 |
| The Tsunami Cloud. Found at Twisted Sifter |
ON MY MIND
Wife’s new personal Club Carlson Visa card finally arrived!
The usual suspect bloggers are back on their regular routine and the endless Chase affiliate credit card links. I did notice a decrease in such posts so I would like to help them snap out of it, maybe this guy can help you visually assault us some more, come on! The record is 39 links in one post, do not give up, you can do iiiiiiit!
Blog hit the highest number of views yesterday: 1,742. This explains the increase in spam!
MILES/POINTS
Seth of The Wandering Aramean is up to…another venture with his Hack.Travel website. This was the original goal of TBB: To be the go to site where I post the best and the worst blog posts from the previous day. The hobby has grown so much that such a site is needed. There are some other websites doing this now. But, as I have had a first hand experience with this, the volume is so punishing that I could not keep up the pace and continue my family and work life! So TBB morphed into an “eclectic journey of the Travel Miles/Points blogoshpere”. Maybe Seth can apply some of his incredible tech knowledge to do this right. With so many blogs there is no way in hell anyone can keep up. Even with Google Reader (or Feedly soon) it is a very time consuming job hobby! I think I am going to stick with my “eclectic” angle to keep my sanity:-)
Ok, Bluebird BIG news! Gary of View from the Wing has the scoop here. Free checks. FDIC insurance. The only thing missing is an increase in the Vanilla Reload monthly $5k limit. I would be fine with $10k because a pig is fine while a hog is not:-)
Mr. Pickles is on a major blogging run. After revealing an Avis amazing rental car code he gets Bobby to guest blog again on how to get a free domestic flight on a Delta award. I also heard that the Avis code made it to slickdeals…which pretty much guarantees its death in…minutes!
Priority Club is rebranding and Loyalty Traveler has the best writeup on it.
TRAVEL
Need to do more of it! But then how am I going to update the blog, I am barely keeping up with it? Hmm…
ODDZ & ENDZ
35 Worst Book Titles & Covers Ever. From MustLook. Mega LOL material!
The free Delta flight was blogged in January, along with other airlines free one way rules. I used it to get to FTU. 🙂
I’ve had good luck with DL lately, found saver space to HNL and added the one way on the end, even though everyone says they never have saver availability.
How much time did you spend finding saver availability? I can go to United and book an award while I brew coffee and done with both awards and coffee shortly thereafter;-)
Sure, United’s search enrgine is much better than Delta’s. But I often have issues gluing together segments at low award level. Always requires a phone call. I can get it done over lunch rather than the 5+ phone calls it would take with Delta.
Ok. I would rather get it done at the UA site than frustrate myself gluing segments together & then calling to get the award issued. And I happen to think myself as advanced user. All the newbies are led to slaughter being told to grab the Delta Amex cards:-)
I spent maybe ten minutes a few times browsing availability. That was just for the one way to ftu cuz nothing was available except redeyes and I was hoping for better. All online and the Hawaii part had lots of space coulda done that in two minutes. Just lucky dates I guess.
But I would add I use UA regularly. I was trying to burn skypesos cuz of all the negative talk and just saying it was easier than expected. Not a DL fan.
Must have been a fluke;-)
Since when do flyertalk moderators assess (and delete posts and mete out discipline on the basis of) whether they deem posts about specific blog article are ‘accurate’ or not?
It used to be that Flyertalk moderators were supposed to enforce a TOS. I see nowhere in that TOS that inaccurate (in the subjective opinion of the moderator) posts are to be removed. If that were the case, much of what’s written about AAdvantage award routing rules in the American forum would have to be deleted…
That moderator action has pissed me off so much…notice how people stopped posting? I understand it is a volunteer position but some sure get a power kick out of it. This whole censoring thing disgusts me.
any idea which post was deemed objectionable? I follow that thread closely and didnt see anything egregious.
No idea! I have the same feelings like you…see posts below!
The deleted post was a bit of snark about the trip report by a TPG staffer who went to Iguazu Fall, and then explained he was trying to requalify for Starwood Gold, and oh by the way he’s well on his way because he has the nights/stays from the Starwood Amex!
The post indicated the TPG staffer chose to stay at the hotel because he had the SPG Amex! Ka-ching!
The moderators considered that to be a substantively inaccurate reading of the Points Guy post, and deleted it.
Paying to stay at the Sheraton in Iguazu is only nice if you enjoy burning money or need an early-morning photograph of the falls. Otherwise, not worth it.
Posadas and hotels in town are much, much better value.
harvson3
I think that moderator is overly dictatorial imho.
Iguazu is in my plans at some point.
Dennis(mia) is a dick and he knows it himself. He has been doing it for years. The blog affinity related censoring is not a new thing. It is just another way he gets off, only recently Goerge and others have been more vocal. His role is to control the flow of information.
Thanks for confirming what I was thinking…I thought it was me. I have been on FT longer than Mia (thought it was a female name!) Only recently I have been contacted by moderators and it was only Mia, no other moderator has ever bothered me. This moderator is probably costing FT many many hits…I am not bothering with that thread anymore, he succeeded! What a travesty!
You are right that the thread now has gone sour because of him and many have stopped posting. So I guess “they” got what they wanted. However they have to respect you because you are also media, much like the bloggers. It is one of the primary reasons why they have to side with bloggers.
Actions like that are telling me I should not waste my time because he may delete it…I can’t get into his head and I don’t want to, life is too short for that.
Is it really necessary to read ALL of the travel blogs? I would think only 10% of them could possibly have “useful” information.
I should just delete a crapload of them in my Google Reader list. Most add nothing but stress to TBB:-)
There arent many blog out there posting new original content. I follow many but its hard to add a link to an article with 10-20 CC Links. I try my best to post the relevant stuff that is useful.
And I think you are doing a pretty good job at it!
MileageUpdate, like your site and good job. Maybe you can improve the layout though and make it easier for the readership to, say for example, detect what is new for the day or week etc. At the moment it is complicated.
Good job though. Thanks much.