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After a Quarter of a Century, I Switch to a Mac

I am still amazed I actually did it. I crossed over after twenty-five or more years of using a PC and bought a MacBook. I don't expect to become one of those Apple fanatics who vociferously defend anything the company makes, but I gotta admit my experience with my iPhone nudged me this way. And so far its simple elegance and these cool voice commands are looking pretty good!

We navigated our way all the way over to the nearest Apple store (using our iPhone's GPS) at a North Jersey mall. There a designated 'genius' helped us with our decision. He told us that the MacBook Pros, which have a cooler looking aluminum case, are actually slower than the newer and less expensive MacBook. I guess people like thinking of themselves as 'pros' and also like that nice brushed aluminum. But I settled on the white simplicity of the $999 priced model, and after a few more sales tips, whipped out my card.

But the Apple store is not like any other store...so you don't go to the register. Oh no, this guy whips out his iTouch and swipes my card right there on the showroom, and he emailed me my sales reciept. I like it already!

I got the thing home and without a Wi-Fi password, can't get online to really get into it. And for some reason plugging my dad's ethernet into the little MacBook doesn't do anything. I can't wait to get home and see how it really works.

Tossing and Turning the Night Before...As Usual

At three am, I tossed in my bed, almost knocking Mamacat off her perch nestled there at my feet. I have had this date seared into my mind for months; now it's time to drive to Boston and speak to a crowd. I toss and turn worrying about what I'm going to say--I let doubt slip in and feel that I'm a phony and don't really know enough to address a crowd of travel professionals. It's the third year in a row I've done this, yet there I was sweating it out the night before.

The way you solve the jitters is to plan...and create the cheatsheets known as PowerPoint slides. I went downstairs and set to work. How many of the people today will have been there last year? Don't wanna repeat the same stuff. But it's good stuff....so it's worth repeating. The topic is social media and how to use it to help your travel business grow. Hey, that's a familiar theme, I read about it all the time. Don't make the PP slides too wordy...don't end up reading the slides--boring. The Boston Globe Travel Show agenda is here.

In an hour or so I was back on track...feeling ok. I do know about this stuff, and I am the right man to make this presentation. Lose that tight fitting sportsjacket. There, OK, I look fine. Ready to get on the Pike, make it happen. Wish me luck!

How Important Is a Soup Label? Very!

How important is a soup can label? Important enough that Campbell's soup spent two years studying the 'neuromarketing' of how people decide to buy soup. A story in yesterday's WSJ by Ilan Brat dove into the details of how to tweak a label to nudge up sales.

Illustrations showed the original Campbell's Cream of Potato soup label with a dowdy spoon above a soup bowl that looks like it would be perfect nestled in your grandmother's pantry. At the top of the can is the familiar red Campbell's logo.

On the same page the remade, sexier, and more sales-oriented label. First steam was added, emphasizing the warmth of this comfort food, and the old spoon was ditched. A newer, more modern bowl, that looks like something you'd find in Ikea, was added, so long dowdy design around the rim.

Researchers tracked people's eye movements, finding that the red labels all look the same when they're at the top of the can. So at the top, instead of the red Campbell logo, appears a gold "Classic Favorites" type, providing a color-coded way for soup buyers to understand the various types of soups Campbells sells.

Water Piped Between High Circuits Makes Holyoke Sense

Phew! I am sitting at the end of the day in the window of the cafe. A familiar spot. My cafe acquaintance Paul told me some of what he knows about the Holyoke High Performance Computing Center that's coming soon. He said in his government office they use water that snakes through the gigabytes of circuits of computers to cool them. No other town has canals that might be used this way. But it's elegant and a throwback to the canal days of yore.

An even more important part of Holyoke's appeal is its hydropower. Holyoke has its own power company, that owns the dam. The dam now has turbines on just one side, they could add another set and generate twice the power. But to do this you need a big customer, who doubles the use and creates the need for more generation. This computer center will need all of this and more since the level of their computing puts them at peak full tilt energy suck.

There are also plans to create a model super connected neighborhood. Holyoke might just be the city where this test by Cisco is to be carried out. We might have 100 mps service in the city this year!

I said hello to the new owner of Alina's in town. He's a beefy and friendly guy named Martin Amaya, and I'm going to pay him a visit on Friday for a cocktail. I think they are going to do well, people love a nice looking Italian place.

Chatroulette: The Anti Facebook Future of the Web

I love to make predictions. I have been reading about a new website that is becoming very popular on college campuses. Some have even wrote that this new idea will someday eclipse the gargantuan that is Facebook. It's so simple, it's hard to believe that nobody has thought of it before. It's an idea that's worthy of, well, Google itself.

It's called Chatroulette. The idea is that you find random strangers to converse with, and you spin the wheel every so often to find new and more interesting strangers to talk to around the world.

You never know what you'll find when you click next. That's the roulette part. Sam Anderson wrote recently in NY Magazine about the surreal experience of the randomness. "Ït turns out that chatroulette is brutal...the first 18 people who saw me disconnected immediately. They appeared, one by one, in a box at the top of my screen--a young Asian man, a high-school age girl, a guy lying on his side on his bed--and every time I'd feel a flare of excitement. Every time they'd leave without saying a word. It was devastating."

The site is ánti-Facebook, pure social media shuffle. Once you dive in, there's no way to manage the experience--to filter users, search for friends, or backtrack and reconnect with someone you chatted with an hour ago. There's only the perpetual forward motion of 'next.' Try it.

Flight Attendants Don't Have As Many Free Flights

For our Valentine's day afternoon, a workout at the Y and a movie were in order. I was feeling a bit under the weather as a result of something I ate on Saturday in Mexico, so we lay low and enjoyed an inside day, with the exception of the Y.

On the plane home I got to talking with a flight attendant who works for US Airways out of Charlotte. She said that she works four days in a row, and if snow closes an airport, they lose their day's wages. She said that the last storm had her flying up to Philly and to a hotel, all for zero bucks. Bummer, she's not the only one who suffers from snowfalls.

She said that since planes are usually so full, it is much harder these days for flight attendants to take advantage of the greatest benefit of working for an airline: free travel. Despite the fact that our Airbus seated 180 and had just 100 passengers, this is a rarity. Most of the times with fewer flights on the schedule, these jets are full up, and there are no seats left for freebies.

I told her why I was coming back from Cancun, and about the story I wrote about eco-tourism there. She said that she loves all-inclusive resorts, but that zip-lining is a dream she wants to experience some day. It was nice to share with her how easy it is to do this right near the popular city of Cancun. Next time she flies this route, she just might get out there and zip.