May 31, 2008
Posted in Ideas at 00:38 by Graham King
When you send a parcel by air, the price depends on the volume and weight of that parcel. Volume, because you are buying a certain amount of space in the plane. Weight, because the heavier the plane’s cargo, the more fuel it takes to get it off the ground. You pay for the fuel to fly your parcel.
The pricing structure for air mail / air freight is closely linked to the costs faced by the airline.
When you travel with your parcels, a disconnect appears. You buy a certain amount of space - typically a seat for yourself, a small bag and one or two big bags. A bigger seat (’business’, ‘premium’, etc) is more money. Extra bags is more money.
Currently you get a fixed amount of weight for your bags, and an unlimited amount of weight for yourself. A 120lb (55kg) waif with no luggage pays the same as a 260lb (115kg) behemoth with their full complement of luggage (2x 50lbs in the hold plus 40lb in the cabin, on American Airlines). That’s the same price for 120lb as for 400lb! Try convincing an air freight company (UPS, Fedex, etc) to use that pricing structure!
The reason it works is that the 120lb person subsidizes the 400lb one, and the airlines hope it evens out. Now, whenever you see that type of setup, there is an opportunity. Attract only the most valuable customers (the light low-luggage ones, who are over-paying their share of the fuel), split the difference with them, and you have a business.
The reason I think this will happen is that it will only take one airline to switch. The first one to start charging by weight will get a lot of press coverage, and higher profits (from over-charging the light customers slightly less than the other airlines).
Once the high-value customers start using an airline that offers them better rates, the balance stops working everywhere else. The other airlines end up with only the heavy high-luggage customers that are paying less than their share of the fuel. They have to change to survive.
Airline pricing should be a flat rate for your seat (depending on the ‘class’ of your seat), and a price per lb or kg you want the airline to carry. The weight price should fluctuate as often as the price at the petrol pump.
May 20, 2008
Posted in Society, Software at 06:55 by Graham King
It’s hard for me to see why you’d bother having someone come all the way to an office just to sit in a cube and type.
The new rule seems to be that if you’re going to spend the time and the money to see someone face to face, be in their face. Interact or stay home!
My thoughts entirely.
Original post: Seth Godin – The new standard for meetings and conferences
Posted in Behaviour, Software at 05:39 by Graham King
When I first got my own server (a virtual private server with Linode which I highly recommend), I ran every Internet service I needed on it, and several for my friends. Over time, I gradually started replacing what I had with online services - I stopped running my own e-mail server and started using GMail, I stopped running my own gallery and used Flickr.
Now I really rely on those services, so I got to thinking what I would replace them with if one of them was no longer available, or appropriate.
E-mail
I use GMail via Google Apps For Your Domain. I have my own domain name, so my e-mail address would not change if I hosted my own e-mail.
I would run Postfix. Before migrated to GMail I used to run Exim, which worked very well but the configuration file was baroque.
The interface would be web-only, using SquirrelMail. I used to run an IMAP server, but I no longer see the need for it.
Those two parts are easy, but the much harder part is spam reduction. That is really the benefit you are getting by having a large professional organization host your mail. I would use Realtime BlackLists (RBLs), then SpamAssasin, and ClamAV for virus scanning. If this didn’t stop enough spam I would use greylisting.
Pictures gallery
I use Flickr, which I love.
I’d replace it with Gallery, which last time I set it up had the best install process of any software I have ever used (possible tie with Wordpress). I’d miss the social aspects of Flickr. The technical challenge would be getting all my pictures off of it. I should really be backing them up more often.
Online notebook
I maintain some notes online in a private Wiki. When I think of something I browse over to my online notebook and jot it down. I use it for everything from planning Christmas presents to organizing vacations and personal projects.
Last week I moved this over to Google Sites. I’m not yet sure it’s going to stay there, as Sites is too much like a WYSIWYG web editor and not enough like a Wiki for my liking.
I wrote my own tiny Wiki in Python called Scribble. I’ll probably go back to that. MediaWiki is the one wiki to rule them all (mainly because it powers Wikipedia), but it’s far too complex for my needs.
Mailing list
I setup a mailing list to stay in touch with friends and organise events. We use Google Groups.
It used to be on Mailman, and I would probably go back to that. It was a bit fiddly to run, but it’s the gold standard in mailing list software, so it’s probably me not grokking it rather than it being difficult.
Chat
I use Google Talk via Google Apps For Your Domain, so like my e-mail I own the domain and my chat address wouldn’t change.
The reason I use Google Talk is that it uses the Jabber / XMPP standard. I would run my own Jabber server, probably jabberd14 because it is simple and stable. Openfire is a much more complete Jabber server which I prefer, but it is written in Java so the memory requirements aren’t compatible with a virtual server.
Web chatback
One of my sites has a widget on it which allows visitors to chat live to me. I switched this yesterday to
Google Talk Chatback.
I would replace that with what I used to use; a custom Flex client. Flex runs in the Flash player. The XIFF library allows Flex to talk XMPP. This is technologically a better solution than Google Talk Chatback because the client receives presence messages, so it will update your status without a page refresh (yes it’s push technology for the web, see here).
The widget would talk to my Jabber server.
Calendar
I use Google Calendar, and have never hosted my own equivalent, so this is tricky. I would look for something that integrated with the Evolution calendar, because that integrates will with the Ubuntu desktop (my distro of choice). The only web based calendar a short search turns up is webcalendar, so I’d try that first.
Bookmarks
Before I switched to del.ico.us, I had a frightening mess of bookmarks stored locally in Firefox.
Using del.ico.us really comes into its own when paired with the Firefox plugin. I really don’t know what I’d use. I might have to write my own, and hack the Firefox plugin to work with that. If I ever needed to write my own, hopefully other people would be in the same situation, so we’d have us a project and a community.
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