Winding Down from ITB Berlin part 2: The Travel Bloggers

I have to get this post off my chest, be it for mere reference for myself, but also as preparation for the tagging of the many photos I took and uploaded already.

Here are the travel bloggers that were listed for the Berlin ITB Bloggers summit:

  • Ram Badrinathan PHOCUSWRIGHT (India)
    Ram commented that only recently he started to blog, but also started to like it.
  • William Bakker WILHELMUS (The Netherlands / Canada). Nice to meet, dine and talk with. He was blogging and twittering on the fly as a real professional.
  • Annalisa Ballaria RELACTIONS (Italy) Unfortunately I had no chance to talk to her.
  • Florian Bauhuber TOURISMUSZUKUNFT.DE (Germany)
  • Claude Benard LES EXPLORERS (France). Nice to meet, dine and talk with.
  • Vicky Brock TRACKING TOURISM (Scotland). Nice to meet, dine and talk with.
  • Karen Bryan EUROPE A LA CARTE (U.K.). Nice to meet, dine and talk with. She came in rather agitated because she had booked in a Hostel right across Berlin, only to find out early in the morning that public transport in Berlin was on strike.
  • Stephen Budd TRACKING TOURISM (Scotland). Nice to meet, dine and talk with. I’ll nickname him “Our Professor”, because he has already forgotten what I still have to learn:-)
  • Joe Buhler TRAVEL MARKETING IN THE AGE OF WEB 2.0 & BEYOND (U.S.). Nice to meet, drink and talk with. Our Veteran Hospitality Guru
  • Philip Caines TOURISM TIDE (Canada). One of the initiators of the Book Tips from the T-List.
  • Martin Cowen TRAVOLUTION (U.K.) Newly arrived at the Travolution crew.
  • Darren Cronian TRAVEL RANTS (U.K.). Who missed his train and unfortunately couldn’t make it.
  • Ralf Eggert TRAVELLO (Germany).
  • Klaus Hildebrandt FVW (Germany).
  • Yeoh Siew Hoon THE TRANSIT CAFE (Singapore). Our Asian Travel Guru.
  • Jamie Horwitz CANADIAN TOURISM (Canada). Nice to meet, dine and talk with. The lonesome hockey fan who took it upon him to solely make Mexican travelers understand Canada better as a travel destination.
  • Stephen Joyce TRAVEL & TOURISM TECHNOLOGY TRENDS (Canada). Another initiator of The Tips from the T-List book.
  • Kevin May TRAVOLUTION (U.K.). The editor of The Industry blog who can listen and write and edit at once. I envied him.
  • Detlef Meyer ROUNDTRIP (Germany)
    Who seemed a bit busy with other appointments at the Fair.
  • Abbas Nokhasteh OPENVIZOR (U.K.). Not a Blogger per se, but trendy he is!
  • Jens Oellrich TOURISMUSZUKUNFT.DE (Germany)
  • Goetz A. Primke LE GOURMAND (Germany). Likes Girls (who doesn’t:-).
  • Eckart Reiche OPENTS (Germany).
  • Henri Roelings WIWIH (WHO IS WHO IN HOSPITALITY) (The Netherlands). Watch my sleeping with Henri post.
  • Bruce Rosard PHOCUSWRIGHT (U.S.). A swell guy.
  • Karin Schmollgruber FASTENYOURSEATBELTS (Austria), who unfortunately couldn’t make it due to the strike.
  • Carlo Alvarez Spagnolo TEXTING ALL OVER THE WORDS (Spain).
  • Ludolf Stavenga REISPORTALS (The Netherlands).
  • Jens Thraenhart TOURISM INTERNET MARKETING (Germany / Canada). The third Tips from the T-List initiator.
  • Guido Van Den Elshout HAPPY HOTELIER (The Netherlands), yes, Yours Truly.
  • Dr. Klemens Waldh BLOGS IN TOURISM (Austria).

I intend to add the photos later.

Do You Woopra? You Should!

Woopra Screen

It was Lorelle VanFossen (from her Family name I guess she or her hubby has Dutch ancestry), avid WordPress advocate, who drew my attention to Woopra with her post Whooping Woopra Blog Statistics Program, starting as follows:

I’m rarely totally and completely blown away by anything, and yesterday at Dallas WordCamp, John Pozadzides of One Man’s Blog, who works together on this project with Elie El Khoury [italics added by HH], who blew the whole crowd away with his new blog statistics program, Woopra.

I now fully concur with Lorella’s observation. I am not such a stats lover that I write for my stats. I blog because I find blogging a reasonable orderly way of cataloging my work / life / interests / finds for myself and sharing them with my readers. I use my stats mainly out of curiosity, because it shows me how people land on my site and what they are interested in. It always gives me (too) many ideas what to write about.

