We bring you the latest hotel promos, learn which are riverless countries, visit frozen Lake Baikal, talk about blog idols, talk about your smartphone, hackers from the first world war, things that were supposed to be built in NYC, the mypillow dude, Vladimir dude, and just a whole lot more for you!<——Expertly placed exclamation mark followed by $$$ links right below this line, must be a thought leader. Or something 🙂
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The action in the miles & points blogs on Martin Luther King day was way down so this post will catch up on some other stuff I have had in the queue…
All current hotel system wide promotions present as of, like, right now. Great resource page at Frequent Flyer Bonuses, feel free to tweet me once a month with it!
There are 18 countries without rivers.
You see it everywhere you go, everyone glued to their smart phones. Why? Because…dopamine! Pavlov’s in your pocket:
Every time it pulses, we get a hit.
Every time we realize we haven’t checked it in two minutes, we get a hit.
Hit, hit, hit.
And again and again.
The box vibrates, we feel hope and fear and our loneliness subsides, then we check, and we lose (again).
But we are hooked, so we put the phone in our pocket and wait for it to happen again.
This is very comforting for me because, as blog critic, I get a lot of crap thrown at me all the time. “Someone Will Always Think You’re An Asshole“.
But that’s okay. Because on the balance of things, there are more people who want to read my work. There are more people who enjoy it. And they’re the ones I’m creating for.
Nigel de Grey. Who? You should know this guy. He was one of the greatest hackers of the first world war. Wow, what a story. One day TBB will change history. Maybe in my dreams. Or nightmares, lol.
What a sales man! This guy behind MyPillow. Only in America you go from being denied crack to running a huge company like this. The Preposterous Success Story of America’s Pillow King. By the end of the story, I had lost track how many times the guy was married…
Required reading if you want to learn about Putin. The Secret Source of Putin’s Evil. Excellent history lesson as well, you are welcome.
Mind blowing collection of photographs by Marc Wilson. The Last Stand. Wounded landscapes, remnants of war. LOVE this! Support art like this!
Frozen Lake Baikal, the deepest and oldest lake on earth.
Never built New York: the city that might have been – in pictures. Wow.
BLOG BUZZ
This section is for advanced level hobbyists who happen to read a lot of the blogs in this quirky space…
What’s the best deal on that business class award to New Zealand? Burning Virgin Flying Club miles via transfers from Citi, Amex and Chase.
First, nobody owns me. I do my thing here. I have always done things my own way. I cherish independence first and foremost. This is why this blog just does not belong in a blog aggregator, it is just not part of what defines me. So, I speak my mind here. Some of you think I am an asshole. As the link above said, it’s okay. I keep going. As long as we are enjoying ourselves, happiness is in the process. Or whatever.
So, like I said, it was a slow day in the blogs. Two blogs that appear to me have stepped it up in the NUMBER of posts (like multiple posts daily) is Live and Let’s Fly (the only blog out of the Hackr aggregator who did not join Travel Codex and went alone in the Boarding Area – Note: Travel Codex itself is part of Boarding Area…this is a confusing space!) and Points With a Crew. In the first one, it appears it is the job of only one person who I guess has the pictures of the bloggers behind View From The Wing and One Mile at a Time by his bed. The other blog has added several writers (the Crew?) who have been prolific in the number of stuff they are publishing. Does that site make that much money to pay them or do they work for peanuts? Anyways…
If there is one practice that gets me really angry (other than the non stop credit card pimping of course) is when a blog breaks out a great deal, a Titan blog writes about it and buries the HT at the very end of the post and then a wannabe Titan blogger who always reads only his idols writes about it and HTs the Titan totally missing the clue that the Titan just copied the original source extending the charade that such Titan is a thought leader, influencer or whatever bullshit term they will come up with. So, this is what Live and Let’s Fly did HTing his idol View From The Wing who wrote about the JetBlue deal that first made it on the blogs at DansDeals (and I linked to it on Twitter and in my comments). Hey, I guess I am an asshole for expressing what I am feeling. Whatever. Oh dude, two posts about Martin Luther King, seriously?
I guess it could be worse and there was no HT at all. But if you are going to do it put it up on top so bloggers like the one above may see it and do the right thing. Unless it is placed at the bottom of the post on purpose? Or it’s a Boarding Area brotherhood thingie perhaps…
I just can’t link stuff here when it involves people who get paid by a Titan blog publicly. I.Just.Can’t.Do.It. Sorry Julian, Joe and Richard! Nothing personal!
And I leave you with this…
Check out my updated blog lists: Blogs I Love, Blogs I Like, Blogs To Ignore
TBB
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Can’t find a better blog
First!
[shaking my fist at ScottCastle]
I shake my fist right back at you sir
Fistfight!
First virtual fistfight in a miles points blog, always breaking new ground here 🙂
When it’s a work day, nobody beats fast fingers ScottCastle #respect
Bronze maybe ?
