Sorry for the late Monday post. So without further adieu:

1. Google introduced App Inventor, a simple GUI based app builder for Android OS. TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid takes it for a spin. Mike Loukides from O’Reilly Radar discusses the different philosophies behind Apple and Google as evidenced by App Inventor. I for one don’t think that we’ll be better off having more bad apps at our disposal, but to each his own. And I guess that’s Google’s point.
2. Tnooz reports ITA had been working on hotel search. Add this to Google’s display of hotel listings and pricing on Google Maps and you’ve got some serious juju going.
3. Big cloud announcements at Microsoft WDC10. Perhaps Azure-in-a-box is the most intriguing. Ben Kepes has an interesting take.  And eBay is the first high-profile client to take the plunge.
4. Facebook v. Google: the upcoming travel wars. Interestingly the author ponders Microsoft’s potential role, but doesn’t consider Apple.  Curious.
5. Apple had its press conference on Friday, but the real-world experiences of Engadget’s own writers shows that perhaps the iPhone4 antenna issue isn’t as big of an issue that the media is making it out to be. And I would say that Microsoft COO Kevin Turner’s lame attempt at a joke equating the iPhone antenna issue with the outright suckiness of Vista was imprudent at best. First ship a mobile OS that doesn’t suck and then you’ve earned the right to say something.
6. In related news, it looks like Microsoft Phone7 OS isn’t going to be the game changer they hoped it would be.
7. Can Google make a good travel product? TravelPost’s Simon Breakwell has some definite opinions. A must read.
8. Google Click-to-Call. Is this the new face of mobile advertising?
9. Bing Travel introduces Flight Summary with savings if you’re flexible with your travel plans. Pretty cool. Would be even cooler if they could integrate dynamic packing of hotel and car to give the best overall travel value.
10. Homeaway hires their new COO from PayPal. This signifies a move to better integrate alternative payments (including mobile) into the booking process, but perhaps shows an appreciation of the benefits of having a more professional software engineering organization in order to keep up with the needs of the business.

I’m introducing a new segment called “Insightful Conversations” which are interviews with industry executives in the technology or travel industries talking about industry news and trends.  Last week the big news came out of Google’s I/O conference with major implications for the mobile web.  To talk about the implications of the announcements by Google and Adobe and how they might impact companies’ mobile plans is Crisp Wireless CTO, Xavier Facon.

In the interview we discuss Flash v. HMTL5, app-centricity v. mobile web-centricity and whether brands and developers should alter their mobile plans based on the evolution of the Android platform, HMTL5 and Google’s open sourcing of the WebM VB8 video CODEC.  Some of the key insights from Xavier were:

• Adobe is an authoring tool vendor. It’s only natural that they support other platforms like HTML5, but it won’t reduce their support of Flash. But he’s bullish on the future of HTML5.
• Xavier breaks down the differences between Flash, H.264 and Google’s WebM CODEC
• Regardless of whether HMTL5 or Flash wins, Adobe wins. Developers will always need the best tools and Adobe will likely deliver them.
• HMTL5-based apps may make Apple’s section 3.3.1 meaningless. Apple won’t be able to tell what tool was used to create HTML5-based apps. The final code will all look the same.
• The most important thing of Google’s new Web Apps store is that it shows that they finally get that winners and losers is based on distribution, not technology.  There will be a convergence between the app-centric world of Apple and Google’s mobile-web centric approach.

Enjoy the interview.

Insightful Conversations – Xavier Facon – iTunes format

Insightful Conversations – Xavier Facon – MP3

About Crisp Wireless

Crisp Wireless is a mobile advertising company that offers a rich media mobile ad platform and a full catalog of beyond-the-banner ad units to enable premium brands to interact with consumers on mobile devices. The company makes it easier for advertising agencies to buy, create, and manage mobile rich media campaigns. Crisp also empowers publishers to take control of their valuable mobile inventory and maximize their mobile ad revenue. Leading brands including Lexus, Infiniti, Paramount Pictures, Estee Lauder, Skittles, and others have utilized Crisp Rich Media ads.  Crisp Publisher Partners include Hearst Magazines, Discovery Communications, A&E Television Networks, Fast Company, Inc., and others.