What is Woopra?

Woopra is not just another stats program, it is the re invention of the blog stats program.

Still a Private Beta
It was launched recently. Is still in private Beta. It is a small 4 man operation. You can sign in on their site. Then it takes quite some time before they let you in, because the demo at Dallas WordCamp drew so much attention that they can’t handle all requests in a timely way.

My short experience
I signed up shortly after Lorella’s post dated March 30, 2008. My patience was honored and I was let in on April 27.

I am in the process of installing several new workstations and a new server. Especially for Woopra I now have installed a second screen that constantly features Woopra. It is fascinating to see readers check in real life. You can see where they landed from, which search terms they used, where they land and which posts or pages or categories they read. It is almost too addictive and together with Twitter makes me forget Face book entirely.

Woopra has a built in chat functionality. I have tried it out with some of my readers and it works. I presume it scares the hell out of a reader when he gets a pop up screen out of nowhere and there are some concerns about the safety of the chat function. I take it that has to be ironed out yet. Also they have a plug in for WordPress that I haven’t even downloaded yet. You can tag your readers, so you can really start communicating with them if you wish via the Chat box. Twitter or mail.

For me the biggest surprise is that Woopra shows me that from all my posts here the two posts that draw the most readers are almost totally unrelated with my main subjects.

I suggest you check it out!

Update

If you want to see other peoples raves on Twitter, just check out Tweet Scan on Woopra. A link I found through a visitor just a few minutes ago.

Bye Bye KLM Royal Dutch Airline?

Always when I want to process some of my pending posts I stumble on something that draws my attention: This time a photo of a beheaded KLM airplane:

Wow KLM Airplane

Which made me think:”How long will this National Pride of The Netherlands live as a separate brand after the take over by Air France?”

I found the duly photo shopped photo on Core77: Things that oughtn’t be Flying, which found it on Zedomax , but I can´t find the corresponding post at Zedomax.

May 15: Bloggers Unite!

In an initiative to unite the power of bloggers around the world BlogCatalog has launched BlogCatalog – Blogging For Hope, an initiative to pay attention to human rights worldwide.

I second the initiative and would like to address three items myself:

  • I would like all Authorities to reconsider their post 9/11 madness with fingerprinting everyone and everybody who wants to travel, apply for a passport or for a visum. See my post The Finger of Suspicion;
  • I would like to ask the Olympic Games athletes to follow the suggestion and be colored orange/red during the opening ceremony to draw silent attention to what China did and does in and with Tibet. Visit Amnesty’s page China: Olympic Legacy;
  • I would like the USA to reconsider their policy of keeping “terrorists” outside of their fine jurisdiction in Guantanamo Bay. Please visit Amnesty International’s Denounce Torture: Get Involved! I do hope a new Democratic oriented US Government will terminate this shameful theater;

Fly in an Airplane Bathroom Seat and Earn Yourself US $ 2 Mio.

Toilet Seat

I am glad I don’t have to fly a lot and certainly not in an airplane bathroom, but the USA is world famous for its frivolous litigating and this is just another example in my opinion:

According to Associated Press, via MSNBC, a New York citizen is suing JetBlue Airways Corp. for more than $2 million because a pilot ordered him to give up his seat and to spend part of his flight on the the toilet for more than three hours on a 5 hours flight from San Diego to New York. The man was traveling on a “buddy pass”, a voucher that airline employees can give to relatives and friends. Probably not the most expensive ticket.

I am curious whether the guy will succeed and also whether the Airline employee will remain his friend and/or keep his/hers job…..

Bathroom Seat with Apple Paper Dispenser

As a chair aficionado, – look at my Chair Blog and Chairblog | Tumblr where I collect some design chairs and some unusual seats and had the ones shown here -, I am sure the flight was not very comfortable, but also not worth this prize money.

All Purpose Commode

Finally I am curious what amount Pam Babcock, the woman, who was glued to her friend’s toilet, see also Discover Magazine for two years, is going to claim. If you apply the claim formula of the New Yorker’s 3 hours glued to his airplane toilet seat and calculate her hours glued to hers, she may be claiming over US $ 4 Bio!

After fighting with her boyfriend, 35-year old Pam Babcock locked herself in the bathroom of the couple’s mobile home and refused to leave… for the next two years. When her boyfriend, Kory McFarren, finally called the authorities to report that “there was something wrong with his girlfriend,” they found that she was physically stuck to the toilet seat—her skin had not only attached but, according to the initial reports, appeared to have “grown around” the seat. The cops eventually pried the seat off the toilet with a crowbar and sent the woman—seat attached—to a hospital in Wichita, where they were finally separated.

Updates

The News is spreading now: Here is the Video News Clip: