October 2009 Archives

As you may well know by now, Google has announced a Social Search experiment on its official blog.

It scans your various profiles (Google Reader, Gmail contacts, Twitter followers &c) and serves up 'trusted' results based on them. Kevin May, late of this parish, has given it a try.

Previous social search experiments - such as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's effort several years ago - have been more explicitly crowd-based, relying on the broad spectrum of users to organise results.

Google's focus on communities within the crowd, rather than the crowd itself, makes Wales's vision look rather quaint (funny what two or three years can do these days).

Is it worth noting that between these two experiments came the explosion of Twitter? Or do they just represent two different approaches that are still equally valid?

I've pitched this as an open post, so no more from me. Do your thing below...

Take a few dudes from New Zealand (probably), get them to do some funny dances and there you have it - Air New Zealand's new 'Personality Allowed' campaign

The campaign was devised by Albion London and features 11 crew members from the airline's London base.

Plenty of personality there and they look like they're having fun.

But then, here's links to the actual ads -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAjMJyJhxTM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyoiOUiAJ3o&feature=related

And, is it just us or has some of the personality been lost?.

At Travolution we like a silly survey as much as the next person especially if it's about consumers' annoying habits.

So, the headlines from Travelocity's Rudeness Poll of US and Canadian travellers on bad travel behaviour are as follows:

Let's start with who you might not want to sit next to:

Passengers with poor hygiene, say 45% of those polled followed by coughing and sneezing travellers, 30%.

Loud and obnoxious travellers, particularly those that swear, are an annoyance for 56% and kicking the seat for 50%.

And then, arguing families, 31% (erm, well, airports are stressful places!), boisterous children, 28% and rowdy college students, 24%.

Opinions on overweight passengers are also strong with 80% thinking they should be allocated two seats and 44% saying it should be at no extra cost.

Other common irritations include:

29% are annoyed by travellers boarding with over-sized carry-on luggage - yes, we agree, if you can't carry it, check it in!

Canadians are more irritated by poor queue discipline than Americans but we think a bit more time spent at some European airports might cure that!

And, passengers in a rush to get off the plane on arrival are annoying for 57%.

Got any of your own to add to the list?