‘Cross The Breeze

I really don’t get it. I’m a frequent flyer and as such I have an airline (or group of airlines) of choice. Simple reason, you try and get as much miles with one and not just shattered around across many different offerings. My choice? Star Alliance. The initial reason for this was because I think flying SAS to our HQ in Seattle is just the best way for me to travel, and once you made the choice you stick with the program.

This means that also when not flying SAS, I will check if there’s a reasonably priced option with Star Alliance to get to my destination and only fly with someone else if there isn’t. As a result for being loyal to Star Alliance, I’ve been Eurobonus Gold for quite a while now.

Now where is the reward? There are 2 things that bother me a lot about this so called loyalty program. First of all, these miles don’t mean much. I wanted to go to NYC with my wife in August to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I got the miles so I started looking for Eurobonus available seats on flights to NYC (and back obviously). The trip would be for 5 days or so but there was some flexibility to it. Tough luck, it’s impossible to find 2 Eurobonus seats on any Star Alliance flight to NYC… and even if there were, chances that you would find seats for the flight back is pretty much non-existent… so much for being loyal.

The second part that bothers me is the lounge. The Eurobonus Gold card allows access to the Star Alliance lounge with one guest… well, if you’re flying with Star Alliance that is. So this week for instance, I was flying Brussels Airlines to Budapest, I went to the Star Alliance lounge before my flight and to my big surprise I wasn’t allowed in. Just because I wasn’t flying with them, gold card or not. So basically you only get rewarded with Star Alliance if you’re flying with them right now, not because all the flights you’ve done with them in the past… so much for being loyal.

I wanted to draw your attention on something. On May 16th, in Lausanne, there’s going to be a new conference called Going Solo - being a freelancer in a connected world - organized by Stephanie Booth. This one-day conference is targeted at freelancers and small business owners in the internet industry, to learn from other freelancers how to succeed in this rapidly changing world.

Stephanie is a freelancer herself within the internet industry and given I really only met her at conferences so far it’s fair to say she knows a bit about conferences as well ;) I think, knowing Stephanie, this is going to be an exciting event for all you ‘connected’ freelancers out there, hence why I like to spread the word a bit as well.

Currently there is not full program available yet, but confirmed speakers are Stowe Boyd, Suw Charman, Martin Roell, Laura Fitton and expect more counting down to the event. If you want to be part of this event, then register quick to benefit from the early bird price which ends March 16th.

Last Saturday evening I took part in the My ooVoo Day promotion that Jaffe’s agency Crayon set up for their client ooVoo.

“Have you signed up to participate in My ooVoo Day yet? My ooVoo Day lets 20+ bloggers, podcasters and digital media makers from around the ’sphere connect with their communities in a series of 6-way video chats. Sound cool? Want to join in the fun. Head over to http://myoovooday.com, find a favorite blogger and register to attend.”

The ooVoo software (for PC and Mac) allows video conversations like in Live Messenger, with one big difference that you can have video conversations with up to 6 people at the same time. No better way to show that then by setting up these blogger chats so people have a reason to try it out… and blog about it :) So great job of the Crayonistas, although I must say I received a bit more messages about this promotion through email, FB, … than I wished for.

Anyway, when I saw they added Drew and Gavin to the planning to talk about Age of Conversation, I put my name on the list immediately. And so we ended up with a half hour conversation between myself, Gavin Heaton, Drew McLellan, Luc Debaisieux, Paul Mcenany and J Erik Potter which was good fun. And the quality of the video was quite good as well, with an interesting option to record the conversation from within the client by the way.

I don’t think I’ll be using it much though, it’s the 4th or 5th IM client on my desktop and that’s more than enough. But whenever I want to have a video conversation with a few people at the same time, ooVoo will definitely be what I’ll be using though. Thanks for the conversation guys!

Last week the anticipated Windows Live Suite saw the light of day and I think it’s an important milestone. I was traveling by then so only found the time now to write about this here. The launch started on Wednesday with a post by Chris Jones (VP Windows Live Team) on Windows Live Wire and was followed by posts on the several product team blogs.

With the Suite you’ll be able to install the whole pack of Windows Live software at the same time, or install just the program you need. Download the whole suite or just one program or take a look at the overview of all:

Windows Live Writer

Maybe still my all time favorite as I’ve been using this program since the very first day I could get my hands on the internal beta and I loved it every since. Windows Live Writer is a program that allows you to blog from your desktop to any blog service you can think of. I use it to blog to 3 blogs on WordPress, 1 on Live Spaces and 1 blog on sharepoint. Here are the main updates of the Writer beta.

Windows Live Mail

I like to keep my work email separated from my personal email and I basically have a program for each. Outlook obviously is my work email client and for my private accounts that is Windows Live Mail. When you download this program it will replace Outlook Express on XP and Windows Mail on XP. If you have one or more Hotmail addresses and a Gmail, … then this client might be a good solution for you (when on a PC). Since I have a few Hotmail & Live IDs together with other accounts like Gmail I use this program every single day.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

The Live Photo Gallery is becoming a new favorite of mine. I’ve just bought myself a new Canon 400D SLR and taking more pictures than ever before. The program will import all pictures from your camera, turn them in the right direction if needed, has crop feature, red-eye correction, … etc but apart from what I see as nice but basics is the option to create very nice panoramas as I tried with some pictures of my visit to NYC in July. Pretty nice no?

And of course - it’s a Live service isn’t it - there’s the option to add photo’s directly to your Space & videos directly to Soapbox from the Gallery.

