Gary Gale

Now that the so called smart phones, such as the BlackBerry, the Nokia N series and the iPhone, are becoming more and more ubiquitous, so airlines are ramping up their paperless or electronic boarding pass programs. I came across this recently when flying KLM out of Amsterdam Schipol when returning from the State of the Map conference; I'd checked in online from my hotel room but had no access to a printer. KLM's online check-in system offered me the option of having my boarding pass on my iPhone, which duly arrived as a link in an email.

British Airways allegedly offers this service out of London Heathrow though I've yet to see it being used and there's no evidence of any scanners at the gates at Terminal 5 or Terminal 4. British Midland and Lufthansa are also operating trial programs and now Continental Airlines are offering a trial at San Francisco. When moving around Schipol the system worked incredibly well even though some staff seemed not to have heard of it and looked a bit confused when I showed them my phone after being asked for my boarding pass. Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

Is it lying in your shed or garage, unloved, a bit rusty and in need of some care and attention? You'd love to get it going again but lost the original maintenance manual?

Maybe this Haynes manual, spotted this morning in Foyles on London's Charing Cross Road, is what you need.

It even covers the Saturn V you have lying around under the bed; you know, the big rocket bit that goes under the lander. Go on, there's really no excuse now.

Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

Here in the UK we're used to bad or non-existent customer service, so much so that it's virtually ingrained into our genes. We're well aware of the oft used expression that you get what you pay for except that you actually don't; you continue to pay and act pleasantly surprised when you actually get what you've paid for, murmuring "well that's a turn up for the books". We look longingly across the Atlantic to the US and talk admiringly of the "American service culture" whilst conveniently overlooking the fact that our US counterparts get paid rock bottom wages and have to work damn hard to garner enough tips to make a living.

Posterous continues to impress and is fast becoming the main source of blog posts, both on my Posterous blog and autoposted onto my main blog.

We're all good Web 2.0 citizens these days and that means we tag everything; the Posterous FAQ has this to say on the subject of tags: "Add tags simply in the subject of your email using the syntax ((tag: apple, gadgets)). You can see your tags on the homepage of your site and click on them to see those posts."

So, in the continued spirit of experimentation, this post is tagged with "experimentation", "posterous", "autopost" and "wordpress" via the subject line "In the Spirit of Experimentation, Part 2 ((tag: experimentation, posterous, autopost, wordpress))"; let's see how this gets reflected in the post and in the autoposted WordPress version.

Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

Here we go again. I'm not entirely sure which is worse; being wide awake and up at 4.00 AM or deciding to write a blog post about it.

Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

There's nothing like being at the seaside; the cry of seagulls, the tang of ozone in the air, Blackfriars Bridge, The Gherkin and St. Paul's Cathedral in the distance ...

Blackfriars Bridge? It's easy to forget that the Thames is tidal and if you time it right that there's several stretches of beach at low tide.

Some parts of the shoreline even have sand, though the daily high tide does mean that sandcastles are seldom seen.

Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

A combination of oversleeping, train cancellation and the temporary loss of my Oyster Card, once I'm on a train naturally, does not make for an auspicious start to the week after the Bank Holiday.

But then the final straw; no coffee at my local station. "Shut Happens".

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This weekend's clear out uncovered these two items of apparel.

The one at the back is a replica shirt from the always-the-underdog- even-when-they-get-to-the-Superbowl. The one at the front is from the, defunct since 1998, World League of American Football and NFL Europe team the London Monarchs.

The former reached the Superbowl four times but have never managed to quite get there. I still live in hope.

The latter won World Ball 1 in 1991 at the old Wembley Stadium. I was there and it was an amazing season with only 1 loss during the entire regular season.

What a lot of hopes and dreams invested in two pieces of clothing.

Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

Posterous is a service that just begs for experimentation; not only because it's a beautifully simplistic yet rich service but also because the Help and FAQ pages can be a little bit light on detail for some of the less obvious questions; probably to avoid scaring those of a less-power-user-frame-of-mind away.

So the Posterous FAQ at https://posterous.com/faq says this "We'll do smarter things for photos, MP3's, documents and video (both links AND files)".

Link eh? In the spirit of experimentation let's try this, firstly from the easy and obvious one ... twitpic.com

... and rival yfrog.com ...

... and from my Flickr photostream ...

... and finally a more challenging one, from my Facebook photo album ...

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3454882&id=757562989

... there's only one way to find out, so let's send this to Posterous right now and see what happens; all in the spirit of experimentation naturally.

Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

And not the track by Faithless either. 3.21 AM in Teddington and no one else seems to be awake.

"I can't get no sleep ..."

Posted via email from Gary's Posterous