Category Archives: travel

Wal-Marting Across America or RVs parking their blog ethics at the door?

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I’m still confused about what seems like a significant overreaction in the blogosphere to Wal Mart’s PR agency Edelman’s decision to sponsor a couple in their RV trip across America. The blog, now called a “fake” by many but not the authors, is WalMartingAcrossAmerica

Onliners, especially bloggers, get more pissed about this type of thing than about, for example, thousands of far, far more significant issues of global significance and ethics, death and destruction and I find that upsetting, intellectually narrow minded, obsessive, and superficial.

So, a big PR firm sponsors a blog that they see will wind up being favorable to Wal Mart? This is surprising? Unethical? If they’d set up the whole thing I’d see it differently, but that does not appear to be the case. They simply were not transparent *enough*, failing to have the bloggers disclose their financial relationship to Wal Mart.

Sure, they deserved to be chastised and called out on this as a breech of transparency, but is this more of a breech than, say, downloading illegal music and videos? Or, for that matter, building entire companies around concepts of illegal downloading? Those guys get cheers and applause and hundred-million dollar paydays.

That said maybe I’m just not reading this right and it was some major ethical breech by Wal Mart/ Edelman.

Here’s my reply to Edelman’s (too thin) apology about all this even as it becomes the top online story by far:

With all due respect this apology seems too thin, and ironically itself sounds like part of the PR-driven rather than the “blog community” approach to the issue which would outline the scoop for everybody and explain how this got so out of hand.

It’s not even clear to me that you seriously defied WOMMA guidelines assuming that things are exactly as described over at the WalMarting Across America blog. Rather it looks like somebody at Edelman saw an excellent and legitimate opportunity and then chose to fund it in a way that turned this into a blog that was too sponsored to retain credibility.

Sheesh – I think I’m articulating your position at greater length than you are?!

Online Sheep get the revenue shaft. Hey Google, when you gonna show *Average Joe’s* the money rather than Rupert Murdoch?

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Business week is fretting over how Google will monetize the YouTube content and whether they’ll share with Myspace owners News Corp. Myspace users have embedded tons of YouTube video content in their personal pages so this is potentially a big stream of cash for somebody. Poor Rupert Murdoch doesn’t have enough money as it is, so heaven forbid that the content producers or the users would be put first in line for a piece of the action that *they generate*.

Business Week:
Google could soon have the ability to stream ads to MySpace users who are viewing YouTube videos embedded onto their MySpace pages. The question is whether News Corp. will get a slice of that revenue, and if so, how much …

I think a more relevant question is how much of that revenue should go to those generating the content and the billion daily page views.

Sites (like Google) are doing a fine job of making it possible for Average Joe’s to find the web pages of other Average Joe’s over at Myspace who in turn does a fine job helping people build silly pages filled with videos and images from other infrastructure sites like Flickr and Youtube. They should be well compensated for this and I think 25% is a good number, with 75% of the total revenue generated going to the “users” who are generating all that content and all those page views.

“Professional” users like me already get a piece of the action from Google – about 60-70% of the ad revenue I generate at my websites comes back to me via Google Adsense payments, and I think that’s probably a fine relationship. At least until Yahoo or MSN wake up to the fact they can jump start their contextual advertising services with a temporary 100% revenue share with publishers. Then I, and a large chunk of the 43% of Google’s Adsense Revenue, will be jumping ship. Booking services only give me about 50% of the commissions I generate but that’ll trend upwards over time (ha – it used to be only 20% revenue sharing).

However it’s very intriguing how the big players in the mega money deals leave out the key people in the equation – the Average Joe user. Part of that is simply scale. An average myspace user is only generating nickels and dimes (literally) per month in ad revenue. Collectively it’s a truckload of money but individually not much and Myspace does provide a good service to the user. Win Win? Maybe, but I think the trend will be towards people valuing their own content and their eyeball time more selfishly than they do right now.

The problem with all this great people-generated content — clearly the heart and soul of the new internet — is that the people generating it are getting left in the revenue dust. There are exceptions who manage to turn a few bucks here and there from the crumbs dropped by the mega monetizers like Google, but the average Joe who blogs and posts pictures and has a Myspace page with his Youtube videos gets nothing but the use of the online tools. That searchability and infrastructure is worth something. Arguably it’s worth a lot and clearly Average Joe is happy so far getting sh** for all his content effort.

