For those of you that are deep into the Paranormal Romance Genre, I have a wonderful page entitled Paranormal Romance Authors and Book Listings on my WordPress site.  This is an intense compilation of various authors and their particular brand of paranormal that is updated by the magnificent Melanie Nowak, author of the scintillating Almost Human.  The list has been revised and you can update your soon-to-be-read pile by clicking on the page at the top of my columns.  A special FYI for those that are true, dedicated fans of the Paranormal, stop by and become a member at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PNRList/.

Fascinating Reading to each and every one of you!

La Fundación del Partido Nacional Revolucionario, hoy Partido Revolucionario Institucional, el 4 de marzo de 1929, en el histórico Teatro de la República de nuestra ciudad, vino a culminar una serie de movimientos revolucionarios en nuestro país; mismos que en apariencia habían sido sosegados con la firma de la Constitución Federal en el recinto antes citado, el 5 de febrero de 1917. La realidad era otra.

Aunque la Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos representaba un avance considerable en la construcción del México moderno; la razón de la fuerza, que no la fuerza de la razón, era la que seguía imperando en la década de los veinte del siglo pasado.

De este modo, la ya larga historia del México Independiente, en la que los gobernantes eran depuestos por la vía de las armas, ultimados y sustituidos en el cargo por sus verdugos, seguía siendo la constante en nuestro país; así como la arraigada idea de perpetuarse en el poder, con los mismos métodos.

La visión del General Plutarco Elías Calles de aglutinar en un solo partido nacional las distintas expresiones de la sociedad, viene a fortalecer los principios revolucionarios; y es así que a través de la vía democrática y teniendo únicamente como arma el poder del voto ciudadano, quienes aspiraran a llegar al poder lo harían permaneciendo en el cargo sólo el tiempo que la Constitución estableciera.

El PNR vendría a consolidar las diversas exigencias sociales que provocaran años atrás el estallido revolucionario; el PNR generaría el pacto social que le dio viabilidad al país y que frenó de tajo la noción de llegar al poder por algún método distinto al de la soberanía popular.

La historia del México moderno no podría entenderse sin la historia del Partido Nacional Revolucionario, transmutado en Partido de la Revolución Mexicana, y posterior Partido Revolucionario Institucional, artífice de los grandes cambios sociales de la Federación.

La construcción de nuestro país se la debemos a un partido que tiene sus cimientos en el movimiento revolucionario de 1910; y que en su Declaración de Principios y Programa de Acción establece el modelo de nación para construir el México que todos queremos, en el cual la brecha entre los ricos y los pobres no se haga más grande cada día.

Ya en los festejos del Centenario de la Revolución, el PRI está llamado a ser el barco insignia que lleve al país a buen puerto y no lo deje naufragar en el mar tormentoso de la pobreza y las desigualdades sociales, de libertades restringidas y justicia como moneda de cambio de unos cuantos.

LA CUADRATURA.

Si los panistas han etiquetado a Francisco Domínguez de priista, por haber aprobado, él y todos sus regidores, la Comisión Investigadora de la Administración de Manuel González Valle ¿significa que ellos hubieran encubierto al ex candidato a la Gubernatura? ¿Qué el PAN está en contra de la transparencia y la rendición de cuentas? ¿O simplemente que es el PRI el que busca fincar responsabilidades a quien las tenga, y el PAN se niega a hacerlo?

Circulo.Politico@Gmail.com

**Update: The four finalists are noted below in bold purple text.**

The Phocuswright Travel Innovation Summit showcased 34 firms yesterday. Each has an interesting new angle on some aspect of the travel business. For me, the firms in the social scanning and fuzzy shopping categories were the most intriguing.  See this post for my take on the implications for travel procurement.

I’ve grouped the firms into the following categories to make it easier to see where innovations are heading in this important industry. (Not all firms fit neatly into their assigned category)

Fuzzy Shopping (for those who don’t yet have a specific itinerary in mind)

• Planetism (alpha)
• TravelTainment by Amadeus Leisure Group
• Amadeus Affinity Shopper
• YourTour by DeciZium
• Voyij
• Journey Manager by Travelport
• Goby
• CloudView Smart Search by Exalead
• Gliider

Niche Booking (specialized booking platforms)

• Tripware OutBook (book travel within MS Outlook)
• CarTrawler
• CheapLimoRates
• ZipSetGo (venue selection for meeting planners)
• AboutAnywhere (hotel bookings)
• SpeedRFP (standardizing RFP data for meetings and events)

Social Scanning (monitors what is said about brands in the blogosphere)

• VinePulse by 10Best Solutions
• GuestCentric Systems
• eBuzz Connect by Milestone Internet Marketing

