Hot industry stats, debates on legislation, an Open Source cloud stack and other news of note:

1. Since Congress has started to take up the question of whether airlines need to be transparent about ancillary fees across channels, in order to allow travelers adequately compare real costs of their choices, Timothy O’Neill-Dunne puts forward the definitive answer. Of course no one in Washington is listening, so this drama will surely last longer than the Microsoft Kin (what wouldn’t?).



2. On a related note, Sabre announces that it will update its “Air Total Pricing” system to enable travel agents and consumers see the total price of their trip, inclusive of ancillary fees before they book. The comparison shopping aspect will be addressed first, but the booking and fulfillment portion of the equation probably won’t be solved until later this year.
3. Forrester Cloud Computing analyst James Staten provides his view on Rackspace’s announcement to Open Source their cloud computing stack. NASA may not have found intelligent life out there, but must think the folks at Rackspace are pretty bright because they are amongst the first to deploy the platform.
4. Shortly after being identified as key competitors by Google, heretofore unheralded start ups Everbread and Vayant go mano-a-mano as Vayant alleges copyright infringement.
5. The continuation of a good week for Apple. First they declare there is no Antenna-gate and then they obliterate earnings estimates with their best quarter ever.  iPads almost outsold Macs and it was the most Macs ever sold in a quarter.
6. To patent or not to patent. That is the question. Great article by Pamela Samuelson from Cal-Berkley on why startups decide to patent…or not.
7. TopGuest, a new location-based travel rewards service has a bunch of notable investors, but more importantly nabs a partnership with the InterContinental Priority Club and IHG’s 4,400 properties.
8. Amadeus released preliminary results of their Guide to Ancillary Revenue in association with leading airline ancillary revenue consultancy IdeaWorks. Some good stats if you missed it.
9. While we have our survey out on what you think about the new Open AXIS Group, Professor Sabena gives us his take.
10. An entertaining and insightful view on the upside of newly passed legislation in NY outlawing the use of private dwellings short-term rentals. While decried by many as propping up the large hotel chains, there are real safety, health and security concerns that this bill protects unsuspecting travelers from.

There were several stories today on TechCrunch about upcoming tablets as well as several…shall we say curious…statements from Microsoft executives at their Worldwide Partner Conference in the nation’s capital.  I find much of the conversation and posturing from vendors and pundits interesting and incredulous at the same time.  Sometimes I’m not even sure if they know what the game is that they’re playing.

From a media perspective it seems to come down to whether you’re an Apple fan or someone who wants to see Apple knocked down a few pegs.  I mean one of the dumber comments I’ve seen was by Inc.’s Renee Oricchio who when comparing a proposed Droid tablet to the iPad asked:

“Who’s more business oriented? Do you really see the UPS man having you sign for a package on his iPad? Hmmm… But, I bet you can see doing it on an Android pad. I can. I can see the UPS man using a mashup app between Google maps and his delivery route data, even Google calendars.”

Is there inherently anything different about an Android-based tablet that could possibly make this statement true? Did I miss where you can’t access Google Maps or Calendars on the iPad or where those services couldn’t be built into an app or via a HTML5-based site. I didn’t think her other points made any sense either.

Anyway, not that anyone’s asking me, but I’d suggest that tablet vendors follow this advice:

1. If it’s not shipping within the next 6 months, shut up. Earlier this week there was an “announcement” of sorts from HP about a flexible tablet based on the WebOS from the recently acquired Palm. Personally I think that WebOS is a great platform and that it provides HP a chance to really own the corporate tablet market. But as someone who owns a Palm Pré, just focus on taking the OS to the next level and get out a new phone and the Slate before you start talking about something that won’t ship for 5 years.  Another example of getting too far ahead of yourself was the Microsoft Courier. When it was first introduced it seemed a dream device, and perhaps most notably a very-non Microsoft-like. It seemed like a sure fire hit…except that Microsoft killed it a few months ago and we’ll never know. But of course none of that stopped Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer from telling the world that he’s hardcore about tablet computers at WPC 2010. Ship something…please.

