beatnic - just wondering

• socialwrite.com » 2007: The Year of Enterprise 2.0?
  (tags: lists socialcomputing socialmedia predictions enterprise2.0)

A good excuse for a musical reference, but this isn’t to do with choosing between the Beatles and Radiohead.

I was just wondering what kind of Christmas tree we should be buying this year.

With all the recent mention of carbon footprints, are we doing more for the environment buying the traditional Norwegian Spruce or is it time to opt for the articial variety?

We’ve already made the decision. This year we’ve gone for a 6′6” Killington from Homebase. It’s got real pine cones on it and it’s not bad for an imitation.

I guess we can find other ways to reproduce the smell of pine. And at least the “non-drop” bit is true at last.

What I will miss is the annual outing to buy the tree. From now on it’s the annual putting-together of the tree, quite an ingenious contraption it is too.

I’m putting my green money on the fake paying for itself over the years both financially and environmentally.

I’ll dig around to find out the true cost of norwegian wood versus fake plastic trees and will report back with any findings.

It would also be interesting to know what all our evergreen politicians are going for.

The nutshell: buying rail tickets online still isn’t very joined up.

TTL: “Thank you for calling thetrainline.com how can I help?”

Me: “Hello, I accidentally managed to book myself two tickets using the website. Can you tell me how I can cancel one of them please?”

[brief exchange of reference numbers and identification information]

TTL: “Hello Mr Price. There will be a £10 charge for cancelling your ticket, because you booked two ticket.

Me: “But I only wanted one ticket, but the website let me buy two. There was no confirmation message or email, so I assumed the transaction hadn’t been completed. So I clicked the “Buy ticket” button again because it hadn’t worked the first time…”

TTL: “If you want to cancel one of your tickets there is a £10 charge.”

Me: “That’s not good enough.”

I’m not a frequent train traveller, and have rarely used online booking for my tickets, unlike flying where I can’t remember the last time I didn’t use a website to book.

That’s not to say I don’t use the online timetables to check journey details, it’s just the buying I leave to the last minute at the ticket office or self-service machines at the railway station.

So the other day I needed to check out journey details for a journey from a small station in Yorkshire to London returning a couple of days later. My incentive for checking was not only to know what my journey options were, but also the potential of an advance booking discount.

Imagine how stupid I felt when I managed to accidentally buy two tickets for myself because the website let me click the “Submit” button twice! I can’t believe a site as high-profile as thetrainline.com still hasn’t cracked this.

I can tell Wordie has the potential to become highly addictive for all the right reasons even if I haven’t quite understood the point yet…

Wordie lets you make lists of words — practical lists, words you love, words you hate, whatever. See who else has listed the same words, add citations and comments, and discuss.
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[Via Euan]

Why are funeral parlours so often on street corners?

My folks were discussing this recently and have a theory about access/parking of hearses, which used to be horse-drawn.

Enough to drive you round the bend ;)

• Beyond Search - Information World Review
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