Travel
Orbitz/CheapTickets brings back air-booking fees, offers customer 10% off room bookings in return. Orbitz Worldwide was forced to follow Expedia in dropping the fees in 2009, but is now trying to reintroduce them in a way that customers will accept. It remains to be seen if the tactic will be successful. Competitors like Expedia already offer significant savings on air/lodging packages without consumers having to go to the trouble of using a coupon.
US Airways offering elite frequent flyer perks to anyone willing to pay a fee of as low as $10. The option is available during online check-in.
PhoCusWright: The two leading travel flash sale brands – Groupon Getaways and LivingSocial Escapes – would rank among the top 1% of travel retailers in the U.S. if their 4Q11 gross billings were representative of their travel sales on an annualized basis.
There are classy bargains to be had on intra-city bus service in the US. For example, ride the new Seattle-Portland BoltBus for as little as $2 by booking early. Even the average ticket is little more than $10 each way. (BoltBus has been in the northeast US for a while now.)
Insider’s secrets to Orlando’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter. This article is spot-on with its descriptions and suggestions on how to deal with the crowds. We were just there last month. It’s well worth visiting and is incredibly popular—the crowds were denser than at any other location we visited at both Universal and Disney World theme parks.
Disney World testing new high tech Fastpass. I reported a rumor of this last month; it’s turned out to real.
Chinese airport uses cheerleaders to soothe stranded passengers
Tech
Samsung Galaxy S III Android phone announced. The various tech blogs are calling it evolutionary but impressive.
For the first time, hacked websites with Android drive-by download malware have been discovered
Oxford University IT staff ‘somewhat overwhelmed by Mac malware.’ This may be a better indicator that the Flashback virus was a significant event. Unlike the antivirus companies, they don’t have a product to sell. This reminds me of my first day on the job as an IT director at an Ivy-league university during the blaster worm outbreak. The IT department had almost no process or experience dealing with network security issues. I kept the staff on late and we hurried from room to room and building to building unplugging infected machines from the network.
Facebook share price to be in the range of $28 to $35. Zuckerberg to personally sell about a billion dollars worth of stock and will still control more than half of the company.
Yahoo CEO’s bio “inadvertently” claims he has a Computer Science degree when he does not. This at a company that laid off a bunch of CS PhDs last month.
Kindle Fire Shipments Fizzle. Is that because so many people are selling them second-hand?
Just One More: ‘Melvin,’ is a portable 38-step Rube Goldberg machine. If a run is successful, Melvin will finish off with a personalized stamped postcard and affix proper postage.
TravelTekker 