August 20, 2007

Call Center Point of Sale

Over the last 20 years I have been involved with a number projects involving point of sale UIs for call center agents. Going back to my days with United Airlines when Casto Travel was the first installation on the West Coast for the, at that time new Apollo Focalpoint UI, to recent projects with Alaska.org, Vegas.com and Vail Resorts, I […]
July 31, 2007

Observations from the NBTA convention

Last week’s NBTA’s annual convention was billed as the biggest and most successful travel management conference ever. A common question I was asked while roaming the tradeshow floor, “What do you believe was the hot topic at this year’s conference?”. My response was simplly stated “nothing really new here”. In reality I believe more was left unsaid then presented in […]
July 20, 2007

CorporateTravel Technology Today and Tomorrow

I am pleased to announce that my most recent corporate travel study: Corporate Travel Technology: Today and Tomorrow is now available for a pre-published order with a discount of $100 (purchase price is normally $600, pre-publication price of $499). In addition if you are attending the NBTA show next week you can receive an additional $100 discount if you order […]
July 16, 2007

I’m Back….

My apologies to my loyal blog readers. I was on vacation in Israel for most of June and I have been on the run finishing up various projects since I returned. A couple words of advice concerning travel to Israel. My family and I felt extremely safe during our stay. Don’t let the US media make you believe otherwise. As […]
May 31, 2007

Working with 3rd party software developers

I found it interesting that two prominent software companies (if you can call a GDS a software company) one within the travel industry, Sabre, the other the poster child for social computing, Myspace, have both recently come out with rules (or lack of) regarding 3rd party software developers that hook into their systems. In the case of Sabre, there has […]
May 18, 2007

Digital Public Space Advertising

I am fan of the 2002 sci-fi movie Minority Report. In the film Tom Cruise is bombarded by digital advertising as he walks through a crowded mall. The ads are triggered by a retina scan personalizing the offering to respond to the character’s specific needs. (In the case of the film, Tom Cruise actually replaced his eyes with another character’s […]