A lot of stuff happened while I was OpenTravel’s 2010 Advisory Forum in Seattle this past week:

1. I’d be remiss if I didn’t start with the successful IPO of Amadeus (AMA.MC), the largest GDS and leader in global travel technology solutions…and Ness Software Product Labs’ signature client in the travel technology space.
2. Apple buys Siri.  It’s not just mobile-web search, Siri also has the ability to learn preferences and not just provide better results back, but help complete activities or business processes like making dinner reservations or booking a flight.  It should be interesting to see how the iPhone experience evolves as Siri deepens the integration with iPhone OS.
3. Salesforce.com and VMWare announce VMForce.  Looks like Salesforce finally admitted that APEX was holding back the Force.com Platform-as-a-Service business and partnered with VMWare to enable direct Java-based development on the rest of the Force.com infrastructure. Good analysis by Enterprise Irregulars Phil Wainwright, Bob Warfield and Brian Sommer.
4. 5 reasons iPhone v. Android isn’t Mac v. Windows. Well said.
5. Another Top 5 list.  This time it’s the untapped or under-exploited opportunities in travel.  Mobile payments, re-booking top the list, but read on to see what other opportunities lie in wait.
6. Steve Jobs’ official position on Apple v. Adobe Flash.  Nothing terribly new (or not already said by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber), but if it’s written by Steve…and he gives it almost 1700 words, you should at least read it.
7. Excellent analysis of what Apple’s announcement of iAds will mean.
8. Tech Crunch’s Michael Arrington announces that with the recent announcements at the f8 conference we’re officially in the ‘age of Facebook’.
9. Forrester’s JP Gownder offers an opinion on why consumers will pay more for products and uses the Mac as a shining example.  I only have two issues with the analysis.  First I think that Gownder mistakenly equates repeat purchase with brand loyalty.  But more importantly, the piece reads as if the three categories can have similar impact. As I’m in the middle of Steven Sinek’s “Start With Why”, I believe “self-selection” (as Gownder calls it) reason is by far the most influential. But if you read the book, self-selection has a lot to do with whether or not a company has a compelling “why”.
10. On top of the Amadeus IPO, two big mergers in the travel industry:  Hertz buys Dollar Thrifty and United and Continental Airlines are set to merge under the United moniker. And it increasingly looks like Google will buy ITA.  A lot of activity for sure.

I just got the Pre on Sprint and am pretty happy with it. Definitely think the value package ($20/unlimited data + email + text) Sprint put together is better and less expensive than what is available from AT&T or Verizon for the Blackberry (both effectively require $50/month to enable the phones) and after all the griping I hear about coverage, I took the plunge.  On top of that, I think the Pre has some great features, particularly multi-tasking, layered calendars and Palm Synergy which seamlessly consolidates contact information across multiple address books (e.g. Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo).

Much has been written about the sure-to-fail marriage between 2 also rans in Sprint and Palm (see here and here), but I don’t think it has to do with the viability or scale of the companies themselves. The real concern about the success or failure of the Pre in my mind is tied to the number of apps available for the platform. In many ways I think the device itself has advantages over the iPhone, but 250 apps v. 100,000 isn’t much of a competition. If Palm is able to get more apps out quickly, at least to the point that it approaches the 10,000 that’s available for Android, it could actually compete more effectively.

Would you consider the Pre versus the iPhone, Droid or Blackberry?