It's not often that you can say "back by popular demand" and mean it, but in this case that's absolutely true. Your feedback (and our enjoyment, frankly) was so all positive that we are doing it again. mesh is coming back, next Spring, here in Toronto.

More details are to come, but in the meantime please save the dates and plan to join us. Registration (which we are working hard at keeping affordable) and keynotes will be announced soon.

In the mesh spirit, we are also hosting a meet-up after 6pm on November 15th at the Irish Embassy Pub in Toronto, for anyone involved in the online technology, media, financing or any other vaguely connected web-type. Or if you like Guinness :) It's just a chance to get together and share some web-by conversation.

Check out the mesh blog for more, including links to the podcasts of last year's keynotes (finally...I know, I know) and more from Rob, Mike, Mark and Mathew.

And see you at mesh07.

Tags: mesh, mesh07

Before I started Expedia.ca, I was with Signature Vacations which was Canada's largest packaged vacation company. Our Vancouver office was run by a long-time airline guy, one of these buttoned-down, big-talking, operations-focused veterans who, like many in the Canadian aviation landscape, had begun at Pacific Western, then moved on to what became Canadian Airlines, and with its passing found other things to do.

His name was Mel Crothers, and that same Mel Crothers today finds himself on the cover of the Globe and Mail in a quarter-page, above-the-fold, full colour picture and huge story under the heading "This WestJet staffer blew the whistle on his employer's corporate spying. He's still waiting for someone to say thanks."

Wow.

In reading the piece, I have to say that I am not at all surprised to learn of Mel's reaction. He always struck me as a very principled man, and I can only imagine how difficult it has been for him to walk away from the industry he loved. I was surprised to read the in the account that he called Steve Smith at Air Canada's Zip, rather than taking it up the food chain within WestJet. Sure, Clive was on holiday - but what about Don Bell or somebody else? In any event, I don't doubt that Mel was doing what he thought was right.

I was startled to see the name of Duncan Bureau in the piece, identified as the guy who showed Mel the Air Canada internal website his computer screen with Air Canada's logo and load factors between Calgary and Vancouver. When we were firing up Expedia in Canada, Duncan was our go-to sales guy at WestJet, who we saw as an aggressive, upcoming and sharp mover-and-shaker. From the piece:

"It all came down to four hours on the Friday afternoon of Dec. 19, 2003. At 1:30 p.m., Mr. Crothers was having a “casual conversation” at the desk of Duncan Bureau, WestJet director of sales, according to the informant's sworn affidavit.

Mr. Bureau couldn't be reached Tuesday for comment.

Mr. Bureau displayed his computer screen bearing Air Canada's logo, said the affidavit, and the screen also showed Air Canada's load factors, or the proportion of available seats filled, between Calgary and Vancouver."

I have no idea where Duncan fits into this picture - I don't even know if he is still at WestJet. And he certainly was a friend to Expedia.ca. But, I for one cannot help but get an awful niggle about the oh-too-often link between "agressive mover-and-shaker" and "pushing it too far". I mean, we have all seen that movie too many times.

UPDATE: Duncan called me this afternoon, and told me that he is now VP Sales for WestJet. This was the first time I had ever spoken with him, as in the past this relationship was held by other people who worked for me when I was running Expedia Canada. After speaking with him, I also made the change to the paragraph above, reflecting more accurately what was said in the Globe and Mail article. To be clear, the article does not state that it was Duncan who showed Mel the AC site on his computer, but refers to an affadvit which makes the claim quoted above.

In the story, Mel wonders if he will ever get a Thank You card from Uncle Miltie over at Air Canada. He clearly isn't expecting one from Clive.Well, given that I have my doubts over whether Miltie would even know what a Thank You card is, I'd say don't hold your breath.

But Mel, regardless, you did the right thing.

UPDATE: I have received a lot of email traffic on this post today, which is oddly not reflected in the comments. The biggest question most people are asking is why Mel went to Steve at Zip rather than taking it up the chain internally. Fair question, and as I said in my post, I continue to imagine that Mel must have had what he thought were good reasons and it is still best that this came out.