Windows Live Messenger

Not many updates from the 8.5 beta 1 if you were on that already, but mainly bug fixes and the availability in quite a few more markets. With up to 400 contacts in my Messenger list this program is really becoming a commodity, I couldn’t miss it for a day.

Other elements of the Windows Live Suite are OneCare Family Safety (which I need to test some more myself before commenting on it) and Windows Live Toolbar (which is already out for a while - no updates). I installed the full suite which took me about 15 minutes for all programs and I experienced no issues. Like maybe most free software these days, the Suite will also propose to change your search defaults which is an easy opt out in case you’re not interested.

Up next? I also noticed Windows Live Translator is out in beta (no announcement yet) and works with Systran for the translations (like Babelfish) but offers a nice side by side view. And on September 26th there will be a search PR event at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus to announce our search 2.0. I’ll report on that after that.

(disclaimer: I work for Windows Live)

Technorati Tags: windows live, suite, windows live mail, messenger, photo gallery, hotmail, gmail, software, free, services, live writer, beta

Tonight Microsoft (who I work for) made an exciting announcement in the social networking space. Bebo is going to integrate Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Contacts into it’s service and is the first social network that is doing so (with hopefully more to follow). Bebo which is present in the UK (biggest social network there) and in the US will allow it’s 36 million users to enter their Live Messenger account in their profile page. This way you can see a user’s presence and start and instant conversation with or without having a LiveID yourself (’IM me’ function). With 280 million active Live Messenger users there’s probably going to be a big overlap, especially in the UK so I’m curious to see how many Bebo users will start using this.

Technorati Tags: bebo, microsoft, windows live, messenger, liveid, partnership, uk, us, integration, announcement, pr

Start spreading the news
I’m leaving today
I want to be a part of it, New York, New York
- Frank Sinatra

As from yesterday, New York was added to the Virtual Earth 3D imagery. Taking a look now at the places I should visit when I do a quick stopover in NY in July. But from the looks of it, CK knows where to go :) And of course Luc as well now.

Check it out on Live Maps.

I could have known something bad was coming when Tim Westergren - Founder of Pandora - sent out an email to all Pandora users asking to ‘help save Pandora & internet radio’. It took only 2-3 more weeks before it was finished indeed, well at least for all of us not living in the US. If I try to visit Pandora now, this is what I get:

“Dear Pandora Visitor,

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for most listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

We believe that you are in Belgium (your IP address appears to be xx.xxx.xxx.xx). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com“

That is really some bad news as I enjoyed Pandora very much. I actually met Tom Conrad - CTO of Pandora - very briefly in Vegas at MIX07 and I told him how many people enjoyed Pandora in Europe. That was 2 days before they shut it down so I feel like he should have told me about it then already.

Time to pick up on Last.fm again I guess, I tried to rememeber my account yesterday without much luck so I think I’ll have to set up a new one :( Good news is that Last.fm has just launched video as well, so it’s a good time to look into the service again anyway. For a moment I thought I would try Sonific.com as well since there’s a widget of Sonific for WordPress.com but it couldn’t find any of the first 3 artists I entered so I already gave up on that.

Yeah… I’m gonna miss Pandora.

Earlier this week Loic helped me to get an invite for Dopplr, a new webservice for travellers that I had read about on his Twitter. I’m a bit of a traveller myself so I was more than keen to try that one out. Thanks for the invite by the way!

” Dopplr is an online service for frequent travellers. It was created by an international team of world travellers as a tool for our own use. We liked it so much that we decided to open it up to our global friends. If you travel more than five times a year and have friends who do as well, then Dopplr is for you. How does Dopplr work? It lets you share your future travel plans with a group of trusted fellow travelers whom you have chosen. It also reminds you of friends and colleagues who live in the cities you’re planning to visit. You can use the service with your personal computer and mobile phone.”

First of all, reading this, this looks even more like a service that I can use. Traveling more than 5 times a year? D’oh! The interface is very simple and knowing that it started as a tool for own use, that explains a lot. That said, it does what it should do. You enter your hometown to start with and then the cities you’ll be in from when to when, and then you’ll see who of your fellow travellers will be in the same place at the same time. Nothing more, nothing less but indeed useful. If you are on Dopplr already, you can add me using this link: http://www.dopplr.com/traveller/crossthebreeze.

I have 3 invites to share with you if you want. I don’t normally do this, but I’ll make an exception for fellow travellers this time and it gives me a reason to try out this new contact form they’ve built in WordPress.com. So if you want an invite leave me a comment or use the form, but I only give it to frequent travellers so prove me you are.

Update: I didn’t have time to update this earlier, but all invites have long gone by now

Geert Desager sent me an invite for Weblin earlier today, and since Geert and I are pretty much on the same page when it relates to anything interactive that definitely means I should check it out. How does it work? What does it do? 

“Weblin the perfect addon to your Windows Live Messenger. Weblin makes you and your friends visible in the Internet as little avatar characters. You are not alone when you surf the web. Weblin brings you a new exiting and lively world on every website. Get to know People, who share the same interests with you.”

On the screenshot below you can see my Weblin (or whatever they call this little avatars) on the Weblin homepage together with 3 other persons. People on the same page can initiate a chat together (in a little chat window) and some will have the little Messenger buddy icon next to it so you can start a Messenger conversation, with all features you have in Messenger.

All pretty cool stuff, I’ll try it for a while and see if it sticks but I do like the idea.

There’s not much to say about this other than go see it for yourself. I guess this is life outside the 30″ second spot, rather than after ;) Great online promotion for the clubinternet TV on demand service.

[Via Pietel]

Technorati tags: clubinternet, advertising, internet, pietel, duel, microsoft tv