Local Knowledge (tapping into “feet on the street” content)

• EveryTrail by GlobalMotion Media (users post geo-tagged photos and text)
• TourAbout (connects curious shoppers with local tour operators)
• Localyte (100,000 “guides” in a social network)

Trip Manager (organizes your separate bookings into one itinerary)

• Traxo
• TripCase

Advertising and Analytics

• Dapper
• Voyage.tv
• [X+1]
• Twavl (alpha) by ConnectMe360
• StorePoint Expandables by Expedia Media Solutions
• WebValidator by iPerceptions

Ancillary Revenue (helps distributors sell more products to travelers)

• Luggagetag.com by Vanguard ID Systems (makes tags on demand)
• TravelGuard (trip insurance)
• Travel Insurance 2.0 by Mondial Assistance

Language Translation (geared to translating web pages)

• Language Weaver
• GlobalLink OneLink by Translations.com

Here is a more detailed review of each of the innovators by the good folks at Tnooz.

Phocuswright will announce the four finalists later today (Thursday) and the overall winner tomorrow.  I’ll update you accordingly!

Here are the five most popular posts on this blog from the last 40 days:

1. Trippy – Tomorrow’s Biz Trip Planning Tool? (Trippy is a mash-up of Google Wave, Google Maps and Lonely Planet content)
2. Travel 101 (a 4-minute video introduction to the travel category, and four posts covering Travel Data 101)
3. Travel Procurement’s Fighting Words (started by a slam against using procurement principles in the travel category)
4. Future Innovations in Airline Distribution – Condensed (a summary of problems and  innovations needed in the airline distribution channel)
5. Why Travel Disses Procurement (explains the friction found between travel and procurement staffs and what to do about it)

I’m surprised that two of these posts don’t relate directly to travel procurement (“Trippy…” and “Future Innovations…”).  You’re saying it’s OK to cast a wider net in terms of topics.  Cool.  I’ll continue to bring in this type of content from time to time.  What else would you like to see here?

Challenge Duration: November 1 –November 30, 2009

I have divided the alphabet into 9 groups and your goal is to match characters from your chosen books whose first or last names start with one of the given letters.

A/B : Adrian from Vulnerable by Amy Lane 03-11 ***
C/D/E : Elinore from Never After (Can He Bake a Cherry Pie? by Laurell K. Hamilton) 06-11 ****
F/G/H : Gwen O’Neill from The Mane Squeeze by Shelly Laurenston 04-11 *****
I/J/K : Percy Jackson from The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan 10-11 ****
L/M/N : Merewyn of Mercia from Knight of Darkness by Kinley MacGregor 05-11 ****
O/P/Q : October Daye from Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire 10-11 ****
R/S/T : Kathryn Raynolds from Edge Of The Moon by Rebecca York 07-11 ***
U/V/W : Jaime Vegas from No Humans Involved by Kelley Armstrong 02-11 ****
X/Y/Z : Jane Yellowrock from Skinwalker by Faith Hunter 13-11 ****

Here are the highlights from my recent presentation at CASMA titled  “Future Innovations in Airline Distribution”.   The original deck has about 50 slides, but because it was designed for a live 60-minute speech, it’s hard to get the meaning of many of the slides (nearly all pictures) by themselves.  So here’s the 3-minute version:

Channels have limits.

Distribution channels are essential to commerce, but they have limits.  The Panama Canal has to build wider locks to accommodate the newest and largest cargo ships.  This is a metaphor for the GDS distribution channel, as it cannot handle the “wider” content that airlines want to distribute today.

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The GDSs are good at moving simply-structured data.

GDSs have been built to display rows and columns of data.  That works fine for the basic airline content of seats, fares and availability.

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But airlines now need to sell more than just commodity seats and fares.

Today, airlines are keenly interested in selling non-seat merchandise.  The problem is that these new items don’t fit neatly into the rows and column structure of the GDS pipes.   GDS technology is pretty old – old enough to not have the flexibility needed to package and display the new content that the airlines want to sell.

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The early results of some of these efforts look like this:

It’s a messy process right now.  The airlines are struggling with what to sell, whether or not to bundle merchandise into fare families, and how to price all this stuff to their various customer segments. (Click the photo to see the text in the arrows).

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But customer segmentation is not a strong suit of the airlines.

Airlines have traditionally dealt with passengers by focusing on getting a name, an address and a frequent flyer number into their reservation data.  Other industries know much, more about their customers.

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The industry is already working on building new shopping carts that will hold the new forms of airfares and related merchandise.

