Toolie Business Travel Newsletter June 2009In This Issue:
Toolie's Monthly Travel Tip: Bringing Business Travel News to Your DesktopThe passing of singer Michael Jackson the other day brought such an onslaught of news to the Internet that a number of services carrying news were slowed down significantly or crashed. Twitter, for example, turned off their Search feature to keep the servers running. The AOL- owned service TMZ, which broke the story, crashed several times in subsequent hours. It is a wake-up call for those building the Internet infrastructure, to be sure. But it got me to thinking about how information flows to us as business travelers. Super-Connected and Disconnected When I'm traveling, I can always spot the business travelers, even those traveling incognito. There is the obvious businessman in a suit with a laptop wedged in between the seat in front and his belt-line; the businesswoman in a pants suit or skirt, balancing her Blackberry, her laptop, and BusinessWeek on the seat next to her in the waiting area. Business travelers on their way home who had a chance to change clothes before boarding are still reading the Wall Street Journal or USA Today to keep up. The "rub" for us is that we're in the air for significant portions of our day. While this situation is changing with the advent of on-board Internet access, we are still for the most part out-of-communication with our business colleagues, the boss, and the world for uncomfortably long periods of time. This means we're forever in catch-up mode, flipping through emails on our Blackberry as SOON as the plane leaves the tarmac. So the idea of staying current with news other than the immediate demands of our daily lives is tricky at best, and unrealistic at worst. But Wait, There's More! Yes, there's more and more information to be read, ideas and hyperlinks to be shared, and social media such as Twitter and Facebook to update. Yet it is the thinnest slice of news available that we business travelers most need to see: those news items that cause us to stand in lines and linger in waiting rooms. It is business travel news about changes to passports, flights, frequent flier programs, you name it. With a few exceptions, this is not the kind of news that stops Twitter's Search feature, yet its impact on us personally is equally frustrating. RSS to the Rescue Before your eyes glaze over at the impending arrival of tech-speak, let me say that I have not been a regular user of RSS news feeds myself, but have changed my mind about them lately. I found a handful of news sources that I like a great deal, and I've enjoyed the convenience of having the news come to me instead of chasing what I need across multiple websites. Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Syndication (RSS) is an Internet technology that enables owners of content (websites, blogs, news services) to "syndicate" or "publish" their content through a "feed" or "channel" (not unlike a TV channel). No doubt you've seen the bright orange icons representing those feeds on websites and blogs you've visited. Unlike tuning into a TV channel where you can watch only one thing at a time, with RSS you can collect the information you want from multiple feed sources and ("aggregate" it) into a single location: a web page, a browser, or a stand-alone feed "reader." These content publishers provide access to their channels through a URL that you "subscribe" to, and that URL is what your feed reader uses to collect the information. When RSS first arrived on the scene and content providers were scrambling to provide feeds, for a time the only way to pull in or aggregate the feeds was by using a feed reader, a separate piece of software which sold for a little less than US$30. Now most of the software is free because the major browsers have incorporated feed-reading capabilities. Some email client programs will also aggregate feeds. Perhaps it's my desire to segment the information coming to me, but my preference has always been to use a standalone program like FeedDemon (http://www.feeddemon.com). It pulls its information from the online version, www.NewsGator.com, and they encourage you to set up a free account online so you can use either service. FeedDemon has an internal browser that lists the feeds to which you have subscribed, and you can create folders and sub-folders to organize the listings. Subscribing to Website and Blog Feeds The best place to find the list of available RSS feeds from a website is to look at the very bottom of the page for a text link that says RSS. Clicking that link takes you to a page with a list of feeds and an (typically) an orange XML icon that links to the feed URL. The manual method for subscribing is to right-click on the icon (command+click on the Mac) and copy the shortcut, then paste it into the "subscribe" section of your feed reader. Your reader then saves the URL, and when you launch the program the reader collects the information from the website and displays the available stories for you to read. Some RSS listings have icons for popular online readers such as NewsGator or Yahoo. Clicking those reader icons takes you to the reader, copying the feed URL in the process. When I click on a NewsGator icon, I'm redirected to the NewsGator website. If I'm not logged in, I supply my username and password, and then I'm presented with a list of folders from my reader. I select the folder where I want the feed added, and click Add. Because I like using FeedDemon, I later open that program, and it pulls my selections from the online site. I could simply skip that step and read everything online. Either approach works. Yahoo has an excellent list of feed readers (and feed publishers) that you can peruse and select. Here is the link: http://snipurl.com/feedreaders Finding Business Travel Information That Helps You Having renewed my interest in using feed aggregators, I went searching for feeds specific to business travel, and I found a handful worth investigating. Here are the business travel feeds I'm watching. US State Department - Travel Warnings US State Department - Travel Alerts USA Today Travel - Top Stories USA Today - Today in the Sky USA Today Travel - Business Travel Wall Street Journal - Travel (WSJ.com) New York Times - Business Travel MSNBC.com - Business Travel CNN Travel Even among these feeds, there are stories that do not constitute the hard news that might alert us to impending problems. You will still be sifting through stories to find the information you need to know. Nevertheless, it's MUCH easier to read the pertinent stories in a feed reader than to click through page after page on a website. To solve this problem, I've decided to add business travel news to my www.ToolieTravelBlog.com. I will be sorting through the stories pulled from the feeds above to add to the blog (see the section below for full details). My intent is to provide the kind of "passenger in the seat" information we need to smooth out the kinks in our travels. I'll do it so you don't have to; just subscribe to my blog's feed and I will save you the time. What Feeds Do You Read? If you subscribe to feeds that help you by providing current news, business trends, or other subjects directly applicable to business travelers, please do share those with me, and I'll include them among my business travel news selections. Or, if you prefer, comment on the stories on the blogs, and I will adjust the offerings accordingly. You've got enough to do! Let me help you stay informed. ToolieTravelBlog.com Adds Business Travel News ServiceI haven't been doing much travel blogging much lately because of demands elsewhere, but that is about to change! I have found a service that will let me sift through the volume of available travel-related news to find the news stories and travel alerts that business travelers need to know. I've always written for "business travel passengers in the seats" as opposed to leisure travelers or business travel industry personnel, so those are the stories I will find and share with you. I will post any US State Department Travel Alerts and Warnings that I receive, so you'll find all of these things in one location, pre-screened for you. Now that you know how to subscribe to an RSS feed, I invite you to subscribe to my ToolieTravelBlog.com feed. Just click on "Entries RSS" in the left column on my blog. Toolie's Travel PlansMy next trip is to Phoenix in July for the NSA Convention. I'll be presenting on "Web 2.0" and the impact of social media. Then, as soon as I can get traction with venues I'm pursuing, I'll be out speaking again. Stop by my web site, http://www.tooliethetravelguide.com and say 'Hello,' especially if the Live Chat icon says I'm online. I love to hear from my subscribers anytime! Toolie®
the Travel Guide http://www.ToolieTheTravelGuide.com PS: Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/toolie |