Employees at buuteeq Have an Awesome Travel Perk

Mitch Pittman, over at KING 5 News:

Lots of jobs have benefits: health care, paid vacation, maybe a 401k. But how about yearly all-expense-paid vacations to anywhere in the world? Perks like that are generally reserved for the world of tech start-ups, such as buuteeq, which offers that annual vacation benefit they call “Trotamundo.” The only catch, if you can even call it that, is you have to visit with three hoteliers you stay with along the way and then tell your coworkers about your experience.

​Folks, that is one great perk. Presumably, the requirement to visit hoteliers means that buuteeq can qualify some portion of the employee's vacation as a business expense (and a tax write-off). That's a good example of a win-win scenario.

By the way (in the interests of full disclosure), I happen to be friends with Lisa Tran, one of the buuteeq employees featured in the video.

Looks like Lockerz is Pivoting Into a New Site Named 'Ador'

​John Cook, over at GeekWire:

Lockerz appears to be unlocking its next chapter. The Seattle social commerce startup is behind a service called Ador, a new online fashion site where shoppers can “get new arrivals & sales alerts from your favorite stores.”

I previously wrote about Lockerz and its troubles, and this news seems to be part of the fallout from those issues. Based on separate information that has come to my attention, it sounds like the Lockerz team is pivoting to a new business model. The current model for Lockerz is to encourage users to share their favorite fashion styles and products via social networks (e.g. Facebook) by giving those users discounts on products based on their sharing and curation activities. The new business model, it seems, is to switch to a new site (Ador) which revolves around providing a service that acts as a sort of 'RSS Reader' for fashion styles, trends, and sales. In some respects, this is like a cross between Trendabl and Poshmark. 

It remains to be seen if this pivot will be successful, but it is at the very least quite an interesting idea.

The iPad Will Not Make Air Fares Cheaper, Folks

Nathanael Arnold, in a post over at Wall St. Cheat Sheet:

Besides using the iPad as a piloting accessory, the airline is also initiating its use as an informational customer service device for flight attendants. It remains to be seen if the airline will be passing its new iPad fuel savings on to the passengers.

Arnold's post notes that American Airlines will save a nice bundle of cash in the form of fuel savings by using the iPad as an Electronic Flight Bag for its pilots instead of a traditional paper-based flight bag. The above quote is something that I often see in aviation reporting...the implication being that everywhere an airline saves money is an opportunity to pass those savings on to consumers.

Folks, that just isn't realistic. Airlines in the USA are having difficulties in being profitable (and quite often have been losing money). Airfares are, oddly enough, actually very inexpensive compared to fares in the past (adjusted for inflation). Every bit of cost savings that an airline can manage in today's market will be used to maintain the health and well-being of that airline, not used to save Joe Traveler a couple of bucks on airfare.

Samsung's Galaxy S4 Commercials are Pretty Good

As I have mentioned before, Samsung makes some good commercials.​ In this case, the commercials focus on Samsung's Galaxy S4 smartphone. The "Easy Mode" commercial is fine for what it is, which is an appeal to older individuals that are concerned about phones being too complicated. My favorite of the new batch is the "Grad Photo" commercial, which shows off a camera feature that lets users remove unwanted items from a picture. Quite frankly, this is a feature that every phone should have and the commercial does a good job of selling this as an essential feature. The commercial shows potential buyers a real world scenario where they might make use of and value such a feature.

Samsung's Galaxy S4 Comes With Less Available Storage Than You Might Think

Chris Welch, in a post over at The Verge:

Some buyers of Samsung's new Galaxy S4 have been disappointed to learn that the 16GB model offers only around 8GB of user-accessible storage. However, in a statement to CNET, Samsung is reminding irked customers that they can easily remedy any concerns with the help of the built-in microSD slot.

If this was an Apple product, you wouldn't be able to turn on your TV without hearing about this story. Since it's not, you won't hear about it (except here, of course).​

Path is Getting Its Hand Slapped

Bryan Bishop, over at The Verge regarding the social network app Path having its API access restricted by Facebok:

The spamming behavior first went into effect with a March 6th update to the app. It gained traction when a digital marketer named Stephen Kenwright signed up with the app, and discovered that multiple individuals from his contacts received Path text notification early the next morning — even though he'd subsequently deleted the app on his own device. In that particular case, some of the texts manifested as robocalls due to the way local phone companies dealt with text messages sent to landlines.

​It isn't at all surprising that Path would pull something like this. They've been caught with their hand in the cookie jar before. Also, what would you expect from a company whose CEO has this kind of personality?

I don’t use a ring of any kind on my phone. This is so that I am always on offense and never defense.

Nintendo Wants to Remind People That the Wii U and Wii are Not the Same

Sean Buckley over at Engadget posted ​a press release from Nintendo, and this was the best part:

Wii U is the all-new home console from Nintendo. It's not just an upgrade -- it's an entirely new system that will change the way you and your family experience games and entertainment.

​Folks, this is just sad. As I've written before, the Nintendo Wii U has been selling poorly. Nintendo could not have handled this product any more incompetently than if they filled the inside of the device with wood chips (which, if nothing else, could be used as bedding for hamsters). Nintendo made some serious engineering mistakes with the product (e.g. anemic graphics horsepower, awkward and unnecessary tablet controller), but this press release shows that they also failed miserably in marketing the console. Giving the product a name that is practically indistinguishable from its predecessor is inexcusable, especially given the fact that its specs and games are not significantly different (at the very least, not 'six years' different) from the Wii.

