China bans funeral strippers

Thought Provoking

BBC News reports that China has made arrests after striptease acts at a funeral.

Two hundred people were said to have attended the event, which was held on 16 August.

The Beijing News said the event was later revealed by a Chinese TV station. The leaders of five striptease troupes were held, it said, including two involved in the farmer’s funeral.

“Striptease used to be a common practice at funerals in Donghai’s rural areas to allure viewers,” Xinhua agency said.

“Local villagers believe that the more people who attend the funeral, the more the dead person is honoured.”

Challenging our assumptions

Thought Provoking

Kathy Sierra’s site, Creating Passionate Users has a nice piece about the longevity of assumptions and how to refresh, challenge and get rid of them when they limit ideas and imagination.

The really big problem is the assumptions which are so ingrained that we don’t even know they’re assumptions. They become an accepted Law of Physics, as good as gravity.

It does little good to list (and date) our assumptions, if the most crucial ones–the ones that could lead to the biggest innovations and breakthroughs–never make it to the list. It’s not enough to say, “So, what are our assumptions here?” We have to ask–and keep asking–“So, what are we accepting as fact and not questioning as an assumption?” In other words, “What are our hidden assumptions? What do we believe implicitly?”

Milk Assumptions

Over a million dollars for a mobile phone?

Tech, Thought Provoking

Interesting article from Business Week about the growing market for luxury mobile phones. If the thousands that are required for a Vertu were not extravagant enough, a new Swiss company call GoldVish offers phones on another level completely.

GoldVish’s cell phones were created by Emmanuel Gueit, a watch and jewelry designer whose credits include items for Harry Winston. The phones start at $24,500 and go to $1.26 million apiece. The company’s most expensive device, fittingly named “Piece Unique,” is handmade of solid gold and studded with diamonds.

10 Ways to Make Your Digital Photos Last Forever

Photography

The Gadgets Page has some great tips on ensuring that your digital photos don’t disappear or get lost.

One tip they note is to rename your photos to keep track of what they mean. I recommend the Flexible Renamer as it uses powerful operators and makes renaming large quantities of photos a snap so I can add the date from the exif information and add other information like location, keywords and titles to the filename. Sure the filenames are long but it’s much easier than manually assigning keywords in Picasa.

Travelocity disables flexible-search option for international flights

Travel, Web

I was looking around for some flights in September and went to my usual source which was travelocity’s flexible search option. However, it seemed to have disappeared. I did a search and found the followingarticle from smarter travel.
In essence, because international airlines have started to screw around with various add-on prices, travelocity’s flight listings did not comply with some US government department regulations. What is the solution? As far as I can see either or both of the following options

  • travelocity should allows it’s non-US websites to use this feature as it does not have to adhere to this regulation
  • some regulation forcing airlines to quote all-in prices

After yesterday’s events, perhaps airports in general should be avoided for a while.

How to kill your wife

Tech, Thought Provoking, Web

Hit and Run runs through some of the data released by AOL last week and finds some disturbing searches being made.

America Online is getting raked over the coals for releasing a portion of its users’ search data. It deserves all the criticism it’s getting, but I have to say I’m a little freaked out by some of the AOL subscribers as well.

Take this search history, for “user 17556639”:

17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 wife killer
17556639 how to kill a wife
17556639 poop
17556639 dead people
17556639 pictures of dead people

Norwegian

Uncategorized

After yesterday’s post about how annoyed I was by airline pricing strategies, I came across one today that completely shows how to make the customer experience an enjoyable one. Norwegian Airlines at each point showed me the complete cost of the ticket each including all charges. At the end, it displays the cost with the tax that was charged as you can see in the little summary below.

Departure
Stockholm – Oslo
Friday 28. jul 2006 18:30
Flight DY817 – Low fare
1 Adult 100 €

Return
Oslo – Stockholm
Sunday 30. jul 2006 15:50
Flight DY812 – Low fare
1 Adult 75 €

Total price (all inclusive) 175 €

Taxes account for 33 €
Web service charge 0 €

Airline prices

Travel

One area where airlines could really improve consumer experience is in the area of pricing. Generally when booking a ticket over the internet, taxes, fuel charges and various add-on prices present the consumer with a price much different from the one quoted in the intial screen. The end result is that I feel ripped off even though experience has taught me to expect it.

Airlines may argue that some prices are not charged by them and this leads to my second peeve about the airline booking experience. If I miss or have to cancel a flight, why can’t the airlines retrieve the taxes and other refundable fees automatically? Or should I say, why can’t they be forced to do it by regulation. This is money that they haven’t earned and doesn’t belong to them. I wonder if there is a business opportunity to retrieve this money from airlines and charge a fee for doing so. Like a central clearing house for return fees.