1. Do not focus on specs. It’s a race to the bottom, not the top. This is the classic mistake that many tech companies make, often borne out of a lack of any real differentiation. It’s also the easiest thing to get “beat” on by the next product the competitor releases. Besides, so many companies use the same components and it’s difficult (if not impossible) for customer to really understand what impact the difference in specs really has on the performance and quality of the product they bought (didn’t we learn this about processor clock speed?).  Author Steven Sinek’s latest book “Start with Why” premise is that best, most profitable companies with the most loyal customer base are those that don’t focus on what they do (focusing on product specs) but have a very clear vision, understanding of “why” they created their company and the products they make flow from that vision.

1. Keep usability front and center. This is the flip side of the spec issue. It’s amazing to me that companies learn the lessons of why different mobile devices have succeeded and others have failed. The success of the first Palm Pilot was its simplicity. There were 4 buttons on the device, built around a customized operating system and the apps worked well.  On the other hand, there’s Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS. Microsoft proffered this shrunken version of the Windows desktop operating system that was ill-suited to the medium, putting the importance of extending the Windows franchise ahead of the needs of the customer.  Well it worked so well that Microsoft finally had to shed the Windows moniker for the launch of Windows Phone7 this fall.

Yet usability is what’s been behind the success of the iPod, iPhone and now the iPad. Neither of the first two products were first in the market, but they redefined the category and thrust Apple into the American consciousness as never before. The iPad is often ridiculed as a giant iPhone or a device for your Mom, but the execution is excellent and it’s the elegance of the interface, designed for the medium has been the key to the success of the device and Apple’s ability to define the segment – so much so that everyone else on the planet is rushing to join the party.

1. The characterization of the iPad as a consumption device is a false argument. I’m not sure that I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard this repeated. Nor do I necessarily believe that it’s true (at least compared to other similar devices) or whether or not it matters.  There’s no debating that many of the apps that were featured in the launch were consumption based, but considering apps like Documents to Go by DataViz, Evernote, OmniGraffle, Wordpress, twitter apps, I just don’t believe it’s true.  And that’s not considering the fact that we’re looking at a product that’s only been in the market for just over 3 months so the best apps are still in the future. And it’s clear that iMovie for the iPad (just released for iPhone4) is in the very near future.  And if you look at this video, I’d like you to tell me that you can’t create on the iPad with a straight face.

1. One last thing…if your tablet requires a stylus, you’re doing it wrong. Bill Buxton from Microsoft Research recently declared at WPC “A device without a stylus is like chinese food without chopsticks”, meaning that their new tablet concepts are going to use a stylus…something not considered on the oft-praised, but not to be released Courier. When will they learn.

Well I hope that everyone enjoyed their holiday. But before I get to the tech and travel news, I must comment on “The Decision”.  Yes, I was among the 10 million people that watched LeBron James rip the heart of his own city when he announced his decision to play for the Miami Heat next year. Like many I feel terrible for Cavs fans and LeBron is diminished in my eyes. Not for the choice that he made. I mean hey, if I was a single, 25-year old mega-millionaire, I’d probably want to play with my two best friends and live in South Beach too. For LeBron South Beach won’t be eye-candy, it will be candy.  And he’s the owner of the candy store (or at least COO with Dwayne Wade as CEO).

Credit: Al Diaz/Miami Herald

But what was unforgivable for me was the way that he manufactured the drama and built-up his own TV special when in fact the decision had been made days, if not months ago. I just can’t imagine that as an Ohio native that he didn’t understand just how his decision to leave would devastate the community and his fans…and how dragging out the process and announcing his decision on national TV would make the effect even worse.  Jeff Van Gundy had it right on the broadcast when he said that the one thing he’d regret is not informing the Cavs of his decision before the broadcast. I think that Cavs’ owner Dan Gilbert’s fantastic/unfortunate/comical “open letter to Cavs fans” is testament to that.

OK, on to this week’s curation.