They’ll need a new aisle, meaning a new distribution channel…and they are working on this in the form of  “direct connect” pipes between the airlines and the larger travel management companies and online booking tools.  The challenge for the GDSs is to build out their own new carts and aisles so that the GDSs don’t lose high volumes of transactions and the associated revenue.

The airline industry also needs to develop a much richer understanding of its customers.

It’s not hard to imagine using a passenger’s social network information, along with other opt-in tidbits, to help an airline do a much better job of understanding a customer’s wants and needs.

Google has recently made inroads here.  See this post on “Social Search”, which shows how they can leverage your social networks.

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Finally, I offer the idea of  “Social PNRs”.  PNR stands for Passenger Name Record, and is the backbone of travel reservation and booking systems.  Today, PNRs don’t mix and mingle very well, especially if they have been created in different booking systems. 

TripIt has done a great job of integrating these stand-alone PNRs, in the form of itinerary components, for passengers who want all their travel reservation information in one place.

But there’s much more that can be done with this concept to make things easier for the traveler,  as this slide suggests.  (Note that I assume this would be done on an opt-in basis).

Well, that’s the short version of the presentation.  There’s more in the original deck that deals with past innovations and future factors that will impact the travel industry.  I’ll send those out to anyone who asks.

Meanwhile, I’ll be delighted to hear your thoughts about this subject!

]]> http://gillespie411.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/the-future-of-airline-distribution/ Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:25:31 +0000 Scott Gillespie http://gillespie411.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/the-future-of-airline-distribution/

***

Update: Here’s a more current post that gives you the 3-minute condensed version of this presentation, including the most popular slides.

***

Here’s what I presented today at the CASMA conference:

“Future Innovations in Airline Distribution”

The key contents of this speech covered:

• Notable past innovations in airline distribution
• Future trends that will impact the travel industry (e.g., aging population,virtual tourism)
• Three future innovations
  • A new shopping cart and a new aisle for buying travel (think Amazon)
  • A rich customer profile (not a profile of a rich customer)
  • Social PNRs

By “social PNRs”, I mean a pool of reservation records that can be accessed and manged in ways that benefit the travelers.  TripIt has made a great start in this area, but it can and should be extended much, much further.  More on this later!

130 votos. Foi o número que deu a vitória e a maioria absoluta (com 5 mandatos) a Macário Correia, contra José Apolinário (4 mandatos). Este resultado foi, seguramente, dos resultados mais nivelados da história da democracia portuguesa revelando o clima, a bipolarização e o equilibrio com que a campanha eleitoral decorreu.

A CDU, os independentes CFC e o BE não obtiveram resultados suficientes para eleger um vereador para a Câmara Municipal. Para a Assembleia Municipal o Partido Socialista saiu-se vencedor obtendo 12 mandatos, contra 11 obtidos pela coligação “Faro está primeiro”, 2 por parte da CDU, 1 por parte dos CFC e 1 do BE. Destaque para o PNR que concorreu só para a Assembleia Municipal  e obtem quase 2% do eleitorado.

Para as Juntas de Freguesia, o PS manteve a Conceição e a Sé, perdendo para a coligação “Faro está primeiro” Montenegro. A CDU manteve com maioria absolutissima Santa Bárbara de Nexe enquanto que S. Pedro e Estoi permaneceu social-democrata (e seus coligados).

No concelho de Faro estavam inscritos 54.450 eleitores, tendo votado 31.264, ou seja, houve uma taxa de abstenção de 42,58%. A nível nacional o PSD apesar de ter perdido 19 câmaras, continuou a ser o partido mais votado e com mais câmaras conquistadas. O PS ganhou 20 e a CDU perdeu 4 concelhos. 7 Câmaras são geridas por independentes e o CDS e o BE têm 1 câmara cada.

Fica aqui em baixo os resultados das eleições farenses:

Câmara Municipal

PSD-CDS-MPT-PPM: 42,67%

PS: 42,25%

CDU: 5,25%

CFC: 4,12%

BE: 3,04%

Brancos: 1,60%

Nulos: 1,07%

Assembleia Municipal

PS: 38,51%

PSD-CDS-MPT-PPM: 38,20%

CDU: 7,19%

CFC: 4,80%

BE: 6,38%

PNR: 1,71%

Brancos: 1,94%

Nulos: 1,19%

Assembleia de Freguesia

             Sé / Montenegro / São Pedro / Conceição / Estoi / Santa Bárbara

PS: 44,11% / 38,90% / 36,21% / 58,30% / 37,13% / 14,86%  

PSD: 36,30% / 43,01% / 43,65% / 26,32% / 43,06% / 26%

CDU: 6,21% / 3,99% / 7,34% / 6,67% / 11,40% / 49,41%

CFC:  4,58% / 4,83% / 3,92% / 5,06% / 3,95% / 5,41%

BE: 5,87% / 5,92% / 5,94% / —– / —– / —–         

Brancos: 1,87% / 2,33% / 1,7% / 1,6% / 2,43% / 2,27%

Nulos: 1,07% / 1,03% / 1,25% / 2,06% / 2,03 % / 2,05%

Challenge Duration: October 1 – October 31, 2009

The goal is to read 9 books whose covers match predominantly the colors listed.

