A Golf Blog

DEMOletter

The folks at IDG Executive Forums, producers of Demo, and Demo Mobile are finally on line with the DEMOletter Blog. I had been wondering if it was ever going to make it online.

Microsoft Research and Search

Eric Brill at MSR is looking at a way to get straight answers to straight questions. His initial attempt is a system called “Ask MSR” and it uses information on web pages to answer questions for which there is a one word or phrase answer – like “When was Marilyn Monroe born?”

MSR starts by looking at the questions from several angles; identifying the verb, changing tense, and then moving it around in the sentence – “Marilyn was Monroe born”, “Marilyn Monroe was born”, and so on.

The phrases are then sent to a search engine and matches to the word strings are retrieved. While the method appears to be somewhat indiscriminate, there are probably very few ‘matches’ to phrases that make little sense.

After the web pages are retrieved they are scanned for possible answers and then ranked by frequency. The correct answer usually appears in one of the first 3 places about 75% of the time. May not sound very good but the person that initiated the search is the second filter. If the answer is still not obvious, clicking on the results links will take you to pages that support the answer.

Sure would like to see something on Channel 9 about Dr. Brill’s work – access to the working prototype would be great.

Need more information? Click here for an analysis of AskMSR and here for the Economist.com article From factoids to facts.

Faster Fast Food

Well, at least a couple of companies think so. Last month, there was a story circulating about how a McDonalds franchisee improved efficiency of his 12 fast food emporiums by reducing drive through order time by 30 seconds. His time of slightly more that 1 minute per order is well below McDonalds average drive through order time of 2 minutes and thirty six seconds. He outsourced his drive through operation.

Now enter HyperActive Technologies. They’ve equipped 8 fast-food restraints in Pennsylvania and Ohio with cameras and software that analyzes incoming vehicles. Their software counts cars and makes recommendations about what the occupants will likely buy based on vehicle type, etc. so the food can be ready before they enter the store. For example, a lady driving a van might indicate children-friendly food and a business person in an upscale foreign car might indicate some sort of salad.

So far, this experiment has reduced customer wait time by as much as 30%.

It’s Not about Winning

Thanks to Robert Scoble for a link to Jonathan Crowe’s Olympic blog. The site’s dedicated to last place finishers.

Corporate Buyers Are Looking Elsewhere

Jay Campbell at Business Travel Beat.com has reported that Corporate America is fuming over Northwest’s plan to charge fees for bookings.

Northwest’s decision “is another slap in the face to corporate travel programs,” said Boston based Keane Inc. administrative services manager Marianne Goodman. “Travel managers struggle as it is to keep everyone booking through one agency for all the information and security it provides. To have a major carrier go against this is just rude. If other airlines follow Northwest, this could hinder our travel budgets for 2005 as the additional cost will be over $100,000 to Keane, and our program is not as large as many others. I am meeting with the CFO today and I am making the recommendation that we do not use Northwest unless there is no other carrier in the market.”

Pretty clear where Keane Inc checks in.

An email survey revealed that

“Northwest is only passing on their cost inefficiencies to me,” said one buyer. “They told me yesterday that they needed to do this to compete with the low-cost carriers, but when I asked them if that meant they were going to a single type plane, reducing their labor costs and going to a point-to-point strategy, they said ‘of course not’. They also tried to tell me that is was because of fuel expense. That doesn’t make sense either, since the low-cost carriers have to buy fuel the same way. I also asked if the additional fee was going to then make them financially stable...well, you know the answer to that.”

More as it happens.

Cendant Takes Action against Northwest

Cendant is no longer supporting prominent display of Northwest Airlines fares.

What it all Means

Well, things are certainly jumping here at Sabre. For those of you a little befuddled by what’s going on, I thought an explanation might be of help.

On Tuesday evening, Northwest Airlines announced that they will institute fees on all transactions that are made outside their web site. Tickets booked and issued by Northwest’s reservation office would cost more than the same transaction on their web site. A ticket issued by a travel agent or by a Northwest agent at a ticket counter would cost more than the same transaction on their web site.

Back in July of 2003, Northwest Airlines signed up with Sabre’s Direct Connect Availability Three Year Option. Among other things, part of the agreement for reduced booking fees was that all fares that the airline sells though any third-party Web site and through its own web site and reservations office would be made available for Sabre to distribute.

Now it’s up to negotiation and/or litigation to sort through the issues.

Sabre Holdings News Release

Tip of the Iceberg

I’ve written about GDS deregulation in earlier posts and hopefully you’ve seen those. I really think the latest row with Northwest Airlines is just the tip of the iceberg for the 4 GDSs. It appears that United will follow suite charging for bookings that are made outside the carrier’s online site.

Right on the heels of this, G2 SwitchWorks with several airlines announced that they will be building a new, low cost distribution network, essentially bypassing the GDS’. Letters of intent have been signed by Northwest, Alaska, Continental, Delta, US Airways, and United. There was one additional carrier that requested anonymity.

Yesterday, on the NYSE, Sabre Holdings (TSG) closed at a 5 month low.

Northwest to Charge Booking Fee

Northwest Airlines is planning on charging consumers and travel agents a $5 fee for bookings made outside of the carrier’s web site.

Henry Harteveldt, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research says “Agents won’t be happy. They like the ease and utility the GDSs represent. But, the duel isn’t between Northwest and the agents. It’s between Northwest and the GDSs.

A statement issued by Sabre yesterday said that Northwest’s move “is contrary to the letter and the spirit” of the three year DCA agreement they signed last year.

Because of the recent deregulation of the GDSs, Sabre said it would give “more prominent display for those carriers providing the full complement of fares as required under the agreement”.

Craig Murphy and Howard Beale

So, what does Sabre Holdings Chief Technology Officer have in common with Howard Beale, the aged newsman in the 1976 Sidney Lumet movie, Network?

Howard Beale’s rant – “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Craig Murphy on Sabre Holdings take on databases and license fees – “We’re just not going to pay license fees for those databases like we used to. We’ll download free stuff off the Internet before we do that. I believe this is the future of computing.” I certainly get the message – Craig’s had enough!

They’re fed up with the way things are and they’re change agents for getting to where things should be. Remember, Sabre was awarded application of the year by MySQL and that application cut some ticketing and pricing processing costs by as much as 80%.