Be Careful with (and accountable to) your customers

Recently, someone shared a video with me from a guy who traveled on United Airlines but had his guitar broken by their baggage handlers.  He tried to get them to resolve it but they wouldn't.  So, he created a catchy song and video called "United Breaks Guitars" and put it on YouTube.  It has now been viewed over 6 million times as I write this (and the sequel, "United Breaks Guitars Song 2," has been viewed over 500,000 times).

The moral?  Be good to your customers - and, when you screw up, take responsibility for it and try to make it right.

By the way - if you want the "back story" on this incident, the guy has also put it on his blog.  It sounds like United eventually came around (somewhat) from the saga told here, but it could have been much better for their image if they'd just paid to have the guy's guitar fixed after they allowed it to be broken during the baggage handling process.

More Useful Tools for Travelers

I've been using a few new travel tools lately that I think are worth sharing with you.  These have all been "field tested" and have not been discarded (that's a good sign for someone like me).

MetrO Worldwide Most smartphones Free	MetrO is a very easy-to-use application to help you plan routes from one place to another using public transit.  It is a single app that can deal with multiple cities through downloadable "modules" for a huge list of cities around the world. I first used MetrO a couple of weeks ago in Berlin and it was extremely helpful - it helped me plan my route for the day, helped me figure out my options when I deviated from my plans, etc.  On the MetrO site, you will find links to download the app for your specific phone type, then you can download the appropriate maps from within the application.
HelloFlight.com US only Browser-based Free	This informational site is very useful for finding out what delays might impact your travel - whether from weather, congestion, or some other reason.  It currently works in the US only but, since I fly most of my miles in the US, I find it helpful. In addition to the delay information, you can find out lots of interesting things such as flight history for specific planes, specific flight numbers, as more.  There are also a number of cool tools, such as one tool where you can tell it which ZIP code you live in, and it will tell you what flights are scheduled to fly over (and when, and at what altitude). Find out more at HelloFlight.com, and see a list of features on HelloFlight's tools page.
TripIt  & TripIt Pro Worldwide iPhone app, plus browsers and mobile browsers Free plus fee-based Pro features	TripIt is an interesting application.  It lets you aggregate all your itineraries and travel plans into one spot, making it easy to track your upcoming trips.  Adding an itinerary is a piece of cake - after you've registered, simply forward your confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com and it will automagically process the details and add it to your account (it knows who you are because you tell it which email addresses you'll be sending from).  I haven't had an itinerary rejection yet, regardless of format - text, HTML, and PDF.  You can also add or edit trips manually, should you so desire. Once the itineraries are up there, you can share and compare them with anyone you like.  For example, I have around 60 people "connected" to me on TripIt and it tells me who'll be near me on future trips so we can plan to get together for drinks or dinner.  I've used this quite a bit, and this alone is great. For more features, you can upgrade to the Pro version for a reasonable annual fee (more details on the TripIt Pro page).  My favorite Pro feature is the real-time flight status feature.  This does things for me like: Tells me exactly 24 hours before my flight that I can check in online, if I wish Alerts me if there are any changes to my flight - delays, gate changes, cancellations, etc. If my flight is delayed, it will suggest alternate flights Sends "connection reports" to my phone to tell me my arrival gate, my next departure gate & terminal, and how many minutes I have to make the connection.  This feature has already made the difference between me making a flight and missing a flight. Obviously, the Pro features are most useful to those of us who travel a lot.  If you're not sure, you can take a 30-day free trial and try it on for size. Regardless of whether you use TripIt or TripIt Pro, I highly recommend this application.

Hopefully you'll find something useful here to make your travel a bit easier in the coming weeks and months.  And, as always, if you have any must-have travel tools I'd love to hear about them.

Related items

• Prevent outrageous AT&T data roaming charges on your  iPhone while traveling internationally
• Augment your reality with Layar to help explore cities you're visiting
• Seatguru: Know whether you've got good airline seats before you fly
• More travel tools before you fly

Protect Yourself! Germs travel, too.

As we move into the holiday season, that means more travel and more close contact with more people.  And where there are people, there are germs.  And it's not just travel season, it's also H1N1 season.

Now - as you may know from the blog here, I travel a lot.  What you may not know, is that I don't get sick a lot.  I follow the well-publicized advice to wash my hands frequently and use hand sanitizer (I have a travel-sized bottle of hand sanitizer hooked to my laptop bag at all times).

But I also take one extra precaution during air travel.  It's one that serves me well, and I'd like to share it with you:  individually wrapped sanitizing hand wipes.

I maintain a stash of about 10 of these tucked into a pocket in my bag so I always have one handy.  Then, when they serve food on the plane I not only wipe down my hands, I also wipe down the tray table on the plane. 

Why?  Because practically everyone who sat in that seat before me used that tray, including sick people, children, and messy adults.  And I've seen people seat their babies in diapers on those trays.  And it makes me feel better to wipe them off before eating food or drinking drinks off of them.

So, do yourself a favor and take some of these wipes along as you head out for the holidays.  I hope they serve you as well as they have me.  I order them in packs of 100, which cost about $7 via Amazon.

P.S. If you are leaving in the next few days and you need some right away, you can always sign up for a free trial of Amazon Prime and get them in 2 days for free, or 1 day for an extra $3.99.  Want to know more about Prime?  I wrote about how much I love it recently (and it will be well-used by me during the upcoming Christmas buying season).

Augment your reality with Layar

This week, I had a meeting with a customer in Vienna (Austria, not Virginia) and we went to lunch afterward.  The talk turned to iPhone apps, and he turned me on to an app called "Layar" that he says is in the category of apps known as "augmented reality apps."  I tried it out and I really like Layer (it's free, too).

So what the heck is Layar?

Let me try to explain.  Layar is an app that uses the technology in your iPhone to add a layer of information to your life.  Layar:

• uses the GPS to tell where you are,
• looks up relevant content on the internet based on your location and filtered by the content Layar you select (more on that in a minute),
• plots the data on a "grid" that it shows you on your iPhone screen, and
• dynamically updates your screen as you walk around, point your camera at things, etc.

That still isn't doing it justice, but if you envision Robocop or some other sci-fi movie in which information is populated in a heads-up display in real time, you'll get a sense of how Layar works.

My example

Here is what was going on when I snapped the screen grab at right.  I was walking from a train station to my hotel in Berlin, and I saw the ruins of a church and was curious what it was.  I started up Layar, selected the Wikipedia overlay, and pointed my iPhone at the church.

One of the little "W" icons had a blue line connecting it to the location of the church, so I tapped on that W, and it turned to a globe icon and populated the little text balloon you see at the bottom of the screen.  I was then able to go to Wikipedia to find out more about the church (it's a fascinating story, actually).  Now, I know what the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is, as well as some of the story of why it looks like it does now.

This app made the rest of my short visit in Berlin many times more enjoyable, and I'll be using Layar to help explore other cities I visit in the future. 

Multi-Layar choices

There are other Layars to choose, such as ones that help you find hotels, bars, businesses, nearby Twitter users, pictures taken nearby, etc.  It's a lot of fun to experiment and see what the Layars know about the area around you.

My only complaint?  As with any iPhone app that uses the GPS, using Layar a lot will cause you to drain your battery much faster than normal.

There are more videos and screen shots at the Layar web site.  If you have an iPhone, it's worth checking out, particularly since it's Layar is free.

What if you lost your laptop or phone?

Today, I had coffee with the Ken Westin, the founder of a company that makes a product called "GadgetTrak."  As the name implies, they have solutions that help you track your gadgets.  Their approach goes far beyond simple barcodes and involves some pretty impressive software that not only lets you tell exactly where your device is (using WiFi or cell tower triangulation).  If the device has a camera it can send you a picture of what the thief is looking at (perhaps even a photo of the bad guy's face).

GadgetTrak can help you find lots of devices, including

• stolen mobile devices (Windows Mobile or Blackberry using advanced features);
• stolen iPhones and iPod Touch devices (free in the App Store -- with basic support now, and the intent to add more functionality when / if Apple improves its SDK);
• stolen Windows PC's and laptops;
• stolen Mac desktops and Macbooks; and
• stolen USB media.

One of the things that impressed me most was the growing list of recovery stories on the GadgetTrak blog, which show real-world examples of how GadgetTrak has helped find stolen devices and even bust open some crime rings.  Check them out - you can even see pictures of some of the bad guys they've snagged.

Also on the blog, take a look at an interesting post about GadgetTrak believes Apple and AT&T actually benefit from stolen iPhones - thought-provoking, for sure.