As many of you know, I’m in Canada a lot and thereby spend a lot of time on Air Canada jets. Usually, in the course of a month sooner or later I am too tired, wired, or just not in the mood to crank out work while flying, and I pick up and thumb through a copy of enRoute – their inflight magazine. It’s generally pretty good as these things go. Each article is printed in French and English, and I have fun trying to use my high school French to piece together an article, and then read the English version to see what it really means, often with laughable results.
Anyway, I don’t know if it’s strange karma or just that when your head is full of one thing you notice it everywhere, but there was a high degree of on-target tech commentary in the January issue, entitled “L’avenir du voyage en 2006”, or “The Future of Travel in 2006”.
To start with, I’ve been messing about with virtual worlds lately, and just the other day was goofing around on Second Life while discussing the application of voice to these places. Page 52 of enRoute had an well-written humerous article about the writer’s recent vacation, which at the very end reveals that it was a trip to there.com. With a nice link to this info repository and review of virtual worlds, which is a very useful pointer for me.
Then, in their new products featurette (p. 41) they have highlighted the SlingBox, which I was just discussing over lunch with Jeff and Bruce.
Chris Mahoney, one of their travel writers, when asked to speak about the future of travel focuses on blogs and says in part (p. 39) (he has a cool blog it turns out)
… Travel blogs become a more trusted resource than traditional travel media, which languishes and fades …
The feature article (p 59) talks about cell-phone and wifi-enabled city wide games, under the theory of psychogeography. (oh, and the link to the English version of the enRoute feature article is here, i was just funnin with ya). Pacmanhattan anyone?
Now, what I found refreshing is that this is all presented so matter of fact. No hype, no blustering pronoucements about the pace of technology. It’s written and edited as if the editors expect their readership to be up to speed and take all of this in as if it was just another survey of luxury spa hotels. IN AN INFLIGHT CONSUMER MAGAZINE !?!?! I guess this to be expected from a country that is one of the world leaders in broadband penetration. Watch out America.
(And hey, is it just me or did anyone else notice that about a year ago the woman in the Rosetta Stone foreign language ad had her drink changed, from a glass of white wine to an androgynous green drink of some sort??? I don’t know why I find this irritating but I do)