April 2008
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Month April 2008

Entries 10 Total

BA: Long haul flight move to Terminal 5 has been delayed

Apr 12, 08 5:26 PM

Flight delays happen all the time but delayed terminal is quite unusual. However it is not entirely unexpected. Once I landed at the Brussels airport shortly after the Belgian king opened a new terminal. We waited and waited and then captain made the following announcement: “Sorry for the delay. We were assigned a gate that doesn’t exist yet”. I am sure nobody told the king the airport was not exactly finished…

Below is message I received from BA today:

Dear Mr Stanek

You may have heard the news today that British Airways and BAA (the London Heathrow airport authority) have agreed to defer the move of the majority of our long haul intercontinental flights from Heathrow’s Terminal 4 to Terminal 5. The move, originally planned for 30 April, will now begin in June.

Although we have seen a steady improvement at Terminal 5, we want to be sure that customers can be confident of high service standards when the terminal is handling larger numbers of passengers.

Both we at British Airways and BAA recognise that the opening of Terminal 5 has not been as smooth as we would have wished. We will be working with BAA to iron out any remaining problems, including the baggage system, and develop a robust timescale for phasing the move of Terminal 4 services in to Terminal 5. We believe it is only sensible to make sure that Terminal 5 is operating consistently at a high standard before the move begins.

We do not underestimate the uncertainty and inconvenience this delay may cause you if you have a trip planned in this period. Our priority is to continue making improvements to achieve the high levels of service our customers should expect from us as soon as possible.

A small number of long haul intercontinental flights have already moved to Terminal 5. These will be unaffected by the delay to the move of other flights.

We will provide more details of the move as soon as we review progress of the improvements being made. The latest information will always be available on ba.com.

In the meantime, if you are planning to travel with British Airways on a long haul flight currently scheduled to operate from Terminal 5 after 30 April until 31 May, please check which terminal you will now be flying to or from by visiting http://www.britishairways.com/travel/routedest/public or ask your travel agent for more information.

Warm regards,

British Airways

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How Good is Good Data?

Apr 11, 08 9:25 AM

Good Data is still in the middle of development but we would like to get feedback from our potential users and partners as soon as possible. And so we published a very preliminary first glimpse of what you can expect from Good Data at http://www.gooddata.com/demo/demo1.html. Please let us know how good is Good Data!

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Geeklandia Redux

Apr 10, 08 1:12 PM

David posted the following comment earlier today:

I better remember your post from two years ago, when you said there will be only 5 computers in the world. We’re almost there – EC2 and Google AppEngine is here, and others will follow soon (Microsoft, EMC…)

David, I wrote it almost four years ago on my Geeklandia blog. Here is the link to the original post in Czech and this is the English translation:

Back in 1943 Thomas J. Watson reputedly made the statement that there is going to be market for only five computers in the world. For sixty years we laughed at his apparent lack of vision but he who laughs last, laughs best. Count with me how many computers there will be in five years: 1. Google, 2. Yahoo!, 3. Amazon.com 4. eBay 5. MSN/Hotmail. (Posted on September 24, 2004)

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Systinet Axiom: It’s A Service World

Apr 10, 08 9:48 AM

In the early days of Systinet (summer of 2000) I made the following proposition that served as a guiding principle for the company development: The web will be full of services within the next five years.

We saw the massive growth of services on the web since then. From Flickr to YouTube, from Gmail to Twitter and thousands of others. And the circle has closed a few days ago when Google announced their service platform: Google App Engine. It’s the ultimate service container as it only supports creation of web services:

* An application can only access other computers on the Internet through the provided URL fetch and email services and APIs. Other computers can only connect to the application by making HTTP (or HTTPS) requests on the standard ports.
* An application cannot write to the file system. An app can read files, but only files uploaded with the application code. The app must use the App Engine datastore for all data that persists between requests.
* Application code only runs in response to a web request, and must return response data within a few seconds. A request handler cannot spawn a sub-process or execute code after the response has been sent.

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NetBeans Early Avant-Guard Poetry Site

Apr 9, 08 11:16 AM

Java was very young when we launched NetBeans ten years ago. Our website was one of the early information sources for the language and we were flooded with questions and comments from our users. Some of the messages were so special and poetic that we created an internal page called “NetBeans Early Avant-Guard Poetry Site” and our colleague Janet Haven analyzed some of them. Here is an example of poetic user comment and a review writen by Janet:

I try using NetBeans Developer,
So I want to know
NetBeans Developer.

Ikegami’s brilliant syncopated rhythm both mocks and reveres the traditions of his native land. Neither nature-oriented haiku, nor over-punctuated beatnik, Ikegami’s work straddles the East-West poetic divide with grace and skill. We look forward to hearing more from this master of the “Asian Fusion” school of poetry.

If you want to read more please put on a black beret, light a cigarette and follow this link.

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Bad Day for SaaS

Apr 7, 08 1:45 PM

Part of Amazon EC2 was down earlier today and Tripit is inaccessible since morning. Not the best day for Software as a Service…

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Big in Tanzania

Apr 7, 08 11:07 AM

The global demand for energy is exploding and that is exactly why I decided to invest in coal. Or more precisely in charcoal. My investment is based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and it’s run by Veronica Mtalemwa:
Veronica is a married woman with 3 children, ages 12, 6 and 2 ½. She owns a small charcoal store, which she started in 2001, and is a batique designer. She works everyday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at her business and can earn a monthly profit of about $290 from her sales. More about Veronica at Kiva.org

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SOA is DOA. It’s time for WOA…

Apr 6, 08 2:57 PM

My excitement about the lack of TLAs lasted less than 24 hours:

WOA may soon eclipse SOA as most impactful business transformation agent | Dana Gardner’s BriefingsDirect

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Three Letter Acronyms

Apr 5, 08 7:27 PM

One of the best aspects of working on a web based project is the complete lack of Three Letter Acronyms. I don’t really miss the hype around SOA, EAI, ESB, WS* or any other TLAs. And there was some substantial hype! The first article below illustrates the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” that SOA enjoyed back in 2004 and the second article takes us back to the reality:

BAA plans to ensure smooth customer service and operations through SOA
16 Nov 2004

BAA plans to ensure smooth customer service and operations when Heathrow Terminal 5 opens by introducing software linking up key information systems. The Sonic ESB enterprise service bus product was chosen following an in-depth EU approved OJEC procurement process, with the first systems set to go live in 2005 in preparation to the terminal’s opening in 2008.….

Terminal 5 problems persist
April 5, 2008

A computer glitch in the baggage system at London’s Heathrow airport caused more delays Saturday at the airport’s new Terminal 5, officials said.

Since Terminal 5 opened last week, about 19,000 lost bags had to be transported to Milan, Italy to be sorted and hundreds of flights have been canceled…

Comments (4)

Your report makes no sense silly!

Apr 2, 08 8:20 PM

Enterprise 2.0 is often defined as Web 2.0 for business. We at Good Data are getting inspiration from many Web 2.0 sites and one of them is Goodreads. But I start to wonder how will our enterprise customers react to Web2.0 style error messages:

Silly
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