Boarding helps you find other stranded travelers
If you're going to be traveling solo in a few weeks for round two of the holiday season, worth checking out is the Boarding Project. It's a social service that uses Twitter to helps you meet up with others at the same airport. To use it you simply tweet #boarding along with your airport code. It'll send you a reply with a link to the other Twitter users who you can message directly to meet up with.
What's neat is that Boarding Project's system does not require users to sign up for anything. It also seems to be keeping an eye out for any FAA or IATA airport code mentions in public tweets, and will send a reply to that user urging them to check in to see who's there.
The service plans to make money by offering special coupons to travelers, which could be shaped around any contextually relevant information from their Twitter stream. I didn't get any with my reply, but a discounted meal or bookstore coupon could make a delay or layover that much more bearable.
The Boarding Project can show you other stranded Twitterers at airports.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Josh Lowensohn is an associate editor for Webware.com, CNET's blog about cool and otherwise useful Web applications and services. If you've found a site you'd like profiled, shoot him an e-mail. E-mail Josh.
Do You Speak EEL?: Translating FAA Bobby Sturgell - PART III
http://ejectsturgell.blogspot.com/2008/11/do-you-speak-eel-translating-faa-bobby_30.html
Exiting FAA Acting Administrator Bobby Sturgell: ?You will notice that I am throwing a lot of new runways, acronyms, programs, kudos, and equipment at people and communities right before I get chucked out of office. That?s on purpose. Those are called ?bribes?. They are intended to buy the silence and cooperation of those that receive them. Others, I?ll abuse. For fun, I once again will try to blame Air Traffic Controllers on my way out the door for all of my own failures ? like me and Hank Krakowski suggesting that ATC failure to anticipatorily ?self-report? is what causes airplane crashes. (Hah!). The remaining other folks, well, I?ll just tell FAA ?Safety Officer? Nick Sabatini to try to intimidate. My best strategy is comprised of the bribes, though. Throwing money-items out to folks like so many Milkbones, provides me a lot of job security in the private sector for years to come, and might make everybody forget those 3,500-and-climbing aviation fatalities occurred on my own FAA watch?.
http://www.bobbysturgell.net