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 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.

There’s going to be a lot of analysis to come, but here’s my first reactions to the news that HP will buy Palm for $1.2B.

For one, I’m glad that Palm is going to survive.  The WebOS received a lot of acclaim as a technology, yet it never took off.  The PDK they release just a few months ago has helped make WebOS a great platform for developers.  But Palm never had the resources to put behind the company and the developer community to really allow Palm to compete on a relatively level playing field.  That changes today.

And let me talk more about how HP will supercharge WebOS’ position in the minds of the developer.  The most important part of this new pairing is HP’s position within the enterprise.  HP will now make a big push to make their new WebOS-based devices (phones and tablets, count on it) in the hands of the enterprise user.  This will encourage developers to embrace the WebOS and start porting apps to it in force in order to reach the enterprise.  This is very bad news in my mind for RIM and Microsoft who finally thought they had something with their new Windows Phone 7 OS to be launched at the end of year.  As they say, timing is everything.

OK, time for a quick take on how this impacts the other players in the industry:

Limited impact:

• Apple: Probably not that much of an impact.  Apple never really targeted the enterprise buyer, although is first in the hearts of many professionals who work in the enterprise.  They have a very loyal, fanatical following and there’s no way that this announcement creates even a blip on the radar.
• Google: Pretty similar story to Apple, although without the fanatical following (except perhaps in the developer community).  Google is still well positioned and also will be greatly unaffected.

Ooh, are they screwed:

• RIM: Even with the impending release of the Blackberry OS 6, they are in for the fight of their life. I truly believe the future of the company may be in doubt for the first time. RIM has lived on the enterprise and has been the defacto standard for many companies. But again I come back to HP’s power in the enterprise and this does not bode well.
• Dell: Their entry into the market is now still-born.  ‘nuf fsaid.
• Microsoft: All of a sudden the fact that the end-of-year release of the new Windows Phone7 OS is a gigantic problem.  HP was not only a large partner for Microsoft from an OS perspective, they’re going to be going gangbusters on marketing an excellent OS and product before the first new Windows Phone sees the light of day (unless its left in a bar by accident).  This impacts not just Microsoft’s phone strategy, but their plans of introducing Windows7 tablets into the market.  Remember that CES announcement of the HP Slate powered by Windows7? No more.
• Nokia: Are they even in the smartphone business anymore? MeeGo is effectively dead and perhaps Nokia becomes a Europe/EMEA-only player.  Good luck with margins in the African sub-continent.

One last thought.  This might also  be good news for Adobe.  Flash 10.1 mobile is scheduled to be supported by Palm’s WebOS,  so this will be another beachhead for them against Apple.
So what do you think the impact will be? Did I miss anything? Please add your thoughts in the comments.

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?

OK, so it’s April already.  But you still should take note of these articles.  I promise next week’s post will be Monday.

1. Novell rejects $2B takeover bid.  It’s nice they feel the company is worth more, but it’s never a good sign that the board is “looking for alternatives”.  I hope the company makes it. I hear their new social enterprise platform Pulse is very strong.  I can’t wait for the beta.
2. Fantastic article about who might buy Palm that includes profiles of the 13 potential suitors with rationale.
3. Google Testing Hotel Prices in Google Maps.  I guess it’s no longer a question on whether or not Google’s entering travel meta-search…they’re in it.  They’re also excellent analysis on the move by travel industry blogger Robert Cole here.
4. TravelClick to add sales and marketing services to Central Reservations Systems software platform. http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_nshw.php?mwi=7107
5. WSJ reports that hotels are most vulnerable to data breaches.  This is on the heels of the news that Wyndham was hacked for the 3^rd time in the last several years.  For those who didn’t know, PCI-DSS compliance is important.
6. Everbread emerges from stealth mode and launches a new search platform that claims to be significantly faster than other travel search engines.  The fare and pricing engine named Haystack is being targeted to airlines and OTAs.
7. Yahoo releases 2 new iPhone apps for search.  The Sketch-a-Search capability is really cool.
8. The Open Source and PaaS Paradox http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/15160/open-source-and-the-paas-paradox/
9. Tnooz to launch Travel App portal in association with Capterra. http://www.tnooz.com/2010/03/22/news/tnooz-to-launch-tsoftware-a-unique-software-store-for-travel-technology/. Pretty interesting development to see a news organization become a marketplace. I guess they’re going the CNET route.  At the very least this will probably be the best way for me to build a travel technology prospect database J
10. Valyn Perini, Executive Director of Open Travel, asks “Why do car rental agencies make it so easy for me to stiff them?” She makes good points about how car rental agencies are basically the only part of the travel food chain that doesn’t ask for at least some payment up front or charge penalties for no shows.