1. Everbread raises about $85M from Bessemer Ventures. I guess it pays to be named by Google as a competitor.
2. YouTube Mobile goes HTML5. Seems as if the mobile web site beats the app, which seems to jive with Google’s strategy of moving towards a mobile web, rather than an apps.
3. There has been a lot of talk about how Facebook could have an impact on the travel industry via their OpenGraph. Well Facebook made their first overt move into the travel space by acquiring NextStop, but then immediately shut it down.  In all likelihood we’ll see the NextStop tech in another form, but it will continue to get interesting.
4. Last week OpenAxis debuted, this week it’s the BLLA announcing the development of a new standard for defining boutique and lifestyle lodgings in hopes to level the distribution playing field with the large hotel chains.
5. Very interesting stats on how people are using the iPad from Resolve Market Resarch. On a related note, Enterprise Irregular Jeff Nolan recants his original take on the iPad and notes that besides e-Readers, netbooks are getting smacked down in favor of iPads.
6. Good sign for a future recovery: US Venture Capital fundraising is up 13%, although that’s still only half of what was raised in the first half of 2008, it’s moving in the right direction. And since emerging businesses are the real jobs engine in the country (many say small business, but really it’s new businesses), this is promising for the future.
7. Continental re-ups their GDS relationship with Travelport through 2013. It’s interesting that CO is doing these kinds of deals with the merger with United scheduled to close later this year. I understand the urgency on Travelport’s part, but with another year on the existing deal, why did CO jump now? At some point doesn’t a merged CO-UA have to re-evaluate and re-negotiate these kinds of contracts?
8. Next week is Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner conference in DC and Azure (Microsoft’s Cloud Computing platform) is supposed be front and center. Altimeter Group’s Ray Wang gives Microsoft partners some Azure rewards and risks to keep in mind while listening to the presentations at the conference.
9. Just a week after OpenAxis is announced, American Airlines announces that it will be making all its optional services available exclusively through Farelogix.
10. Two weeks in a row a major technology company buys a travel firm.  This time it was Facebook buying Nextstop. At first there was speculation that this was Facebook first step into the travel sector to keep up with Google and Apple, as had been rumored after they unfurled their OpenGraph at f8 in April. But according to TechCrunch it looks like perhaps they’re just accumulating talent.

Well it was not a particularly newsworthy week. Partially because of the shortened week for Memorial Day as well as the expected lull between Google’s I/O conference and Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) that kicks off today.  But there were still a few items worth noting. As an FYI, I’m heading out on vacation on Friday for about 10 days (10 year anniversary + wife’s xx-th birthday), so no column next week. Not sure if I’ll squeeze out another post this week, so if not “Mahalo”.

1. Adobe announces new technology to power digital publishing for the iPad, iPhone that’s behind the Wired iPad app. Burton Group’s @pragkirk believes it outputs Objective-C, yet unconfirmed. Seems this is all Apple ever wanted. They didn’t care about the tool, just that it results in code that delivers high performance and doesn’t crash. So now if CS5 can output to HTML5 and this new tech, why do we need Flash again?
2. How would travel search look if fare search engines knew who you were? Interesting proposition, presuming that the travel suppliers kept a customer-centric perspective and tried to build a better relationship with their customers rather than implementing this solely to squeeze more ancillary revenues from travelers.
3. The much awaited Google Chrome will launch this fall.  As with any OS, I think adoption is going to be predicated on the availability of apps. If it’s just going to support Google Apps and web browsing, I think there’s limited uptake. So the announcements surrounding the Chrome OS will be more telling than the OS announcement itself.
4. Say what? HP CEO, Mark Hurd says that they didn’t purchase Palm to be in the smartphone business, but mainly for the underlying IP in WebOS to use on a variety of devices.  As an owner of the an H/Pre, up til now I was hopeful that there would be an investment into improving WebOS for the phone. Now, I think I’m more motivated to switch to the upcoming new iPhone or Android than when it looked like Palm may go bankrupt L
5. Amid all the debate about Facebook’s privacy policies, Mark Cuban wonders whether Facebook’s “simplified”, revised privacy policies actually hurt Google and provide a path for newspapers to chart out a new future.
6. At TRAVDEX, I mentioned how Siri might really change the game for travel search as a “do engine” rather than a simple search engine. Robert Scoble paints a picture of how location, search and social might transform how we plan and book travel and how we do other things in our daily lives by 2012.
7. Just days before WWDC, AT&T screws Apple again by abandoning “all you can eat” data plans. People who love their iPhones have abandoned them for Android solely to because of AT&T’s terrible service. This about-face a mere 4 months from the iPad announcement just gives AT&T haters another reason to hate. UPDATE: AT&T has said they’ll grandfather anyone who buys an iPad 3G through June 7, even though they’re currently backordered.
8. Social media superstar, Chris Brogan is launching a new site called “Man on the Go” where he will share his experiences and recommendations of travel gear, hotels, restaurants, etc. It should be interesting to watch what effect he may have on the travel industry. Already he’s highlighted a company called ExpertFlyer.
9. Not necessarily what I would call breaking news, but the New York Times notes that while the airlines have introduced new capabilities leveraging smartphones, they are still – as Henry Harteveldt says –  “prisoners of their past” from a technology perspective.
10. Looking for a place to eat while on the road? Good news. Yelp takes its restaurant reviews to the next level, integrating restaurant booking via OpenTable.  A smart move given that 3 out of 10 businesses reviewed on Yelp are restaurants. Another example of how companies are shortening the distance between investigation and booking.