However, I think over time Average Joe will become more demanding, perhaps even having the audacity to suggest that the collective fruits of all that online labor should be shared not just among Google and friends, but shared with those who watch it all and who make it all worth watching.

Freemont Street Light Canopy, Las Vegas

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Freemont, Las Vegas

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.

Just booked for WebmasterWorld Las Vegas coming up next month. These Freemont Pics are from that trip a year ago and make the downtown area look spiffier than it does in person. I’m glad I saw the spectacular light show but the Las Vegas Strip hotels and casinos and general “feel” is much fancier and “cleaner” than the downtown area.

When too much is not enough and a little is just right. Google > Yahoo

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Today a very sharp friend said that even though he uses Yahoo mail and some of their default screen navigation, he always uses Google to search. Why? Because Google is not cluttered and makes it very easy to leave Google to visit external sites. Yahoo, especially Yahoo News, he felt, tries to keep the user at Yahoo too aggressively.

A similar point about the ease of navigating to external sites was recently made by Mike Arrington when talking about Web 2.0, noting that it’s important to let folks feel they can easily leave the site for other web locations if you want return visits and credibility.

Relevancy, conspicuously, was not the concern of my friend. He just didn’t like the Yahoo search user experience. I agree and realize that for me it’s the fact that with Google I can get and visually scan *a lot more results* much faster than with normal Yahoo search. Like my friend it’s not the relevancy as much as the navigation that keeps me at Google despite the fact I own Yahoo (well, actually I own about one two-millionth of Yahoo). I don’t trust either engine to give me great results, but I know that I’ll usually find what I need somewhere in the first few pages of sites. Google makes it easier to preview a lot of sites fast.

I have stronger negative feelings about most of the travel sites. Online Travel 1.0 is a nightmarish blend of booking screens, pitches for Hawaii and cruise packages, and tourism sites all trying to convince you they are the only destination both offline and online.

It’s particulary frustrating when sites expect me to learn their navigation and nomenclature just to use their damn site, especially if I’m trying to preview dozens of websites for a trip! Most of the worst offenders are overproduced by expensive print media firms using the pretense they know about “online marketing”. In fact most big firms have about as much web savvy as an inebriated, obnoxious, and arrogant tourist and appear to be designing the sites for …..themselves.

Like most users I’d prefer a Craigslist format so I can easily jump to the information I need rather than wading through popups, pictures, video, and other nonsense when I’m trying to plan a trip. With some exceptions the mantra “just the facts please” would serve online travel promotion better than the foolish extravagances that confuse users and also search engines which struggle to find meaning in garrish flash and pages filled with 100k high resolution photos.

What will Travel sites look like as Web 2.0 shakes out? I’m optimistic that they’ll be much, much better, and hoping to figure out how before it’s obvious to everybody.

Expedia’s Best Price Guarantee, like a grenade, just needs to be …. close.

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Generally I like price guarantees which tell you that the company is 1) fairly confident they are usually offering the best pricing on stuff and 2) allow you to relax a bit and book while still surfing around for a better trip.

But Expedia’s “simple” and “Best price” guarantee did make me laugh a bit when I noted in the fine print that the Expedia airline ticket must be at least $6 more to qualify.  Not  a big deal of money (though with a family trip it’s enough to care about), yet somehow the notion of “best price” that is not the “best price” smacks of the kind of bogus pitch everybody is tired of hearing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody had a good faith best price deal with no fine print where “best price” meant simply the best price for a comparable (rather than perfectly, exactly, unlikely-to-be-found-in-exact-same-form thing?

Mall of America on Travel Channel

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Hey, I really like the Mall of America.    When we visit our Minnesota relatives we often head over there for a day and it’s really an intriguing place.   In some ways it’s the capital of American retail consumerism, a dubious but interesting distinction.   In a world fraught with violence, intolerance, war, disease, and hardship isn’t it nice to have four miles of enclosed, climate-controlled store fronts, amusement park, aquarium, and theme restaurants?   No?   C’mon, you call yourself an American?