Tags: air canada, westjet, mel crothers, duncan bureau, expedia, signature vacations

News today that another Expedia person is off to do something new. Francois Daoud was my 7th (I think?) hire at Expedia Canada, and was brought on initially to work on marketing in French Canada as we rolled into that new market.

He is leaving to move to the US to run marketing for a San Francisco based start-up. Quick with a laugh and always game for anything, Francois will certainly enjoy himself back on the Left Coast.

Happy trails, Frankie :)

Well, not really, but my Wife and I did spend last week recording our radio listening habits for the latest round of Toronto BBM (Bureau of Broadcast Measurement) ratings. You know, those things that the stations use to figure out who's listening, and advertisers use to figure what stations to buy to reach what audience. We hadn't done it before, and given I have an, um, more-than-passing interest in media and advertising, we figured what-the-heck.

While filling out a little booklet was fine and dandy, what was most interesting to me in the process was realizing how little radio I listen to anymore. It was really surprising. Not that I am not listening to anything, but that it's not radio. For instance, we went away as a family so the music was kid's tunes on the iPod. Then, it was me in the car, listening to CDs, music and podcasts. On the subway? All iPod, all-the-time. Home? Same. Kid's music and iPod tunes and podcasts.

I also found it interesting that the BBM people don't seem to be interested in knowing that I am listening to my iPod, or CDs for that matter - although, you'd think that they'd want to know what is happening around substitution. Oh, wait, right, they *don't* want to know.

Tags: BBM, tags, radio, ratings

Aer Lingus being bought by Ryanair would be smart. If, and it's a big if, the vagaries of transatlantic aviation regulation can be managed. Long-haul equipment and routes utilizing a Dublin LCC hub might make for an interesting alternative, and goodness knows the European skies need those. It does seem like the sell-off IPO price that the Irish government set was likely too low, though, if Ryanair can turn around and do this deal so quickly. But these are smart guys, Aer Lingus has cut a whack of cost and it feels like it could work nicely.

Porter Airlines, the new Toronto Island, er, City Centre Airport-based outfit is set to fly shortly. Backed by Robert Deluce (of Air Ontario and Canada 3000 fame...I'd say that the only more jet-fuel-in-the-veins Canadian commercial aviation guy might have been the late Max Ward, although I would be hard pressed to put Deluce in that esteemed bucket for many, many reasons). They will be operating the new version of the Dash 8, the Bombardier Q400 and are coming to market with 20 flights daily between the Island and Montreal and Ottawa. The look-and-feel is all very boutique-hotel, with chocolate brown and sea blue, comments about "a Porter being someone who carries your bags" and a tagline of "Flying refined. (tm)."

Uh huh. Dudes, yer flying a Dash 8 from the Island, porter is thick beer and yer mascot is a racoon. For goodess sake, kids, get over yourselves.

Tags: aer lingus, ryanair, porter, goat rodeo

 

Kudos to my friend and mesh-mate Mark Evans who has decided to put his talent where his mouth is (or something like that). Yesterday, Mark resigned his post at The National Post, where he covered the technology scene, and announced that he is becoming VP Operations for the newly-formed b5 blog network. I think a lot of Mark, and know that he believes strongly in the potential of this type of new media. That, plus the fact that they just scored $2 million in VC funding from John Albright's JLA Ventures and Mark Skapinker's BrightSpark, seems to have been what it took to get him to make this big step.

I wish him, and the b5 crew, nothing but success.

Tags: mark evans, b5

News today that Airbus, the European aircraft enterprise and not-too-long-ago wunderkind of the global aviation world has dropped the ball *again* and will be pushing first deliveries of their huge A380 twin-deck behemoth for another entire year. The parent company, EADS, is projecting that this second, major slip will cost them $6.1 billion in operating profit.

Parking the whole "man, I get that it's a complicated thing to create a new thing like this, but how could they have messed this so badly?" line of thought for a moment, let's think about the downstream implications. Singapore Airlines and Emirates - two of the most successful global players, with well deserved reputations for service and strength via small-but-well-located hubs as their home bases - have committed to buying a whack of these machines. Which means, they did not commit to other alternatives, such as the latest Boeing 747 for instance. The result of these slips means that their entire business plan has been thrown for a loop, for years to come. Airports have done major upgrades, pilots have been trained, revenue has been projected. Just as traffic from China looks set to ramp - prime business for both these guys - they look to be short of capacity. And Virgin, who seems to have ongoing gifts of "oopsies" from British Airways landing in their lap, is also left holding the bag. And Lufthansa, FedEx...da da da.