It’s Tuesday, not Monday, but here’s your guide to the week that was. Hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend and took a moment to remember the men and women who lost their lives in defense of our country (at least those of you in the US).

1. Timothy O’Neil-Dunne divines Google’s travel strategy. Whether he’s channeling Google executives or not, it’s a reasonable and thoughtful articulation.
2. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber provides his reflections on the Apple-Google feud post the I/O conference. The upshot: Great week for Google, mediocre for Apple, not good at all for Microsoft.
3. IBM buys Sterling Commerce for $1.4B. Insight and analysis from Altimeter Group’s Ray Wang. All I know for sure is that the AT&T shareholders are happy to have a pile of cash where an ill-fitting piece used to be.
4. Hmmm. iPad competitors may face CPU shortages and miss the Holiday selling season. And worse (for them) it seems they will try to compete on hardware features rather than user experience. Add to that the announcement that Apple has sold 2 Million iPads in the first 60 days and I sense happiness in Cupertino.
5. Timothy O’Neil-Dunne strikes again, describing his conflicted feelings over the recent ATPCO announcement regarding standards to enable ancillary revenue sales across various distribution channels.
6. Attention Cloudwashers: Ray Wang is on to you. Personally I’m surprised that there’s still so much confusion on the syntax around SaaS and Cloud. But wait until the technical discussions of how to achieve it start. Hoo boy.
7. Lean v. Fat Startups. No surprise that VCs favor the former. The truth is that neither works unless you have strong management.
8. Excellent, interesting study of transaction processing performance based on different cloud architectures from Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
9. Excellent post by Lori MacVittie to show that while the recent VMWare relationships with SFDC and Google allow you to move your code from one Cloud platform to another, it isn’t the same as enabling cross-Cloud deployments.
10. Google had their week, but Apple’s WorldWide Developer Conference is only a week away. The first major rumor has begun with the possible revitalization of Apple TV. Perhaps it is a hobby no longer.

Last week Dennis Schaal wrote an article pondering the question of what travel companies should do with their mobile and web strategies in light of the Apple/Adobe feud over Flash.  Dennis got input on whether to continue leveraging the Flash platform or wait for HTML5 to mature from several prominent individuals involved in the travel industry including RockCheetah’s Robert Cole.  And Robert got it exactly right…only backwards.

But I don’t want to bury the lead.  Let me state up-front: You should not stand on the sidelines and wait for the Adobe-Apple kerfuffle (nod to @jangles) to sort itself out.  This will take years.  Instead, be thoughtful in establishing your web and mobile strategy and get moving today.

Now let me outline where I have disagreement with Robert’s views.

Different platforms require different modes of presentation based on different usability strategies

Robert worries that uncertainty around the winner of the Flash debate will result in the “dumbing-down” (Dennis’ words, not Robert’s) of sites or the need to invest in multiple sites to support different technology platforms.

