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If your profile is ABC1 and you plan to go to Heathrow Terminal 5 for shopping you won’t be disappointed:
Terminal 5 is working with a range of local and globally strong brands to create a new and exciting retail environment, with each store concept fulfilling the key criteria of being surprising, tempting and experience-enhancing. And whether consumers are after stimulation or relaxation, Terminal 5 will set new standards in retail and dining experiences with 144 different stores and restaurants from which to choose.
From a traveller perspective the audience demographic is anticipated to be 92% ABC1 in profile, and the Terminal will be used exclusively by British Airways – Domestic, European and International destinations.
On the other hand if you are one of us who don’t want to buy a new Prada bag at T5 but who want to connect at Heathrow to another flight or go directly to London, the situation won’t be as rosy. The real problem at Heathrow is actually the lack of runways. Two current runways serve five terminals and they are used to the maximum. Any disruption creates a ripple effect of delays and flight cancellations. My yesterday’s flight from London to Prague was three hours delayed and the reason was a rain shower that delayed some incoming flights few hours earlier. And on top of that BA lost my bag…
To summarize my experience: Heathrow T5 is an exclusive shopping mall but it’s a terrible airport.
I don’t mind long flights. Twelve hours of flight time with no Internet access allows me to focus on my long term plans and helps me to organize my thoughts. But not today. I was so exhausted from my busy trip that I fell asleep soon after the take-off from San Francisco and I woke up twenty minutes before our landing at Heathrow. No food, no movies, no work. Twelve hours of the ultimate solitude…
One of the decisions we had to make is what client-side charting technology we should use for Good Data. The options were JavaScript or Flash. JavaScript is the standard part of the browser but Flash would give us nicer chart libraries. The main question is what to do if the user doesn’t have Flash installed. As always I found potential solution on the web (link).
The picture below is from last week but Twitter seems to be broken again…
I came to California on Virgin America flight from NYC yesterday. It was my first flight with this new low-cost airline and I was impressed by the service: leather seats; entertainment system that allows passengers to order food, watch one of 25 movies or satellite television, play video games or send instant messages to other passengers. And the mood lighting is really cool:
A casual traveler may wonder why there is not more airlines like Virgin America and here is why:
Under the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, Congress required that U.S. citizens own or control at least 75 percent of the voting interests of U.S. airlines. This standard has remained the same since then.
Current U.S. law defines a “citizen of the United States” as an individual U.S. citizen, a partnership whose members are U.S. citizens, or a corporation or association organized under U.S. law where at least 75 percent of the voting interest is owned and controlled by U.S. citizens. The law also specifies that the president, as well as at least two-thirds of the Board of Directors of the corporation, must be U.S. citizens. That is, the law has been construed as requiring actual control of the enterprise to rest with U.S. citizens.
I am sure they did not know anything about globalization back in 1938 but these requirements only help to cement the dire state of American airline industry today…
Some folks like to get away
Take a holiday from the neighborhood
Hop a flight to Miami Beach
Or to Hollywood
But I’m taking a Greyhound
On the Hudson River Line
I’m in a New York state of mind
I did not take the Greyhound and I am not here on a holiday but I am still in a New York state of mind…
I use LinkedIn as the primary hiring tool and I found many of great Good Data employees on LinkedIn. I did some math last night to understand how much the recruitment agencies would charge me for the same people. It is $75k and that actually translates into one month of Good Data development. Go LinkedIn! Go!
I did not expect to find my luggage when I arrived to Boston last night. But it was not my bag who had problems to get to the US. I was the one who was very late! The US immigrations computer system was down and there were several planes ahead of us waiting for the immigration clearance. I don’t know why the INS computers did not work but I am sure the reason is similar to the recent GrandCentral outage (the message below is from Craig Walker, founder of GrandCentral). Find GC and replace it with INS:
I wanted to write a quick note to all the GC users and apologize for the service interruption this morning. We had a power issue at our current colo facility and it knocked us off line for a few hours. Unfortunately I’ve been up in the mountains with the family this weekend and had no cell/internet coverage so couldn’t respond earlier. I did want to let you know that we were able to restore the service by noon today and are working extremely diligently to make sure this won’t occur in the future. We’ll do a better job keeping you informed in the future, not only about service related issues but also about upcoming features, soliciting your feedback, and generally making sure that you, the GC user, is well informed as to what’s going on with the service.
This rule is as applicable to product management as it is to travel. I don’t expect to find my bag in Boston when I land there and so I won’t be frustrated. And I did expect long lines at Heathrow and I was not dissapointed…
