airport checkin processes

over the last two weeks I had cause to fly every weekend .... and with different airlines.

Now airline 1 had a very easy to use web check in process, and as long as you have a computer printer handy you could print your boarding pass (assuming no luggage). Then all you needed to do was to rock on up to the airport 1/2 hr before you fly.

Airline 2 allowed you to change your seats but still wanted you to queue and check-in via normal hence you needing to be at the airport earlier than you would have to. This was true even if you had no luggage.

as a result I was miffed - why do i have to check in when I have no luggage - why can't I just go to an ATM like machine and print a boarding pass. Even better - why not use my mobile phone # which they have to send a boarding pass/barcode straight to my phone and let me just use my mobile to scan in (ok I would have to turn it off after boarded).

I certainly don't appreciate having my time wasted by having to be anywhere earlier than I need to be. This is not convient to me or how I live my life. Lucky I have a laptop else I wouldn't even be able to work at the airport and at least use my time effectively.

Whilst it may be a cheap airline, cheap checkin, don't they 1) look at what their competitors are doing 2) look at what their customers want or would make them an preferred carrier ??

online photo albums

I was asked today by some non web people how easy it is to load photos onto the web.

Now I have my own favourites for photos, but wanted to see if there were others.

I looked at :

• Bigpond Bigblog
• microsoft spaces
• blogger
• yahoo
• picassa (google)
• flickr(yahoo) & livejournal
• kodak

out of all of these the bigblog, blogger and spaces accounts were not useful as they were blog driven with photo areas, rather than pure photo storage.

I personally like picassa, however you must use software downloaded to your pc. If you are not on your normal pc then its not as good. Taking it into account I think that flickr is a great freebie with software as part of the browser not the pc - hence it has my choice as preferred straight online photo album.

Do you load photo's onto the web, and do you like the system you use. Is it cumbersome, does it use jargon you are not familar with ?