In fact, trying to provide the same experience over different devices or platforms is the epitome of dumbing-down.  “Write-once, run anywhere” is a siren’s call that can cause many apps to crash on the shores of poor usability and blandness.  Different devices have different use cases and capabilities.  If you don’t take that into consideration you’re making a fatal mistake.  Let me elaborate.

• Think of the use case: In software development, just like in web design, nothing is more important than the use case. For example, prospective travelers are more likely to conduct their primary research during the trip planning phase on their desktop/laptops, but are more likely to use their mobile devices post-booking and while in-situ (e.g. itinerary changes, alerts, making a dinner reservation).  So the kind of information that you present and how you present it should differ in each case. While the information you provide the “travel researcher” can have a lot of text, high-res images, and video, the information and options you give the mobile traveler need to be much more streamlined and transactional in nature.
• Consider the device capabilities: First of all you must remember that the desktop paradigm is based around the traditional WIMP (windows-icon-menu-pointer) construct while most smartphone and mobile devices are touch-based.  This changes almost everything about the way you need to present your information.  In a touch-based paradigm mouse-overs don’t work because you can’t physically do it.  The precision of ‘pointing’ is constrained.  Finally, and most obviously, not every device has the same screen size or can automatically switch from portrait to landscape mode. To not adapt for the different devices is to leave a lot of potential improvement to the user experience on the table. More importantly, why bother creating an app for a device if you aren’t going to take advantage of specific device capabilities like accelerometers, locators, calendars, or phonebooks?

Finalization of the HTML5 spec will take years, but won’t hinder adoption

It is true that the finalization of the HTML5 spec is not anticipated until 2012.  But that’s a very different point than saying that no one will be adopting it until the spec is finalized. If nothing else the web is fluid and reacts quickly.  Every desktop browser of note either supports HTML5 currently (Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera) or has pledged its support (Microsoft for the upcoming IE9).

And the same goes for mobile browsers, which are increasingly based on the WebKit standard.  Check out this chart from a post in the O’Reilly Radar:

Overwhelmingly mobile browsers already support HMTL5 (with Microsoft pledging support in the future) and TODAY, none of these mobile browsers (nor really any mobile device I’ve heard of) supports Adobe Flash.

Add on top of this the fact that by all accounts over two-thirds of videos on the web – and perhaps as high as 90% – are available in the H.264 standard used by HTML5-powered sites, I’d say that video content isn’t a deal-breaker anymore.

Let’s get real about “Open Source”

Lastly there is the debate as to who is more open.  Is it Adobe or Apple? I think that Daring Fireball’s John Gruber (no relation) says it well.

“Open” is one of those terms that means a lot of different things to different people. Most should be able to agree, though, that open-vs.-closed is a continuum — shades of gray, not just black and white. A light enough shade of gray is “open”, dark enough is “closed”. The arguments are over where those thresholds lie.

I, for example, would argue that HTML5 is open, and that Flash is not. HTML5 is open, to my eyes, because no one vendor defines or controls either its specification or its numerous implementations. The specification is being written and decided upon by consensus by two standards groups, WHATWG and the W3C.

You can argue whether or not Apple’s policy regarding AppStore approvals make any sense and you probably have a good argument.  But I don’t think it’s fair at all to say that Apple is closed from a technology perspective.  Apple’s web vision is based on HTML5, CSS, Javascript and H.264 video — all industry standards that they do not control.  Adobe on the other hand freely licenses the Flash player, but not the platform. Adobe can make whatever changes to Flash of their own choosing and on their own timetable.  They may claim to take the desires of the development community into consideration in developing their product roadmap, but they are not required to. In the four years since Apple’s iPhone ushered in the age of the web and media driven smartphone there has been no mobile version of Flash available for any device and consequently no mobile device has supported Flash in all that time and we have lived to tell about it.

In my view, Adobe’s entire argument is merely a matter of timing. Only now when Adobe is finally planning to release Flash Mobile 10.1 (anticipated to be launched next month on the Android 2.2 OS…backwards availability or compatibility not assured…and H/Pre’s WebOS) after years of delay are they protesting.  How much longer should they have expected the rest of the industry to wait before they moved on to a standards-based approach? It’s important to remember that months prior to the release of the iPad and the announcement of iPhone OS4, it was Google who was the most vocal proponent of an HTML5-centric view of the future of the web.  Only recently has Google begun to embrace Flash on mobile devices driven by their “the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend” strategy against Apple.

