I'm currently on my way to California, the Yahoo! mothership in Sunnyvale and the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose, where I'll be talking about Ubiquitous Location, The New Frontier and Hyperlocal Nirvana on Wednesday, March 31st. From doing some background research while waiting for my plane, it looks like my talk is going to be changing somewhat from the original plan. If you're going to be at Where 2.0, please pop over to the Yahoo! booth and say hello and meet the Geo Technologies and Yahoo! Developer Network teams.

I'll be writing up a fuller version of my talk once it's complete and once it's actually written but for now, here's the published abstract.

Post 9/11, post the Shoe Bomber and and post, for want of a better description, the Pants Bomber I've had to travel to the United States in the aftermath of a security incident and have had the dubious privilege of witnessing at first hand the incrementally heightened security procedures that have been put in place. Witnessed as a passenger I might add, so I can only pass comment on what I've seen and not what may or may not be going on hidden behind the scenes and out of site of me and my fellow passengers.

Even pre 9/11, airport and airline security seemed to rely on a degree of ritual, of knowing the right incantations and of knowing the right answer to give to certain key questions; "is this your bag?", "did you pack it yourself?", "could anyone have tampered with your luggage?" and "has anyone given you anything to carry?". Answer the previous questions with "yes, yes, no, no" and you would be granted the honour of being able to check in and pass to the mysterious land of "airside". Answer them incorrectly or get the yes's and no's in the wrong order and your life would become very interesting.

At Heathrow yesterday morning, prior to getting on my (much delayed) flight to San Francisco, I remembered to give the aforementioned answers in the right order (this is critical to success), took off my belt and shoes, took my laptop out of my bag, put the whole lot in large grey plastic trays and while they passed through the x-ray machine, I passed through the metal detector with nary a beep.

It's probably due to the amount of time I've spent in the States this year but I seem to be more and more incensed by the crap customer service that companies in the UK seem to think that their customers should accept. I may have blogged about it once or twice or, as Guiseppe Sollazzo commented on Twitter recently "your blog today looks like a customers' rights advocate".

To be fair, it's not just me; there are other people I know who are equally strident about this, be it directed at the Apple Store or O2. Most of the time, the companies concerned just ignore complaints but sometimes, they try harder and given my recent experience with Avis at Heathrow, trying harder is rather apt.