Sorry for the delay in posting, but I’m been flat out here in India as I am getting further up to speed with my new role at Ness Technologies Software Product Labs. Now that the excuses are out of the way, let’s get to the Top 10.

1. I’d be remiss if the first one out of the gate wasn’t the public announcement of Ness SPL’s relationship with travel IT giant Amadeus.  For the past year Ness has built an engineering team in Bangalore, supporting Amadeus’ continued investment in building industry leading software products for the travel industry.  It also signals Ness’ focus on providing software product engineering services to the travel industry.  If we can deliver for Amadeus, we can deliver for anyone.  Call me!
2. GM’s Augmented Reality Windshield: This is potentially very cool. Nice that it can highlight road signs, but better if it could superimpose hi-fi versions of signs I can’t see clearly.  Also the ability to check out where the drivers eyes are looking could be potential liability issues for drivers who crash while texting, dialing or otherwise distracted.
3. Google May Leave China on April 10. I can’t imagine they want to really do this, but their public stand has kind of boxed them in a corner.
4. Priceline Introduces Pay-at-Checkout for hotels.  I guess I didn’t realize that with online travel agencies (OTAs) that you had to pay the hotel fees at the time of booking.  I guess I never booked a hotel through an OTA because this seemed like standard operating procedure.
5. Musings from the Mobile Upfront: Recap from Mobile Upfront and insights from mobile guru @tgruber
6. Security Risks of Multi-tenancy.  Just goes to show that architecture in the wrong hands is dangerous and usually that’s at the core of bad software.
7. Cloud killing the enterprise software market? Hold that thought. I agree that there will probably be a lot of private/hybrid-cloud implementations, although don’t believe that’s a very good strategy, other than trying to recoup existing infrastructure investments.  It’s one thing to get leverage from what you already have, but let’s hope that few are actually thinking about buying a bunch of hardware to build-out new private cloud infrastructure.  This makes me think back to a post from last summer: Who will be the first to offer cash for infrastructure? I still think it’s a good idea.
8. Why RedMonk’s @sogrady is against patents – the system is broken.  But what if the system could be fixed. Then again this is an awful lot like tort reform. Too many special interests to make it happen and too many frivolous lawsuits/patents.
9. Webciety and Enterprise 2.0: A snapshot of today’s social computing conversations.  Notes and perspective from CeBIT on the opportunities and concerns about E20 by the one and only Dion Hinchcliffe
10. Enterprise 2.0: efficiency, effectiveness, blame and responsibility.  More good hard truth from Dennis Howlett.

Let’s see what came up:

1. Forrester analyst John Rymer’s take on Oracle’s Cloud strategy. And for a bonus, a slightly different interpretation by fellow Forrester analyst Stefan Reid.
2. Dion Hinchcliffe, ZDnet: The Facebook imperative for enterprise software.  Hinchliffe is great. Longish articles at times, but good insight. Riffing off Benioff’s recent proclamation that enterprise software should look like Facebook (not sure I want my enterprise software UI changing every 3 months), he asks important questions like “Should Enterprises be Social” and has a Top 5 list of why IT should be social (I certainly won’t limit to IT).  But I think that social is critical for organizations, particularly global organizations, who want to innovate.  R&D has gone global and the best way to harness that is to make sure those teams are social with each other, collaborating and sharing.
3. David Linthicum: Cloud Provider Roulette.  Bottom line: If you are evaluating cloud computing technology today, you have to consider that your choice could be bought up this year or next. That means you need to make sure your legal agreements are rock-solid and spell out what happens if your provider is acquired
4. Wyndham Hacked for Third Time. Not good. Wyndham please talk to me about security testing.  Related article noting that recent research shows that the hospitality industry is hit hardest by hackers, with the natural focus on payment card information.
5. Tnooz: Will Priceline come back to the field?  The concentration of revenue in the OTA (online travel agency) business is pretty staggering.  It’s the Pareto Principle on steroids.
6. Tnooz: TripIt maps employee travel with TripIt groups.  Pretty cool way to keep tabs on the organization. Would be very helpful in case of a crisis and there was a need to know/get in contact with employees at a moments notice.
7. Daring Fireball: Thoughts on Windows Phone 7 by John Gruber (not related, but I’d be somewhat glad if people confused him with me. Would certainly help me get gigs on the speaking circuit)
8. Keeping in the iPad theme this TechCrunch article on Apple’s HTC patent Lawsuit indicates that the real focus of Apple’s ire is (spoiler alert) Google’s Android OS (ok, not really a spoiler).
9. Three theories why Google pushed Buzz out the door.  What’s more interesting to me is that it seems that the Buzz experience is vastly different on an Android device, with all it’s location-based goodness, than on a web client. Is this really targeted more at Foursquare than Twitter?
10. And last but not least: Ballmer’s really committing Microsoft to the Cloud. Yet somehow I still don’t quite believe it.

Now I may be relatively new to the travel industry, but I’m not new to controversy, so let me get this off my chest.

I like many others were glued to their computers listening to live audio streams of yesterday’s Apple iPad announcement, tweeting away.  Now I won’t get into the whole debate as to whether or not the iPad met expectations or not. That’s been discussed ad nauseum, here, here, here and here.  But I was reading through my RSS feeds and came across PhoCusWright’s (a leading travel industry analyst firm) take on The iPad Affect on the Travel Industry.  Mobile is growing in importance in the travel space, and it figures prominently in the solutions that my firm, Ness Technologies will provide,  so I certainly wanted to get their take.  But unfortunately, it didn’t take them very long to miss the entire point of the implications of the iPad.  Here’s the part that got me:

Yesterday’s iPad announcement…does not mean you need to build another app.

Ugh, you don’t.  Let the dust settle on this announcement before drawing up plans for your iPad app.  Let’s see how the consumer uses the device and then develop based upon their needs and opportunities.

HELL YES it means you need to redesign your app!  I mean why continue to constrain yourself to the capabilities of a tiny screen if you don’t have to?  The truth is that the iPad, especially as a super-media-consumption-device will let you do things that can’t be accomplished on a much smaller display.  While the iPad looks like a gigantic iTouch, the trick to unlocking the value of the iPad will not be to treat it that way.  Imagine the user  experience differently.   I thought that the MLB.com demo showed how you can significantly improve the user experience and the levels of interaction with the game.

Image credit: gdgt.com

Now imagine how a hotel could completely remake the education and trip planning phases of the traveler lifecycle if they used all 9.7″ of real estate and the touchscreen interface to immerse a potential customer into the experience that the hotel provides, using overlays to show details of rooms, launched video of featured activities, a tour of the spa, whatever.  But the point is that instead of a bland website or an app that is transactionally-focused, you can create an experience that should increase the likelihood of them booking.

Bottom line: Don’t judge yesterday’s launch or create your mobile app plans based on what you saw yesterday. Think about what the apps will look like 6 months from now after developers have had a chance to play with the SDK.  Now you can wait until the usage model is determined to make your decisions, but by then you will be behind your competition. 2010 is shaping up to be another tough year for the travel industry, don’t make it worse for yourself because you’re waiting to see what the future becomes.