Yes, Adobe’s products have long been a favorite of designers (let’s not forget that it was Apple who helped them achieve that position), but they’re certainly not the most “open” company and there are plenty of alternatives for web and mobile app development to Adobe’s Creative Suite.

OK, one last thing. While Tnooz highlighted the largely sarcastic and self-serving ads by Adobe to show how much they love (i.e. loathe) Apple at this moment, I feel compelled to share a faux-ad that I found on TechCrunch created by an Apple fan that I found truly amusing

A lot of interesting stuff happened last week including the launch of the iPad.  Have at it.

1. Gotta lead off with a review of the iPad.  I got mine, did you get yours?
2. Concur completes $287M note offering.  Looks like they have some ideas on what to do with the money (via Tnooz)
3. Fantastic post on how not to confuse a product launch with a market launch by Enterprise Irregular Niel Robertson. Great breakdown of how he built and launched his startup, Trada.  Terrific roadmap for other entrepreneurs.
4. Good post by Open Travel’s Valyn Perini on how the industry is going to address the technical challenges around merchandising and ancillary revenues.  We’ll leave the issues around whether or not anyone likes the additional fees for another post.
5. Great post by Google’s Don Dodge on why Big Bang acquisitions often end in a whimper.  AOL/Bebo is the latest example.
6. Mike Vizard talks about the benefits of more structured code reviews in a globally distributed development environment and recent research by Forrester on the subject. Of course my company Ness Software Product Labs helps technology firms extend the value they derive from their software product engineering organization, so the topic was interesting to me.
7. Box.net raises $15M.  I’m for any company that may free me from Sharepoint…and provide cloud storage to access docs from my iPad.
8. Fear and Loathing in the airline industry. Farelogix CEO Jim Davidson pulls no punches against the BTC and wins by TKO. But wait – responses from the BTC and ASTA. Who doesn’t love a good fight?
9. Really good post by Mashable’s Ben Parr at the escalating mobile advertising war between Apple and Google.
10. Travelport extends agreement with IBM, commits itself to TPF legacy technology for 4 more years. Does this sound like a good idea for anyone other than IBM?

I’m sure many of you saw the Mashable and TechCrunch posts about Adobe Platform Evangelist Lee Brimelow’s latest post on the Flash Blog where he ends the post “Go screw yourself Apple.”

As the Mashable piece states, it’s understandable that the folks at Adobe are hopping mad at the latest move by Apple which appears to say that apps created in apps like Adobe Flash Creative Suite, but exported to Apple code won’t be accepted…a mere few days before the release of CS5 (for more background see this post and this one from John Gruber – no relation – at Daring Fireball).  And I’m not even saying whether or not he’s completely right or wrong in his position or that the post is over the top (well, it is).  But from a pure communications perspective I think it’s a mistake for a number of reasons.

• Never write angry  (and he does). It comes through the words and I think you lose credibility with your audience, especially when you’re arguing for your self-interest. I think it distracts from whether their position is right or wrong.  It just becomes complaining.
• Brimelow tried to cast the issue of Flash on the iPad/iPhone/iTouch as a red herring, and it’s not.  It may not be the proximate reason for the post, but it’s surely a major point of contention and in the back of the mind of EVERYONE at Adobe today.  It’s just another statement that seems to belie the true intention of the post and lowers the credibility of the argument he’s trying to make.
• The biggest error I saw was at the very end of the post.  Brimelow tries to separate his views from the company by saying “Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment…” just before he says “Go screw yourself Apple”.  First of all the man is a developer evangelist for Adobe and his job is to use his blog and any other platform to communicate and energize developers about Adobe’s platform.  Merely asking us to ignore that for the last 4 words of the post is moronic.  It’s even stupider given that earlier in the post, he redacts a sentence at Adobe’s request.  In my mind, this is an explicit statement that Adobe communications pros have reviewed the post before it went out, which in my mind is defacto approval of the “screw yourself” statement by Adobe.  I mean am I wrong here?
• Lastly, I think it was a mistake to close comments on the post. Brimelow tries to play this off by saying he doesn’t want spam from Cupertino, but I think more likely he’s just afraid of negative feedback from others in the developer community.  Closing off comments isn’t going to stop Steve Jobs.  I’m sure that if Steve wants to, he’d go on CNN and rip this guy.