Lol…maybe, yeah, hard to keep track!
One thing about doing a H/T at the top is that it would show on your home page which makes the first paragraph summary which appears there look a bit odd.
That doesn’t matter much if you’re on BA, of course, since no-one ever visits your home page, but mine is 1/3rd of my traffic.
Yeah, good point, maybe they stick in the third…line?
TPG expands globally is all talk…no action. The action is from you going Dutch hey? 🙂
Here’s the reality of staff. I am in London in truly depressing non stop, day in day out rain. My young colleague is swanning around Ibiza and Madrid reviewing luxury hotels on my dime 🙂
Why not spell it out in the first line of the article? ‘As I read on xyz’s blog today…’
PS: George is having your son write blog entries a violation of child labor laws?
No. I pay him very well. I have his next post almost ready and already paid him.
Kid made enough he can do the maximum contribution in his Roth IRA! Not from me, from his UofM job.
Great links today Buzz — love the fact you “curate my morning wanderings”…
My contribution — Skift interviewed the CEO of Hyatt. Of interest to our community in re: the WoHurt:
“We have made some changes, a few key changes to the structure of the program to support that. We expect that we will continue to extend that platform to be able to include many different types of experiences and to allow us to have a much higher level of engagement with our guests.”
Higher level of engagement = give us MORE $$$ for the same level of benefits we used to give you. Lots of talk about empathy. Read the whole mess here:
http://tinyurl.com/j3lpwd6
Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’ into the Future — 4 more days in Paradise..
Great minds think alike as this was already slotted to appear in next Buzz post 🙂
Now wait until the thought leader makes a blog post about it kissing ass to his buddy Jeff and then HTs Alan H. again.
Maybe better to send me the links via DM?
Oh yeah,I will have my commentary on the interview. These Hyatt guys are giving the Accor guys a run for most BS corporate speak on the planet!
Lufthansa and Etihad merging…
Not done deal yet but it may happen sooooon.
I am sure TPG will write about it about a week after it is official, too busy promoting and expanding hey 🙂
The new TPG homepage gives the customer a better impression of what TPG is all about, selling CCs.
Was there ever any doubt? 🙂
Here’s a timeline of the JetBlue deal btw: https://storify.com/ezjourneys/was-that-jetblue-150-discount-a-mistake
Good recap, I added the link in tomorrow’s post. And added your blog to my Feedly. Thanks.
One addition:
TBB readers were alerted of the deal here at 3.21 pm, just 4 minutes after DD outed it. For the record. Then everyone else saw it 🙂
Updated, thanks!
I presume JetBlue honored the bookings since there seems to be an absence of “Dan’s Army” filing (spurious) complaints to DOT?
Also — one of the UK blogger had a link for 2x IHG points. Still valid? Sorry, while attempting to update/garden my bookmarks, an operator error occurred. I am almost positive it had nothing to do with adult beverages of Nicawawa!
It died at 6:45pm, or 2 minutes before OMaaT tweeted it.
The OMaat comments are gold.
“Next blog post: Great deal!! Buy Amazon or Tesla IPO stocks!”
Amazing, all that Titanium floating 🙂
Oh man, I just made an exception and dug up some gold comments from the TPG site redesign post…I just can’t dig in to OMAAT comments too…
Hey, they need to keep up the travel thought leader branding…
TPG never got around to it? 🙂
If you’re on entertainment tonight, try the comments on the TPG redesign:
http://thepointsguy.com/2017/01/new-look-same-great-content-welcome-to-the-new-tpg/
If you’re *short of* ….
Oh man I…clicked. I chose some comments to feature here tomorrow, thanks.
#entertainment
What is HT?
HT is “Hat Tip (Thanks)” or “Home Time” or “Handheld Transceiver”
HT Definition / HT Means
The definition of HT is “Hat Tip (Thanks)” or “Home Time” or “Handheld Transceiver”
The Meaning of HT
HT means “Hat Tip (Thanks)” or “Home Time” or “Handheld Transceiver”
So now you know – HT means “Hat Tip (Thanks)” or “Home Time” or “Handheld
And here I figured HT meant something fancy like Hyperlink Thread, oh well.
Looks like some interesting stuff today.
Thanks again Buzzy for your efforts!
Buzzy Buzz says hi!
To be fair, having now seen TPG on an iPad it is not as much of a car crash as the mobile site.
The key issue, though, is whether you can basically sell cards from a CNN Traveller type website. I get a feeling that they were getting embarrassed by the ‘blog’ format.
But here’s the thing. It works. One thing I have learnt about from TBB is Dan’s Deals which, let’s be frank, looks like it was designed in 1990. However, Dan seems a smart guy and he is running a huge site now. My money is on the fact that he believes his readers actually want and appreciate that sort of down to earth style and go out of there way to use his links.
I think you are right on all counts.