Travel Channel notes:

The Mall of America is effectively an entire enclosed city. Designed by 40 architects and designers over a period of four years.

Giant Rectangle, allowing strolling without backtracing.
Each floor has over a MILE of storefront space.

4 malls in one with different themes:
North Garden

West Market – RR station theme.
South Avenue – Southern grand hotel theme.
East Broadway – modern high tech design

Glass sphere spy cams document shopper’s every move.

120 security gaurds plus dogs to sniff out trouble.

250k visitors daily during peak times

Camp Snoopy makes 25 million per year.

20,000 parking spots in 3 square miles of parking. State, symbol, and color designations to help mall visitors find their car.

20 sit down restaurants plus 30 fast food.

14 screen movie theater.

Chapel for marriages is the “Chapel of Love”.

5 themed restaurants and Hooters is the most popular watering hole in the mall.

Underwater Adventures is a huge aquarium located in lower sections.

Maple Syrup Memories. Sappy, but very sweet.

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TourPro got me thinking about New York’s Adirondack Mountain country where I grew up. His site is an excellent guide to that region. Then my old pal Tom, who really should write more often in his blog because he’s a great wordsmith, reminds me that Maple collection is in the spring, not fall. Funny because I’d blended the memories together, maybe simply under the category of “maple tree stuff”?

I actually remember (at least I *think* I remember) picture perfect scenes like this from the woods a short drive out of Plattsburgh, NY. Image is from Dale’s Ponies Gallery:Sap horse

The more newfangled approach lacks the romance, but probably pulls a lot more sap out of the trees.Maple trees with the bucket system seem to use the difference between the pressure in and out of the tree via the tree’s transpiration system.  Hey, DOW makes the filters for this gadget. Why don’t the put THAT fact in their ad campaign with a few horses and maple sap buckets and sugar shacks and I wouldn’t be reminding people of their sordid chemical past.

Sap Extractor

Top Ten Fall Destinations?

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TripAdvisor’s top ten fall destinations are:

1.Munich, Germany
2. Napa Valley, Calif.
3. Montreal, Quebec
4. Asheville, N.C.
5. Woodstock, Vt.
6. Vancouver, Canada
7. Lake Placid, N.Y.
8. Camden, Maine
9. Mystic, Conn.
10. Aberdeen, Scotland

It seems like a funny list to me.   The Fall color of USA is well represented at Woodstock, Lake Placid, and Camden and a trip to the Northeast USA in fall is impossible to beat for spectacular foliage IF your timing is lucky.   Mystic and Napa are charming and Montreal and Vancouver are very cool places.   Haven’t been to Asheville but I’m sure it’s nice.    Munich an obvious choice for Octoberfest.  Not sure about Aberdeen.

But as long as they’ve decided to include the entire world it seems like a reasonable person is going to pick London, Paris, Rome, Prague, a city in China or Japan, etc, etc over, say Asheville or Mystic or Lake Placid.

I think these silly lists tell you more about the person composing them than travel.

Yahoo is doing a LOT of great stuff. 2.0 Stuff.

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I’m slowly working on creating some travel related mashups and Yahoo keeps coming up with better and better mapping tools and tools to add travel information to any website. Even restaurants with reviews. Flickr makes it a snap to add pictures to blogs or websites as well as manipulate your own photos. I pointed out how great the Flickr features were to some Picasa developers at Google last month and asked about Picasa integration with websites. They sheepishly replied they were working on it, but I wish my pal Jeremy could have heard that conversation and gloated a bit, because Yahoo’s still not getting anything like the credit they deserve for fully embracing the new web and easily beating Google by most measures in API development.

Google employees do embrace the principles of the new web, but I’m increasingly skeptical that Google can fully promote the openness of the new web and maintain the huge profits they now enjoy. Increasingly profit protection will collide head-on with the old spirit of openness and innovation, and compromises will be made.

The Yahoo 2.0 enabling tools are great stuff and unless I’m really missing comparable things going on at Google, MSN, ASK, and other big players out there it is clearly Yahoo where the really good enabling development has been going on for some time. Yahoo Hack Day is coming soon and they are inviting developers to hang out and camp out down there for hacking and mashing. Open, fun, and free. Neat.

I just hope all this good stuff translates into better press and success. Go Yahoo go.