What do you think? Agree/disagree? Did I miss anything?

Back from a quick trip to Miami for a sales call (I know, it sounds terrible). But here’s what I found interesting and hope you do too. In a tip-of-the-cap to Spinal Tap, I’ve taken the list up to 11 for this week:

1. Excellent article by Timothy O’Neill-Dunne on how technology is transforming the travel industry
2. PhoCusWright Connect take on Hotel Prices on Google Maps. The entry of Google into meta-search (even if they don’t want to overtly call it that just yet) is an interesting development.
3. RedMonk’s James Governor drinks Microsoft Kook-Aid at MIX?
4. TechCrunch reports that Google is going to incorporate Adobe Flash in Chrome OS.  The enemy of my enemy is my friend, even if I think what the new friend is doing is stupid.  The headline says it all.  I’m not sure what sane reason Google has for changing its stance as the leading advocate for HTML5 to embracing Flash. To say it’s about choice would be a trite answer.
5. Marc Benioff is becoming something of a guest-poster-in-residence on TechCrunch. His latest post is about how he feels the iPad is going to lead a revolution in how people interact with technology.
6. Great article by Enterprise Irregular Paul Greenberg on the state of Social CRM
7. Interesting study on the performance of the Top 45 UK travel sites. Not terribly surprising that customer service is weakest link, but also telling that the steps after search…that is the part when people actually look to book…otherwise known as the part where travel companies make money…perform weakest.
8. European LCC EasyJet wants to add booking options over Facebook.  Would you book an airline over Facebook? Or maybe the right question is: “Are there any reasons that you wouldn’t book a flight on Facebook?”
9. Lawson to offer ERP on AWS instances.  A big step from a company whose CEO Harry Debes predicted SaaS was a fad just 2-3 years ago.  Still this is not SaaS, and only Cloud-ish (it’s single-instances on the Amazon Cloud; doesn’t significantly change the game on pricing or upgrades), but a baby-step in the right direction.  Basically it seems that Lawson wants to provide hosted solutions, but doesn’t want to invest in its own datacenters. Much better analysis from industry pundits Vinnie Mirchinani and Frank Scavo.
10. What brand of Freedom Would you Like? Apple’s or Google’s? Seems to me that at least Apple’s pretty straightforward with their approach. Google? It’s a little more murky.
11. Bonus Round: Forrester analyst John Rymer’s take on the future of app servers.

A little late, but here’s your weekly bit of curation:

1. Mashable: Google v. Yahoo. Who has the right social strategy? It may not be who you think. Build or Buy revisited.
2. From RedMonk’s @sogrady: “What Sports Can Teach Us About Analytics: The MIT Sloan Conference“  Great post about Dorkapalooza. Wished I could have attended.
3. TechCrunch: Windows Slate preview. Yes it has flash, and some custom work to accommodate a touch interface, but still seems to hold too tightly to the traditional windows paradigm…and not just because it runs Windows7
4. “When the platform changes, the leaders change”. Great post by Seth Godin
5. Benioff’s Facebook Imperative Part 2.  Is he trying to change the conversation, buddy up to Facebook (the enemy of my enemy is my friend) or just trying to promote Salesforce Chatter?  Or could it be all three?  Read the initial post here.
6. Great post on design nuances for iPad
7. The Revolution at Work (the industry reacts to Salesforce’s moves) from Robert Scoble [Video]
8. From @compete: Lost Bookings Where Are You?
9. Good post on possible impact of Twitter Geo-Location — Red Giant Consulting: High Tech Marketing Consultant
10. Extraordinary review and perspective on the latest research and understanding of Social CRM from Paul Greenberg of the Enterprise Irregulars.