1. Farelogix is on a roll as they add Delta to their client roster and giving it a clean sweep of all the major NorthAmerican carriers (Air Canada, American Airlines, United/Continental and US Airways).  However, while utilizing a “direct connect” technology, Delta is taking a kinder and gentler approach to airline distribution.
2. The travel distributions wars have hit a whole new level as US Airways files an Anti-Trust suit against Sabre. The heart of the filing is to remove the exclusivity provisions that binds airlines to a single GDS and provide extraordinary market power to the GDS over the airlines.
3. Intel blew past analyst estimates and delivered record earnings. The numbers seemed to show a very healthy PC market, but some have questioned whether there was some channel stuffing of a sort going on. But in any case, Intel does need to make some progress in the mobile space.
4. This is one of the most interesting pieces of analysis I’ve seen in a while. While most people are concerned with the relative share of Android v. iOS, for all of Android’s market success, it’s had almost no direct effect on Google’s stock price, whereas Apple’s fortunes correlate to the iPhone’s success.
5. If Michael Krigsman believes these numbers, it’s good enough for me. But what they say are shocking. It’s frightening that the expectations of 3-out-of-4 IT executives is that their projects will fail before they even start. The reasons all make sense, but that’s part of why we at Ness feel that it’s important to take a product-development approach to all software initiatives.
6. Apple usually exceeds earnings expectations, but this is getting ridiculous – Apple beat Wall Street consensus estimates by more than $1B in revenues and $1.00 EPS for the quarter.  And that was over estimates that were 5% – 10% higher than Apple guidance. TC’s Erick Schonfeld points out that MacBooks, iPhones and China are driving Apple’s performance. The first two are not surprising, but the numbers out of China indicate are pretty amazing.
7. American Airlines put forward disappointing earnings and apparently had an interesting earnings call.  Apparently Wall Street isn’t buying, feeling that no matter all the talk about distribution, there are some fundamental challenges such as high labor costs that can’t be overcome.
8. Concur keeps making moves. The latest is a strategic marketing agreement & $40M investment in Cleartrip, India’s largest online travel agency.
9. Is there a Moore’s Law for solar energy? I certainly hope so. It’s not travel, it’s not software, but it’s definitely worth reading.
10. eBay buys Where.com as they hope to drive more mobile transactions through PayPal.

There are times I wonder whether this post is still of value to people, but then I ran into Amadeus’ Debbie Iannaci at the ACTE conference last week and she says she reads it, so for now it stays. But I’d love to hear from others too.

1. ZipCar had a very successful IPO, as the stock soared more than 50% over the initial offering price of $18/share. This bodes well for other travel IPOs such as HomeAway or Kayak. But Henry  Blodget says while the IPO was great for people who were in at the initial offering, Goldman & JP Morgan actually screwed the company by significantly under-pricing the offering to the tune of $5oM.
2. American Airlines who have already pushed their chips into the middle of the table in the Direct Connect poker tournament have now thrown their gold watch and car keys into the pot by bringing an anti-trust suit against Travelport and Orbitz. I’m not going to editorialize , but could you see Hasbro suing Wal-Mart if the latter didn’t want to sell the former’s products? The way this story has evolved it feels so reminiscent of the NFL lockout I wonder if DeMaurice Smith is moonlighting for AA now that he’s reduced his NFLPA salary to $0.68.
3. The long-awaited BlackBerry PlayBook debuted to less than stellar reviews. Many do seem to show a light at the end of the tunnel for RIM, but seem to underscore the fact that the device is not quite ready for primetime and was launched out of fear of losing the tablet market entirely. The other odd thing is the concept of the BlackBerry Bridge. It seems to be a kluge acknowledging the lack of native email and calendar apps. But it’s also being seen as a means to provide the security that attracted so many enterprise customers in the first place. But if that’s the case, why not build the capability into the device? Again, most likely because the PlayBook was rushed to market. Perhaps RIM needs to heed the words of Orson Welles from when he was hawking Paul Masson.
4. Phil Wainwright fires another missive at the Private Cloud folk, who writes “…an enterprise that builds a private cloud will spend more, achieve less and increase its risk exposure…” The best part about the piece is that his point of view is informed by two top enterprise cloud architects who built private clouds.  A really good read.
5. A minor PR blunder for Sabre as they tried to spin the AA/Expedia deal in which Expedia agreed to establish a direct connect with AA using GDS technology. Chris Kroeger, SVP of marketing for Sabre went perhaps a step too far as he claimed that Sabre has direct connects with “hundreds of other airlines globally”. Of course the type of direct connect that AA and Sabre are talking about are not the same. Positioning the GDS as an aggregation technology that can enable efficient comparison shopping is a good idea, but on the DC characterization I don’t like when people try to obfuscate or confuse the facts.
6. There has been a lot of talk about the potential of NFC in the travel sector and retail in general. But it seems that it remains over-hyped if only 1 in 5 smartphones will have NFC…by 2014.
7. Perhaps it was tepid sales of the Motorola XOOM or just reading the writing on the wall, but the changes that Adobe announced to enhance support for HTML5 and a new release of Flash Builder 4.5 are a step in the right direction to keep one of the most important digital design technology leaders relevant. And this should bring a sigh of relief to those with significant investments in Flash.
8. I knew that Priceline (and many of the larger OTAs) owe a lot of their earnings to hotel bookings, but the recent analysis at Forbes – showing that only 2% of PCLN’s stock value comes from airfare – was still a little surprising, especially after the fanfare of their hookup with American Airlines.
9. Congratulations to SilverRail Technologies for another $5M funding round, bringing their total just shy of $15M.
10. Surprisingly, Cisco killed the Flip camera less than two years after they bought it for $590M. The move was surprising in many ways as it was the top selling camcorder and was profitable as a standalone unit. Michael Wolf examines the other options that Cisco had.

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.