The Extend Project

Air Canada launching more self-service options

I read in the Globe the other day, Airlines want to help you help yourself, about Air Canada's move to include baggage tags at their self-serve kiosks. Being in a relationship with someone who is very closely tied to the airline industry tends to give me a bit of early warning on these trends, indeed Montie Brewer, CEO of Air Canada, has noted this change in one of his letters in enRoute magazine, Air Canada's in-flight magazine.

I think that while this move could be a bit of a gamble in terms of customer service, I'm pretty sure that most Canadian travellers will actually welcome the option to help themselves manage this kind of service. The same people who use ATM's, make use of the self-serve checkout lines at Loblaws, purchase books online instead of at the retail outlet - these people are the ones who are going to benefit most from this change. The overseas group travellers who have 18 mounds of boxes and bags they're bringing with them back to wherever they came from - these are not the target market for this service.

Harry Gow, co-founder of consumer advocacy group Transport 2000, has a big problem with this service - and I do call it a service whereas he would more likely prefer to call it a non-service. His concerns seem to stem from the fact that the airlines are reducing manned service stations in favour of machines, a move which appears to him to reduce services for travellers as opposed to helping them. Frankly, I couldn't disagree more. For the experienced traveller, holiding an e-Ticket, printing my own boarding pass and luggage tags amounts to nothing more than a reduction of the two plus hours I'd have to normally wait in the queue just to drop off luggage. In this time-is-money society, that two hours just cost me a relaxing pre-boarding experience. That time that could be better spent shopping for duty-free or having a nice sit-down meal - or trying to find free wireless...

Last Day of the First

Tonight will mark the last day of my first semester at Ryerson. All the tests, quizzes, assignments, discussions will culminate in the final exam for Marketing 100. My final assignment was submitted yesterday and hopefully I'll do well enough that my final grade starts me off on the right foot.

It will all be over by about 7pm this evening - then I'm having a well deserved mojito.

UPDATE: So, I wrote the exam. After a bit of a panic when my crappy DLink wireless router decided to go on strike which necessitated a speedy re-route on my Mac Mini, I managed to complete it with about 20 minutes to spare. Result? a very respectable 56/60 with a 30% weight, improved my mid-term score by one mark while I was at it. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. Now that the semester is over, I can start to think about the holidays and the complete commercialism and what this means for branding.... Nah! I'm going shopping! ;-)

iPod Games

I'm one of these people who drank the Kool-Aid and bought one of the very first Apple iPod models. The 5GB white version with the black and white display and mechanical buttons and a physically rotating wheel on the front. It was heavy and scratched easily and ran down battery life pretty damn fast - and I loved it more than my best friend. I traveled with the little guy from Toronto to Taipei to Sydney and back again - then all over North America and then back to Australia and to Japan and then finally, about three years after I got him - he died. Perhaps he'd been dropped on the ground once too many times. Perhaps it was just his time to go, we'll never really know.

What I do know is that it took me a long time to get another one - so long, in fact, that I'd completely forgotten how freeing it was to have music available so readily and so pervasively. I got one of the new iPod shuffles that looked like a piece of Lego and even made that same kind of clicking noise when the cap went on it. Again, he lasted a LONG time - at least until he ran through the wash in a pair of Gap jeans.

Heartbroken once again, I decided that it was not yet time for me to consider another replacement - I was waiting for something new, something cool, something interesting, something I'd not seen before. And then the NEW iPod Shuffle came out (which I purchased with express delivery to be able to have it ASAP) and then the NEW iPod Nano came out (in Product (red) no less!) and the new NEW NEW iPod Nano came out with VIDEO! and then the piece de resistance - the iPhone!! And then the iPod Touch!!! And... and... and...

I'm spent. Literally and figuratively. I've owned one iPod 5GB, one 512MB Shuffle, one 1GB Shuffle, one 4GB Nano, another 4GB Nano and an 8GB Touch - and I'd have the iPhone too if Rogers and Apple could ever stop playing "My cojones are bigger than yours!" for 15 minutes and decide to make some money off the pent up Canadian market.

The point being, I'm an innovator cum early adopter cum mass market junkie. I can't stand to be on the trailing edge of all things iPod - and I doubt I'm the only one.

Now back to my new iPod Nano game, Brain Challenge.