According to Ed Brill’s twitter stream:
Brent Peters just announced that activesync for Lotus Notes Traveler will beta in May/release late Q3 2009 during LotusUserGroup.org webcast
Finally! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some iPhone orders to place…
On 2 of the 3 flights I took during my vacation last week, the airplanes I was on had been updated to have WiFi on board. The 2 flights that had it were Delta. Their newly soon-to-be-merged partner, Northwest, didn’t yet have WiFi on their aircraft, despite the fact that the Northwest plane was significantly newer than the two Delta planes I flew.
The in-flight WiFi service works through GoGo and has a fee assoicated with it that doesn’t include accessing some content on delta.com. It appeared to be a pretty slick system with reaonsabily fast speed. Upon returning from vacation, I decided to look into a bit more only to learn that Delta has a blog which details the planes that have had this system added to them. I have to admit: I was impressed at the fact that they were doing WiFi on their planes AND that they had a blog to talk about it. Nicely done!
As a side-note, it also impressed me that Delta staff seemed to be consistently striving to offer great customer service. From the woman at the gate who worked hard to get our family better seats to the staff on-board who were always pleasant and curteous (even ASKING me nicely to keep my foot out of the isle when it was COMPLETELY my fault for leaving it there while they were serving drinks … something I never do but was so into the movie I was watching I wasn’t paying attention). Even something as small as handing you a basket of snacks and offering to let you take as many as you’d like is a big deal — especially in this day of being charged for everything.
Now for the funny part… on the 2nd (Delta) flight, they announced that there was a problem that left them with no potable water, so they (apparently – I didn’t check) placed large bottles in the restrooms for people to use when washing hands on the short flight. They did, however, have WiFi working properly – which a few people around me joked about saying that they’d rather have “WiFi vs. Water” anyway. Priorities.
Apple blogs are buzzing about an upcoming event that will feature the iPhone OS 3.0 software. The event is scheduled for March 17th at 10:00AM Pacific time and will apparently provide people a sneak-peek of the new operating system for the iPhone.
Could it be that this was the milestone everyone has been waiting for before an announcement about a Lotus Notes solution ActiveSync support for the iPhone? I sure hope so!
Don’t worry, I’m not holding my breath. At least I won’t start holding it until 10:00 on 3/17.
Tags: activesync, iphone, lotus notes, phones
Disney fans might recognize that title. I guess you could say that I have Disney on the brain after last week’s podcast episode on my other site. Moving on…
Last week I traveled out to our office in L.A. For the first time in a long time, I flew on US Airways. The flight down took place in Feburary, which meant that if I wanted a can of pop, I’d have to shell out $2 for it … which I thought was crazy. (Although, not as crazy as dishing out money to use the restroom.) The return flight took place in March, when the airline reversed their decision to charge for pop, so I enjoyed all the free drinks they’d allow. I have to be honest, I didn’t want anything to drink on either flight home (two legs of the trip back home) but out of principle, I ordered something anyway.
I think its interesting to see how quiet airlines are right now. A year ago at this time, we couldn’t avoid hearing about their woes brought about by (according to them) high fuel prices. To combat the higher fuel cost (over the last few years) they’ve increased fares, reduced flights and began to charge for things like the ability to take luggage with you (unless you’re one of the MANY people that now crams it in the overhead compartment as a way around it). However, today, none of those decisions have been reversed – even though fuel is less expensive again. I understand that these decisions are designed to improve profitability – but it seems that a few of them (namely the luggage one) should be reversed, much like the charge for pop was on US Air.
Oddly enough, outside of people talking about this at terminals, very little chatter appears to be present on websites and blogs that I frequent – suggesting that we’ve either adjusted to it or we’re OK with the price models in place now.
And its not as if airlines don’t have a way to measure this. Certainly they have their own customer service reporting tools but they have all new metering systems available to them, like twitter! When news about Ryan Air’s consideration of charging for restroom use hit the media, twitter lit up with feedback. Like or hate their idea – you have to admit that market research like that is quite powerful! Unlike US Air, they don’t have to enact the change to figure out how people are going to react … they can just read through the twitter stream to get a sense of it. — What an amazing, powerful and inexpensive way to conduct market research (although I’m stopping short of calling it “good” until I see if the phenomenon caused an increase or decrease in flights and customer perception in the marketplace).
Moving on…
A co-worker traveling with me snapped the following picture in his exit row seat. I get what they’re trying to say here, but I think its a really funny sign nonetheless.
Finally, let’s talk a second about “zones.” A lot of airlines have gone to this as a new way of loading the plane. If you haven’t seen this yet (and if you only travel Northwest Airlines – that’s probably you) the idea is that your ticket has a zone number on it. When your number is called, you get on the plane. Simple enough. Its just like “boarding rows 1 through 10″ just faster to say over the P.A. system.
One would assume that zones match up with segments of rows (like rows 1-10; 11-20; etc.) or types of seats (exit rows, window seats, etc.) – but they don’t always seem to follow that logic. Infact, I couldn’t figure out the logic to it at all in any of the 4 flights I took to get out to L.A. and back. I compared zones with people around me and on other parts of the plane and found no pattern to them … other than they appeared to want me to get on the plane last – no matter where I sat.
I guess that is a pattern, isn’t it. 
What people here are saying…