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Twice the price, half the service Robert Scoble of Scobleizer writes in with a story about how United Airlines manages lose customers and clues at the same time. Last week I heard United referred to as "U.S. Aeroflot." It does amaze me that United managed to achieve hugeness without offering exceptional service, or even value, other than near-ubiquity of routes between places that matter: New York, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Denver. It's pretty hard to fly in and out of San Francisco and Denver without using United. My favorite United site is Untied.com. If you want to get really creeped out, go there. By the way, I am now an Executive Premier flyer with United, which is a fairly high-mileage caste. I've never had a really bad experience with the airline. Mostly the service has been good, but not great. All my bad experiences have been with other airlines. Like last October, when I flew Lufthansa for the first and only time, and they flattened — I mean, absolutely crushed — a bag full of electronics. Digging Sam I'm sitting here enjoying the company of Sam Albert, whom I've often heard on the radio. He's explaining all kinds of things I didn't know about IBM (where he has huge history), and I'm acquainting him with Weblogs. It's live linking in meat space (actually the press room at Linux World Expo). Vote generously Matt Goyer points to Fairtunes' vote on what to call what I think is misnamed a "tip jar system." Some other nice feedback from Ted Shelton on the same subject. Suckage at work On Tuesday the 23rd I bought a Handspring Visor Deluxe and had it shipped to our address here in New York. I paid a little extra to have it shipped express, so it would be with me for most of my week here. As of Monday it still wasn't here, so I wrote to Handspring customer support and got a quick response by both email and telephone. The address was slightly off, with a street address of 212 instead of 211. There is only one apartment building on the block, however, at 211. There is no 212. Still, the Handspring person told me, there was a signed delivery to 212 on Friday, but then another attempt was made Monday. The Handspring person wrote to confirm that the address had been changed with Fedex and the package would be delivered. On Tuesday, Fedex called and said I could either pick it up at their facility on West 33rd in Manhattan or they could attempt a Wednesday delivery. The W. 33rd facility is a stone's throw from Javits, where the show is happening, so I went by at about 5:30 last night and picked up the package. It seemed oddly light, but I was in a rush and didn't check it. After going to a party and dinner in the village and getting home after 11pm, I opened the package. In it was the Visor box. In the Visor box was: nothing. The contents had been stolen. I was up until almost 2am with various Fedex people. Was it insured? What was the full value? Whose fault was it if I had addressed it wrong in the first place, but Fedex courier misdelivered it at least once? Whatever, I'm out of one Visor and the money I paid for it, but richer by one more New Yawk experience. Full orbit The Earth has revolved around the Sun approximately once since I interviewed Tim O'Reilly for Linux Journal at the last Linux World Expo here n New York. The tape languished in the heap for a while, but I recovered it several months ago and discovered that it made interesting reading in light of momentarily inflated importance Linux held in the investment market at that time. Tim didn't want any part of it then. Turned out he was the Wise One because nobody wants a part of it now, it seems. A copy of the interview is here. White whole What's the opposite of a hole? Of a black hole? I'm wondering because the world has become so small that I'm thinking it's become a single point, but in the positive sense. It sucks us in and propells us out. Just met and had a great conversation with Steve Gillmor of XML Magazine and many other things. Last night I met Cameron Barrett too. It was one of those odd moments when I know I should recognize the name but don't quite put it all together. You know, Camworld, he said. Shit, I wish I was quicker on the uptake. I then proceeded to insult him by talking about "these kids" and finding he's younger than three of mine. But he's a great guy, though, and it was fun to find that he, like lots of other cool people, works for Collabnet. We were at a party for something at this hip location on West 23rd last night. I'd mention the Something because I think it's really interesting, but the name was forgetable and there doesn't seem to be a link to it from the Collabnet site. Hey: just learned from Camworld about a nice piece in the Times about Don Norman. Right now I'm in the press room at Linux World Expo with stories to file. More later. Scale as a verb Craig Burton has some very interesting things to say about Linux in his new blog. A sample: The fastest growing server business before Linux was NetWare. Novell hit that rate in about 1988. They both took about 5 years to reach this kind of run rate. It took Windows about 14 years. Microsoft didn't hit the 600,000 mark until sometime in 1997. What Craig modestly declines to mention is that the strategic smarts behind the near-ubiquitization of Netware were his own. The question of Linux' ownership isn't often raised, and Craig brings it up here. On the one hand, Linux is assumed to be "non-proprietary," yet on every ad for a Linux distribution there's this little disclaimer: Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Linux, at least technically, belongs to Linus. Craig suggests that Linus at some point will "sell out." I'm wondering how.
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