I guess after all the changes in the Airbus executive suite, it's better to call it and take the hit, but I can't help but think that this could have all been avoided. The Boeing folks in Chicago/Seattle, Embraer in Brazil etc. must be doing all they can not to high five around the office.

Tags: airbus, a380, goat rodeo

Congratulations to all who were elected, and to those who did not - many thanks for your participation.

Tags: CIRA

We all have our little pleasures, I guess. Some people eat ice cream, some curl up with a good book. Me? I read The Economist. In many ways, it's like trying to get drunk on Guinness: it tastes great, but man is it heavy after awhile. I subscribed at one point, but mostly ended up feeling guilty about not reading it most weeks. So now, it's an occasional purchase before a trip or what have you. But I still love it.

So will you pardon me tooting my horn by mentioning how neat it feels (yes, geeky lame-o neat, I admit) that I am the lead in a story in this week's edition? Turns out that this blog post about watching the World Cup on the train via WiFi caught the eye of a writer working on a story on that very topic, and it went from there.

The story is here.

Tags: wifi, the economist

It's funny that the English language doesn't have a single word for what the Germans call schadenfreude, which wikipedia defines as: "pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune." The Dutch have a similar word ("leedvermaak") which they use in a proverb that goes Geen schoner vermaak dan leedvermaak: No better joy than joy about someone else's sorrow. I used to live in The Netherlands. Got to love those kids. Anyhoo...

In a completely unrelated vein, I note with interest that Steve McArthur is leaving as President of Expedia.com. I am sure that I join a massive chorus of countless others who wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavours.

Tags: Expedia

As some know, I haven't really been on the whole "podcast" bandwagon. I sort of listened to some while online, but the whole subscribe-via-itunes-and-listen-later thing wasn't really something I had bought into.

Until now.

I decided to try to get a few podcasts and listen to them during my commute. So here I sit on the subway listening to "Bill Maher" and laughing out loud. Yesterday, I listened to CBC Radio One's global perspective show "Dispatches" in the car.

I have to say I am really enjoying doing it. In both cases, they are either shows I can't get (Maher is on HBO in the US which I at least don't get on cable here in Toronto) or usually have to miss (the CBC show is on around kids' bedtime).

They are both great, and I have to say that this place-shifting plus fresh-content thing might be handy after all.

(Posted via blackberry)

Tags: podcast, Bill Maher, Dispatches

  As Chair of the Nominating Committee, I've been remiss in not mentioning that the CIRA Board Elections are happening now. If you own a .ca domain, this is your chance to influence the direction of the Internet in Canada, and I would encourage you to check out who is running, what they think, and to vote!

Tags: CIRA

 

Cool to see that RIM is going public with the much- blogged-about-already Pearl, their new multi-tasking (music, camera, expansion slot etc.) device. As a devoted 'berry-man (skip the Chris DeBurgh jokes please ;-)) and having FINALLY recently upgraded to the 8700 (more on that whole story later) I am really pleased to see them getting with the multipurpose program.

But why, oh why are they sticking with the awful phone-not-QWERTY keyboard? Unfortunately, that call means that I, for one, won't be buying. That dinky thing is a nasty way to write an email.

Shame.

Tags: blackberry, rim, pearl

I sampled the new service at a downtown location yesterday. It was easy to get online by getting a userid and password via SMS to my 'berry, though I couldn't figure out how to change either after the fact (e.g. am I stuck with the wacky randomly assigned thing in the future or can I change it?). The service was also a wee bit slow - not the connection, which was both broad and "excellent" for the time I was connected, but the speed whereby pages were being served up was very slow. Not sure what might be behind that.

All in all, it was handy and since it's free for the next 6 months, great value too :-).

Update: Sitting here at my Second Office (the *$ at the northeast corner of Yonge and King here in the Tdot :-)) back online with the Hydro service. Around me, people are having problems getting passwords and userids: upon entering their mobile numbers and hitting enter, the next page deosn't load, so they are getting nowhere. This also happened to a friend yesterday. For me, since I already have login info, I got in right away.

The signal is strong, and I am loaded and viewed a couple of YouTube videos just for the heck of it, and the Slingbox is streaming well to boot. Although, I did turn it off since there's only so much "Backyardigans" an adult should have to watch in one morning, and I had my fill at home ;-)

And as a final note, just as I went to publish this, my connection died.

So, my overall rating? Early days, so I am going to give them some slack and assume that they will work these niggles out. This is "beta" so it is not necessarily indicative of where this system will end up.

Tags: toronto, wifi

After five weeks away, I am back in Toronto and getting ready for the Back to School madness.

We had a great family trip to the Maritimes after our run to Europe, and now I am just starting to get back up to speed with things. Expect more blog posts again from now on (and thanks to those of you who emailed wondering if I had stopped posting ;-)).

In the meantime, if you happen to be near a radio or a computer, I am going to be on CBC Radio One this morning at 10am local time across Canada, as part of a panel discussing The Long Tail.

Hope you are all having a great summer.

Surrounded by a sea of red as the Schu-fosi revel in the local boy's win. There might be a few Ferrari fans in there, but make no mistake that here it is all about Michael. And the local kids are happy.

Not the most exciting race ever - Kimi lost it pretty much right off the bat with an early pit stop, and Jacques New Town did his (sigh) standard "I'm out" move about halfway through.

But watching the Schumi Army - thousands of them, with flags from dozens of countries in view - party hearty is surely a sight to see.

The boys are at it, aiming for position in tomorrow's race. Hot here in Hockenheim, but cooler than yesterday.

The session has already been red flagged with the American Scott Speed wiping out quite nicely. Second time in as many races - he lost it in France last time, and hurt his back.

Should have aimed for Nascar, maybe. Bud and ribs, all 'round!

;-)

That Wife of mine is one smooth operator. Not only did she pull one over on me with a surprise party that lasted an entire weekend with guests from across the Country, but she *also* managed to pull off arranging a trip to Europe without me knowing.

We are sitting in a breakfast spot in Prague (posting via 'berry on the T-Mobile CZ lightning fast Edge network), after visiting the gorgeous spa town of Karlovy Vary and before spending the weekend at the German F1 Grand Prix in Hockenheim. All a complete surprise to Yours Truly.

Maybe being 40 doesn't suck after all!

Oh, wait. It still does.

Sorry for the uber-lame post, but I turn 40 in a week and my wife and best friend managed to completely pull one over on me and I'm am sitting at a cottage on Georgian Bay with a bunch of guys from all over the continent who mean a lot to me, drinking beer and single malt and enjoying the best sunset of the year.

This is - without doubt - the best present I could imagine.

Okay, so I know that the to-do over Rocketboom is frankly silly and tiny, but I still find it remarkable that, with all the interest in this story and where Andrew is taking it next, they are a day late putting their next show up there.

As they say, "enquiring minds want to know" (extremely apt saying on this occasion, as that's about the level of importance this thing has) and from a business perspective, I'd say missing the hugely-anticipated re-launch is likely not a good call, no?

Update: Rocketboom 2.0 beta ;-) is up, and I have to say I found it quite entertaining. And the interim host, Joanne Colan, is pretty strong too. Congrats!

Tags: rocketboom, goatrodeo

Those wacky kids at travel meta-search site Kayak.com look to be all set to burn through a pile of VC money trying to build awareness and reach with what I think will be their first TV creative. Apparently set to run on cable in the US, these spots feel more like an attempt at a viral web thing than a serious TV campaign, yet apparently they are really set to air them.

I could spend a whack of time outlining why they are far off the mark, or why they are clearly more about the agency O.D.-ing on their own self-declared brilliance, or how they seem to have zero relationship to anything close to a meaningful consumer insight, but you know what? I won't. Heck, given that these spots make the frickin' Travel'O'City gnome look like a stroke of brilliance I'm not going to waste the keystrokes.

Next.

Tags: kayak

Why?

Why would he do that? Why would someone with such a stellar career have *that* as the final punctuation? I mean, the Italian guy said something offensive, but c'mon. "Your Coq ain't really all that Sportif" or "Ta mere wears army boots" or ANYTHING can't possibly justify a nasty head butt and a frankly appropriate red card.

But with all that was on the line, with the strong likelihood of penalty kicks and Zizou's freakish skill in that regard...well, it's unfathomable that he would have done that.

Tags: zidane, fifaworldcup

At a backyard bbq for the FIFA final. Mey the best team win, and my that team be France.

I can't help but have this really sinking feeling that we are entering the twilight of the current online boom(let). The froth feels like it is hitting a rolling boil, and I fear the end is nigh. Why? Well, there are a bunch of examples:

~ Lots of the glitterati of the current boom(let) are punching out to "do their own things".

~ The enormous row over the whole "Web 2.0 TM" thing.

~ The seeming gobs of new VC money looking for a home, any home, in the absence of any really compelling exit opportunities and atop crappy track records to boot.

~ Gawker laying off staff to get out ahead what they fear as a coming crash.

~ Conferences, conferences, conferences!!!

~ The current Rocketboom firestorm.

~ And, most definitely the growing hum that "it's different this time."

Well, you know what? It ain't different this time. Like it wasn't different last time. It's just smaller.

I fear it's time to roll up the tent and await Web 3.0. This party is smelling like it's winding down.

(photo credit: http://www.lightbox5.com/likeitmatters/50100138_76bd65c296-2.jpg)

Tags: web20, jumptheshark

More later, but this is great news for Cendant and bad news for Blackstone. Online 3rd party sites and associated plumbing aren't coming back any time soon.

Update: The potential for Cendant in the travel space had always been that the synergies of having a vertically integrated entity - like a European style tour operator - would pay off. By combining a host of suppliers (Avis, Budget, Wyndham, Ramada, Super 8, Travelodge) and the plumbing to distribute them (the Apollo CRS, Orbitz, CheapTickets.com and even trip.com before them) costs would be reduced and margins fattened up and down the chain. Sadly, that just never happened.

With this breakup and the creation of a pure distribution arm, any hope of that seems out the window. Of course, CRSs and online resellers aren't going away anytime soon, but there sure is every indication that they are struggling to stave off declines in growth and margins.

I guess the good people at Blackstone can see something I don't, or they have other plans. Or perhaps just wringing more cost out means that this can spin out a nice enough ongoing income annuity through the decline that they are fine with it.

But it sure isn't a growth play.


Tags: orbitz, travelport, blackstone, cendant

My friend Mark has a post up riffing on the whole "we don't need your bloody marketing" thing that web 2.0 types tend to wax poetic on. And the post sorta makes me want to scream and shove sharp objects in my eyes.

Why? Because Marketing is, and near as I can tell always has been, the basis upon which virtually any good business has been built, and it misses the point completely. For the record, a-gain: Promotion is only a part of Marketing. An important part to be sure, but jeez louise people, it ain't the whole thing.

When I read things out there in the big world like "to be successful you have to have a product that meets a need, regardless of the marketing" or "the marketing was good, but they didn't get the distribution they needed" or "they had great marketing, but it was too expensive" it drives me batty. Marketing is all of those things. Anybody who thinks that somehow you can create something and then foist it on an unsuspecting public with enough ads and it will work must have a penchant for making their lives a living hell.

Marketing is, at its' core, recognizing a problem and then doing everything to profitably solve it. The best businesses stay completely focused on solving that problem in a way that resonates with their market. So for you webby startups out there, that's the thing to remember. It's not whether or not you can avoid spending money on advertising, it's how well you are making your customers' lives better.

Fact is, if you are doing real Marketing well, everything will be easier.

Tags: marketing

Congrats to the Farecast gang for moving out of private to public beta today. Though, with mentions on TechCrunch and BoingBoing, among others, it's not like my little heads-up here matters. That's some serious b-sphere coverage. Nicely done Mike and team.

Now their challenge is to prove that the whiz-bang, P.R.-friendly airfare predictor feature is more than the flavour-of-the-month, and to continue to build on the solid start of their metasearch tool. Oh, and to move into hotels because that's where the cash is. No small task.

