United Airlines, why do you fuck me so?

Inflexible Airline Experience #74: I have $400 in travel vouchers on United Airlines from last time I flew. I book a flight home for Christmas, SFO to Washington Dulles. Fare is $667 (insane!). I want to apply my $400 vouchers. OK, first try and book trip online at ual.com. Payment time and there is no input for vouchers. I have to call reservations. LAME. I call, go through automated voice response reservation system which takes forever, doesn’t understand my name. I eject to a human being dialing 0. Human has the reservation. She tells me I have to mail the vouchers in or take them to the airport within 24 hours. EXTREMELY LAME. Eject to a supervisor. I explain vouchers have a unique serial number. You should be able to verify they are valid and issued to me. I offer to give the serial number and bring the paper copies with me to the airport. No can do. It doesn’t work that way. WHY THE FUCK NOT?

United, why are you inconveniencing me with your archaic ways of doing business? How is it I can book a flight online and have nothing but my name and an ID when I show up at the airport? It’s obvious you understand unique serial numbers and ID verification. SO why can I not apply the vouchers the same way? Why must I trust the postal service or make a special trip to the airport to book this flight? Why United Airlines, do you fuck me so?

Off to Austria for Roboexotica



Vienna
Originally uploaded by ioerror.

I’m taking off on Sunday for a week in Austria, mostly in Vienna to attend and cover Roboexotica, “the festival for cocktail robots”. I’m super psyched to be hanging out with new and old friends as they compete with their robotic creations in areas of expertise such as ‘robots that mix and service cocktails’, ‘robots that light your cigarette for you’, and ‘robots that engage in bar conversation’.

Then I head to Graz to give videoblogging workshops to university students and give a multimedia slideshow presentation on weird techno-art San Francisco. Drop me a line if you’re also gonna be around in Vienna or Graz.

Ecobabes Save the Planet One Month at a Time

Ecobabe Lindsay Hassett

My good friend Lindsay aka Betty Biodisesel is featured on the front page of the SF Chronicle today, above the fold no less. The story? Her ecobabes calendar (she’s Miss August), a hot fundraising tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The online version of the article even has a poll, “Is the ecobabes calendar a respectable promotion for Sonoma County’s greenhouse gas reduction efforts?” Oh, the controversy!

I caught Lindsay on video explaining the ecobabes calendar in this GETV episode from the Bioneers conference last month.

Way Fucked Up


This is way disturbing and makes me grateful for the cushy life I live. What’s up with killing peaceful people in the snow? Link to it and make more people aware.

My 15 Megs

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Crazy media week for me.

On Thursday night at 7pm PDT this week, I’ll be on this newfangled interactive Internet conference talk show thing called Reinventing Television with media educator freakstein Jonny Goldstein. We did a walk through tonight and it’s pretty cool. Part video conferencing, part party line, part talk show, part movie theater and much spectacle, this Phovi thing looks like a great way to get a bunch of Internet connected freaks in a virtual room together to throw media around. Irina was going to be on with me, but she had to bail due to a sheduling conflict. So it’s all me reprezentin’. Come be a pioneer and toss me some questions.

Last Sunday, Ryan and I did RU Sirius’ Neofiles show. A two parter even! Part one is up now. Violet Blue came in and did RU’s other show right after. Check it too.

And the previous Friday night, I was on Irene McGee’s old school media show on 106.9 Free FM. She has the 12-2 slot to be all Irene, all the time. Truckers and lonely stoners are known to bring the love. Podcasts of the madness are up now too.

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YouTube Prediction

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With the news of YouTube’s $1.65 sellout to Google, I thought I’d take a look at an early email exchange I had with Steve Chen, one of YouTube’s founders. Back in July of last year I tried out YouTube for the first time, as I was hungry for checking out the emerging world of video sites. With in a couple of days, Steve messages me thanking me for trying out the service. This was a couple months before Webzine happened and I pitched Steve on YouTube being a sponsor. Here’s what he to say at the time:

Date: July 24, 2005

hi eddie:

good to hear back from you so quickly!

we should chat some more. i believe the next 6-12 months, we’re going to be experiencing a dramatic shift in personal publishing. i think similar to bloggers vs traditional journalists, similar to podcasters vs traditional broadcasters, we’ll be seeing a similar trend with videoblogging vs traditional media.

furthermore, i think YouTube is special in that it caters to a much wider audience than videobloggers. i see a lot of family videos of babies, friends videos of college, so on.

along these lines, i also think within the next 2 years, the web will become much richer of an experience. video codec incompatibiities will be a thing of the past. so on, so on.

in any case, i’d love to hear your feedback, on-going.

regarding the webzine 2005 — i know about the conference. however, as we’re very much still in a start-up mode that it’ll be difficult for us to drum up the funds to become a sponsor. but who knows, maybe things will change in September. 🙂

-s

Maybe Steve meant October. 🙂 I’ll be hitting you up next year, Steve. He’s right, the web is a much richer experience. Video codec incompatibilities aren’t quite a thing of the past yet, though Flash has done much to get us closer to that day.

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Touch the Felt

Beck, the ultimate epic genius freak, dropped in for a show on the downlow at Yahoo!’s campus in Sunnyvale on Friday to kick off Yahoo Hack Day. Check out this video of Beck puppet haxx0ring into Yahoo. Freaking hilarious.

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One Year Ago

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This weekend one year ago, there was this rad event called Webzine 2005 that a lot of us worked our asses off to make happen. As a result of that awesome weekend, I have many new friends, I followed a passion that’s now become a job and the independent web is still alive and kicking. Since so much crazy shit is happening right now, Ryan and I decided to skip doing Webzine this year. We’ll be back next year. Promise. Oh yeah, revisit the spot we did last year.