1. Orange – Angels’ Blood by Nalini Singh 09-10 *****
2. Red – Broken by Kelley Armstrong 04-10 ****
3. Brown – Tall, Dark & Dead by Tate Hallaway 06-10 ***
4. Green – A Vision of Murder by Victoria Laurie 01-10 ***
5. Black – Hunted by P.C. & Kristin Cast 08-10 ****
6. Yellow – Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand by Carrie Vaughn 06-10 **
7. Purple – The Darkest Whisper by Gena Showalter 12-10 ****
8. Pink – Once Dead, Twice Shy by Kim Harrison 09-10 **
9. Blue – Hunting Ground by Patricia Briggs 10-10 ***

Challenge Duration: September 1 – September 30, 2009

Pick 9 GR friends of yours, browse their “read” shelfs and pick one book from each friend.

1. Stephanie – Dark of Night by Suzanne Brockmann 07-09
2. Kathy – Industrial Magic by Kelley Armstrong 10-09
3. Shawna – Extreme ExposurePamela Clare 12-09
4. Kasia – Succubus On Top by Richelle Mead 15-09
5. Agnieszka – Krokodyl z kraju Karoliny by Joanna Chmielewska 16-09
6. Alathea – After the Kiss by Suzanne Enoch 18-09
7. Geediez – Głos Boga by Jacek Sobota 24-09
8. Inis – Lord of the Flies by William Golding 25-09
9.

the comeback kings

After years of being dormant, the Philippine National Railways (PNR) has finally resurrected from oblivion with a bang!

Since June of this year,  and now sporting a  brand new livery, the new look PNR has begun plying  anew the recently  rehabilitated railways of Metro Manila ( albeit at the moment,   its  reach is a hollow shell of its former self).  To those who can’t remember, the trains of the PNR  once lorded it over in the world of  local public utility vehicles;  but unfortunately, it was erroneously reduced to the sidelines due to the  neglect of  the local and national

inside the Bicol Express

governments of  the past.

With the rise of the Light Railway Transit (LRT) and the  Metro Railway Transit (MRT), a lack  of foresight plagued the supposed urban planners  of Manila forcing the abrupt stoppage and bankruptcy  of the PNR’s Manila and  North-South  Luzon train routes.  The result was a total deterioration of the railway’s infrastructure.

Although it is estimated that it’s operational capacity at the moment is only at a  probable 50% in my estimation, the impact of  its return among commuters is very significant especially in the near future.   More importantly, its comeback  provided new hope for the daily travelers of the concrete and sometimes harsh landscape of Manila.

Soon when the government has completely cleared the railways of those dangerous and unsightly informal settlers, the traveling time from one end of Manila to the other would be cut down to just below 40 minutes.   And what is great about this  is that it will also complement the existing LRT and MRT lines, thereby reducing the volume of vehicular traffic in the already congested streets of  the metro.

Also, these trains would be servicing the provinces  North & South of the National Capital Region.  Even if the allocated budget is  relatively  measly, its envisioned to reach as far North as the Ilocos Region and as far  South as  Bicolandia.   In fact, the train system in Naga City, otherwise known as The Bicol Express, is just about ready to go full blast and serve as a catalyst of   growth and progress for  the prime city of  Camarines Sur.

*pictures courtsey of  RIHSPI

Even if Philippine National Railways already have new air conditioned trains,  I still love to ride the old one. Riding the new train is something ordinary for me, it is like riding on a LRT 2 coach.

I started riding the old PNR train last year because of curiosity.  Now, I ride it regularly (once every two months) because of the feeling of adventure.

Gone are days when people would throw garbage or human waste at the train. There are some instances but it is very minimal.

There are regular vendors here every Sunday like the old lady (above) who sell nilupak & crackers and the guy (below) who sell puto and kutsinta.

People inside the train especially the elders are not fond of shooting them. I need to make a rapport to make them a little bit comfortable and next thing they know I already have a photograph of them.

Just beware and be alert of suspicious people inside staring at your gears. Trust your instinct. Better safe than sorry.

Old PNR Train trip schedule is only once a day. Starting from Tutuban Station at 12 noon and will be at Alabang Station by 1:30pm. Fare is Php 16. Wanna ride?