Tags: farecast

 

As I mentioned here, TripHub is a new Seattle-based online travel startup which includes some former Expedia colleagues of mine, and at least one Expedia + msn Travel Channel veteran. Off the top, I offer kudos to all of them for tackling something new, and extra kudos for taking on the very difficult task of helping people manage the tremendously ungainly world of group travel.

As you might take from the last sentence, I went into my tire kick of the site with fairly low expectations. Not because these aren't bright folks, but because group travel is really hard to do. As it turns out, my expectations were probably well placed - at least partially.  This is a pretty good invitations-and-central-repository-like-Evite meets private-label-Hotels.com site, but as a real group travel management tool, they still fall short.

Now, the Evite-esque invitation and central trip record thing is a cool tool. If you have ever used Evite to invite people to a party or event, you can probably imagine applying that concept to multi-person trip planning. Pretty handy. And, they have a private label deal with the Hotels.com/TravelNow crew (all part of the Expedia group of companies) and Viator for activities, which from a revenue perspective should drive affiliate revenue for them. But, from a user perspective, beyond the Evite-esque thing, they don't seem to offer much in terms of true group travel planning assistance.

What do I mean by that? Well, "group travel" is really about people going as a group of more than X people (depending on the supplier) and saving money. Fact is, this functionality is very, very hard to offer online. There are a lot of reasons for that which I won't go into, but more to the point, it does not seem that TripHub has pushed that envelope any further.

To their credit, they do link to group request pages on various supplier sites, as well as promoting "featured links" to these types of pages, so and it looks like they are likely getting some kind of payment for the referral and ad revenue for the features, which is good for them in terms of revenue. But short of aggregating the links, there's little user value there.

The flight search is nothing special - it's a straight-up pass through to the TravelNow IAN platform, and only searches for a maximum of 6 passengers (there's one of those hard group travel planning problems - this is a limitation imposed by the CRS). For true "group" deals, you have to go to the airline's own group booking sites, and then input the details back into TripHub manually. Likewise for the hotel portion: there is certainly no new ground being broken in terms of the search functionality itself (eg: there is no meta search or breakthrough-anything here; it's just vanilla private label Hotels.com). In fact, TripHub offers nothing which makes hotel seeking "groups" easier to book or price multiple rooms at once.

Net/net: while the Evite-esque feature is pretty neat-o, as a real travel planning service and aid to group travel, TripHub doesn't get the job done.

Update: I had a chat with Michael McGinn, TripHub's CFO and Operations guy this afternoon. Michael also happens to be a former colleague, a former Expedia Strategic Planning VP and long time air industry guy. He's also one smart cookie to boot. Michael talked with me about their desire to use solving the problem of people travelling together as a way to get people to keep coming back and build an ongoing audience for advertisers. He stressed that the traditional travel industry idea of "group travel" being about deals is not at the core of what they are offering, and I have to agree that making the prospect of "going together" easier is a good good one. As I said above.

All that said, and with great respect to Michael and the team, I still can't imagine that what they have today is where they are going to end up. It just shouldn't be. Group travel is a big business, and making it truly better in a big way is a nice, chewy, defensible objective. My hope is that, regardless of what they are saying at this point, they do have cracking that big problem as the ultimate goal. Now *that* would be cool.

Tags: triphub

Man, living in a formerly heavily Ukrainian neighborhood has never meant anything until now. Today, it's wall to wall cars-with-flags and honking horns.

Little Italy eat your heart out! Too cool.

Update: It hit me that unless you are following the tournement, you are likely scratching your head as to why this celebration was happening. The reason is that Ukraine beat Switzerland 1-0 in todays's FIFA World Cup match.

Here are a few pics of the spectacle - literally at the end of the street. Yep, this is Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Jeff has a tremendous post here. Long, but worth it.

Lines up with my view of the world, big time - as anyone who has been listening to me for the past, oh, two years, and has been playing any sort of follow-the-money already knows.

 

Today might just be my best sporting event day ever.

England over Ecuador, now five cars out of the Montreal GP in the first 13 laps.

Yee-haw.