Folks, it doesn't look good for the people from the House of Mario.​

My WWDC Sob Story

I was ready this year. Oh boy, was I ready. I was ready for Apple's World Wide Developers Conference. Last year, in 2012, Apple made ​tickets available on April 25th around 5:30 a.m. PDT and tickets sold out in roughly two hours. I was fortunate to get a ticket that year. A colleague, stricken with mild insomnia, was awake and noticed the tickets were on sale. It was his email (or rather, the notification sound on my phone) that woke me from my slumber in time to purchase a ticket.

That year's WWDC was a blast. I met quite a few interesting people and enjoyed the technical sessions throughout the week. With that in mind, I did my best to prepare for this year's WWDC. Like many folks, I prepared a notification system that would let me know when the WWDC page changed. I was not willing to take the chance that the notification system would fail, so I decided to wake up every day at 5:30 a.m. for a month around the time I expected that the WWDC tickets might go on sale.​

I had my first burst of WWDC-related adrenaline when my phone started going crazy with notification alerts around 5:17 pm. on April 22nd. The WWDC page was down for about an hour that day, and when it came back up I had to read the page twice to make sure that it still said '2012' and not '2013'. As it turns out, Apple decided to make a change to how it handled ticket sales to WWDC this year. Rather than just making the tickets available for sale at a random time (which upset quite a few West Coast developers last year), Apple decided to give developers a bit of a heads-up notice that tickets would be available at 10:00 a.m. PDT on April 25th. This was presumably in response to many developers who felt that they did not have a fair chance to purchase tickets before they were sold out. I had a bad feeling about this.

To prepare for buying a ticket, I decided to buy an item from the Apple store just so I could make sure that my billing and credit card information was correct. On the day of the tickets going on sale, I also logged into my account on the off chance that I could shave a few precious seconds off of the time that it would take to get through the checkout process. I had my chat client up and was communicating with a friend who was also getting prepared to buy a ticket. As the clock drew closer and closer to 10:00 a.m., I started mashing the refresh command like a monkey on crack. Finally, I was able to see the button to begin the process!​

I clicked the button, but got an error page. I clicked the back button, and tried again. I tried again and again but still received an error message. Finally, I was prompted to sign in. I did so faster than I ever had before, and was taken to an odd page. It showed my account as logged in, with my name and Person ID displayed. There was something odd though...why was my team name displayed as something like 'Chris Philbin' when that is not even close to correct? I tried refreshing the page, but got that darn error page again. At this point, my friend mentioned that he was going to switch from trying to buy a ticket with Chrome to using Safari. I did likewise, but got this:

​Not what I wanted to see.

The current time at this point? 10:02 a.m. Just in case you think that was a typo, let me repeat it for you: 10:02 a.m.​

WWDC 2013 sold out in two minutes. All 5,000 tickets, reserved in an instant.​ I didn't believe it was possible and thought that it was surely an error somehow related to the strain of having so many users hit Apple's servers at once. I had seen issues like this before with Apple's online store (particularly during the release of a new iPhone or iPad), and decided that I would keep hitting the refresh command. I did this for several more minutes. It was like the scene in a movie where the good guy keeps pulling the trigger on an empty clip.

Eventually, I accepted the fact that tickets had sold out. My friend and I chatted a bit more about this experience, and discussed options for attending alternatives such as 360|iDev or Cocoaconf later this year.

Later that evening, I spent a bit of time reading various articles discussing what had happened earlier in the day. John Siracusa, of Ars Technica and Hypercritical fame, wrote an interesting blog about WWDC:​

After yesterday’s experience of watching WWDC tickets sell out in what I measured to be less than 2 minutes, I’ve changed my mind. If the tickets had sold out in, say, 10 minutes (and assuming no server errors—more on that in a moment), then dedicated buyers would have been rewarded. If you couldn’t be bothered to be online until more than 10 minutes after the tickets went on sale, well, tough luck. Someone else wanted it more. But tickets selling out in less than 2 minutes does not reward anyone’s dedication. We were all online at 10 a.m. PDT sharp, all ready to purchase, all equally dedicated. It was a de facto lottery, with an extra layer of pointless stress added on top.

This year's solution (pre-announcing the date and time that tickets would go on sale) was, in some respects, superior to last year's solution (random time to begin selling tickets). It still feels like there is some room for improvement to this process. Perhaps an actual lottery? That would still have some measure of stress related to not knowing if you'll be able to buy a ticket, but at the very least it would avoid the "extra layer of pointless stress" noted by Siracusa. I am hopeful that Apple will come up with a better solution next year.

Don't Let Wireless Carriers Abuse the Term 5G

Kevin Fitchard, writing for GigaOM:​

4G became a meaningless term, and we tech journalists reinforced its meaninglessness by swallowing the terminology carriers fed us. If carriers get their hooks into the acronym 5G, you can bet the exact same thing will happen. Once one carrier succumbs, others will race to redefine their perfectly serviceable 4G networks as 5G networks. An the next operator to gain the slightest technical edge will start bandying about the term 6G.

This is one of those situations where journalists need to take a stand. Don't let marketers misuse a term, because doing so perpetuates misleading advertising and ultimately results in consumer confusion.​

Microsoft's Crazy Magazine Advertisement for Office 365

​Jon Fingas, at Engadget:

Americans who've received a special issue of Forbes have flipped past the articles to discover a fully functional (if stripped down) T-Mobile router tucked into a cardboard insert. Once activated, it dishes out 15 days of free WiFi for up to five devices at once, at up to three hours per charge.

I have conflicted thoughts about this move. On the one hand, it's interesting from a technical and marketing standpoint. It certainly does a good job of getting the reader's attention on Office 365 (as well as T-Mobile). The troubling part, as noted by some of the commenters in the article, is the fact that this would look awfully suspicious if someone attempted to take it through an airport's x-ray machine.