Speaking of Amazon, right now they are selling 50 digital albums for $5 each. Legal MP3s that you can use as you will. There’s some garbage in there yes, but also some classics from the Rolling Stones, Steely Dan, Shawn Colvin, and Soul Asylum. Plus some cool quirky stuff like Willie & the Wheel (Willie Nelson/Asleeep at the Wheel) and Saharan blues band Tinariwen—one of my favorite albums we’ve covered in Perceptive Travel’s world music reviews. Fill in your collection for cheap.
5 Responses to “4 Annoying Things and 2 Good Ones”
By Eric on Sep 3, 2009
On Point 1, if you want to preserve your free photo storage, try signing up for a paid service that has a free trial and cancelling before they bill you for it. When I did that, it got me an extra year of free storage.
(It’s still not a good policy on Kodak’s part but at least there’s a way around it).
By Christine Gilbert on Sep 3, 2009
On point #4, bloggers who over using the list format, I think sites that rely too heavily on it do so at a cost: reader loyalty. Sure they work great as social media bait, getting high numbers of people to pop into your site, but those people don’t convert either as ad clicks or as subscribers. It also annoys your subscribed readers, so you trade a loyal audience that will help you promote posts, to a high volume, transient population that bounces and never returns.
I know of a certain hotel blog that was doing that and getting 1 million+/mo in traffic, but only had 100 subscribers.
By Gregory Hubbs on Sep 3, 2009
Tim,
What do you mean?
I am making a top ten list of the top ten lists which list the top ten things to do and see anywhere in the world. Or I might do it in sevens. That way I can maximize exposure to the minimal attention spans of the Web audience. Pavlov, etc…
But hey, don’t pick on Italy! I never met anyone who did not fall in love with the country where aesthetics are valued above all.
By Renato on Sep 4, 2009
Gregory, I 100% agree. And I am glad (and proud, I’m Italian) that you are so positive about Italy. There are great places and aesthetics are really valued above all. But it’s not (as a value for money) anymore an affordable place in Europe. Many areas in summer are simply out of budget (unless you are a Russian entrepreneur). You can still find beautiful, cheap and quiet corners, amazing and charming little cities but forget the traditional grand tour of Italy if you are travelling on a shoestring.
By tim on Sep 4, 2009
We used to play this game in college with the dining hall menu: “the chicken curve.” You would circle every dish with chicken in it on the weekly calendar and draw a line connecting them all.
Which brings us to Italy on the cover of travel magazines. If you put them all in a line on a newsrack, you could draw “the Italy curve” in the same way, never failing to find at least one that had a story about Italy on the cover that month. It’s a purely commercial decision because it makes people reach for the magazine the same way they click on a Top-10 whatever article on the web. As one editor at a major travel magazine told me, “Italy is our Lindsey Lohan.”