 

Reuters is reporting that Boeing is considering selling or even shutting down Conexxion by Boeing, their inflight internet service. Certainly, after spending a reported US$1billion for an asset which is being estimated at having a $150m value, you can sort of understand why.

But...what's with these people? As I mentioned here, the bandwidth to make this possible in the US was just made available by the FCC, and the US is arguably the biggest potential market. Walking now seems tantamount to throwing out the baby before the bathwater is even poured.

Now, I suppose it could be that Boeing has already heard that airlines have zero intention of equipping their aircraft with the necessary gear anytime prior to the freezing over of a very warm place.

But man, if you have come this far, only to see the door to potential mega-adoption open in front of you, doesn't giving up seem just a little silly?

Tags: fccauction65, fcc, boeing, airborneinternet

 

The good people at the Globe and Mail have taken it upon themselves to do a feature on me in this Thursday's edition of their new Report on [small] Business Magazine. It's the second time they are putting it out, and in keeping with their main and respected Report on Business Magazine, they are devoting the last page to something called "Exit Strategy". The people they featured last time were Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield of Flickr, who sold to Yahoo! This time? It's me.

Now, I don't know what they are going to say (Simon Avery is the author, and a photog followed me around for 3 hours a few weeks back) so I guess we will all learn together on Thursday. All that I will say is that if it is good, it's true. And if it is not, it's clearly all out of context :-)

UPDATE: I am yet to see the paper version since I was travelling, but here is the link. For clarity, contrary to the facts layed out in the piece, I didn't calculate airline yield as a child - I was older than that. And, I didn't move to Seattle to work for USA Networks, but for Expedia, Inc., although Diller had bought us by that point. Also that was in 2003 not 2004. And, I didn't actually bring Signature Vacations online - I was about 6 months into that project when I moved on to Expedia.

Tags: globeandmail, reportonbusiness

Heading to Ottawa for a CIRA meeting, watching Argentina vs. Netherlands on the 'puter via wifi and a slingbox. 24:13 in. Both teams playing well.

Feed sorta dodgy, but on the whole...man, this ROCKS.

ps: If you applied for a spot on the CIRA Board, we are meeting to discuss who we will put forward tomorrow.

GO HOLLAND!

Update: here's a sample of the quality of the picture. Not bad, for wifi on a moving train.

Update 2: Ended in a 0-0 tie. Caught the last bit here in the Ottawa train station. Is this the future of media? Well, something like this sure feels likely...

Tags: slingbox, worldcup, train

...these things, which I will dive into more later.

1. Is it the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end? With all the people jumping off to "do their own things" (Tara, Scoble, Om) it sure feels like one of those.

2. Some other former Expedia folks are a part of a team which has launched a group travel site called TripHub. I am going to check it out and report back.

3. A good friend and the former President of Expedia Corporate Travel, Matt Hulett, is now doing a shopping start-up called Mpire. Another one to check out and report on.

4. There are a lot of Canadian online travel sites starting to advertise. I was driving along and heard 3 radio jingles in a row. Great that they are promoting themselves. But too bad they still suck.

Tags: tara, om, scoble, triphub, mpire

I wish my berry had a camera, since I am standing here on King Street across from the TSX, marvelling that there are *hundreds* of people standing on the sidewalk watching the France-Switzerland match on the Reuters jumbotron in front of their building.

This sure is an event beyond compare, isn't it? This is Toronto for heaven's sake. Pretty cool. Really something to see.

Tara Hunt, one of the keynotes at mesh, announced that she is leaving Riya, her employer, to do her own thing to grow her Pinko Marketing brand.

While I certainly wish her well and think she's tremendous, I have to wonder about the wisdom in leaving a hot pre-IPO start-up where she has been instrumental in pulling in boatloads of users and heading off on her own, child in tow and TN-1 visa in hand (yikes).

She says that she and Riya have grown apart, and that sure does happen, but I hope she knows what she's doing.

Break a leg, Tara.

Tags: tarahunt, riya, mesh06, web2.0

Sorry, but with due respect to the folks behind this now-defunct AJAX homepage (uhh...and the world needed another one of those, why, exactly?): When you chose that name, um, what did you expect?

See also Mark Evans.

Tags: fold, goatrodeo