Online Mapping: What happened to MapQuest? It used to be a very flexible, free online mapping service. It’s still there, but it has been severely pared back feature-wise: it’s missing things like “make this map bigger” and “add an icon to this map” and “save this map.” MapBlast, from Microsoft, has better maps and more features, but it’s still not where MapQuest used to be.

Air Canada: Although flying Air Canada these days is the travel equivalent of buying generic “no-name” peaches, at least it’s cheap. Catherine, Oliver and I are flying Halifax to Montreal return for $58 each way. That said, the cheapness disappears if you’re trying to fly from Charlottetown, where the cheapest equivalent for our dates was $286 each way. For the extra $684 I’ll defy David Malahoff and drive to Halifax. By the way, JetsGo, WestJet and CanJet were each more expensive to Montreal from Halifax, and only CanJet flew direct.

Photo ID: How is it that we can be almost 3 years into the new airport security regime and people still don’t understand about the need for photo ID at the airport? I think you could improve the efficiency of air travel by at least 15% if people simply had their ID at the ready at every turn. As it is, I’d say about 25% of the traveling public act surprised when it’s requested at the gate (despite the “please have your photo ID ready” announcements), and about half of them take 2 minutes to root through their purses or wallets, slowing up the lines and frustrating the gate agents (and the people behind them).

Alamo: About two years ago, I registered with Alamo, and went through the rigamarole required to sign up for their Quicksilver program. This, in theory, allows me to reserve online, and then quickly check out my car from a kiosk once I arrive at their airport location. In theory. The problem is that in half a dozen visits said kiosk has only actually worked once, and even that time it mysteriously “upgraded” me to a Chevy Astro Van from a Toyota Corolla. Every other time I’ve had to get in the regular line because the machine has been completely or partially broken. Their cars tend to be horrible GM proto-cars like the Chevy Cavalier, and are often dirty, have filled ashtrays, and are missing ice scrappers in winter. I think it’s time to go back to Hertz: although they have a poorer reservation engine, I’ve never had a bad car from them, or a bad experience renting.

Ted Williams Tunnel: The opening of the Ted Williams Tunnel in Boston, which runs from Logan Airport in Boston under the harbour to downtown Boston and the I-93 north and south, has made it extremely easy to travel by car to and from Logan. But if you’re Canadian, it’s important to remember to have your $3.00 in US dollars with you before you leave the airport: the best I had was $5 Canadian, and they wouldn’t accept that. As a result, I had to wait for 5 minutes while the toll booth clerk filled out an invoice for me, and collected everything from my driver’s license number to the license plate of the car. I have 14 days to mail them a check for $3.00 or they’ll fine me $250. I’m not complaining, just warning you to be ready.

The Inn at Jaffrey Center: I spent seven nights last week at the Inn at Jaffrey Center, an 11-room inn just south of Yankee in Dublin. For most of the week I was the only one there. Beds are comfortable, staff is friendly and helpful, and rooms are clean and well-appointed. Breakfast isn’t exactly splendiferous, espcially if you eat neither eggs nor bacon, but it’s nice to have included, given the Inn’s remote location. And in the winter the pipes do knock a lot. And they’re really, really loud. But all in all it’s one of the nicest places to stay in the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire.

Beverages: Regular readers will know that I love iced tea. The Dublin General Store now stocks the T42 brand, which is a happy medium between the syrupy overkill of the standard gas station Liptons and Nestea and the stripped-down unsweetened goodness of Honest Tea. The beverage highlight of my trip last week was a bottle of POM Wonderful pomegranate. It’s expensive as hell ($3.98/bottle), but boy is it ever good.

Here’s the terminal manager of the CTMA ferry that runs between PEI and the Magdelan Islands commenting on a recent crossing that took 16 hours (instead of the usual 5), as reported by CBC:

“The passengers are quite comfortable,” he says. “They’ve got plenty to eat and they’re warm. It’s a closed-in ferry so everything is very comfortable for them. It’s just that it takes so much longer to get from point A to point B, and it’s kind of boring because you can only go so far on a boat.”

A couple of weeks ago was the anniversary of The Molasses Disaster of January 15, 1919. It’s one of those historical events that is so bizarre as to be almost unbelievable. But it happened.

The lords upstairs mentioned last week that they had noticed a proliferation of Really Bad GarageBand-generated music on the net. Not wanting to be left out of this orgy of badinosity, I present my first GarageBand mixdown.

Notice my subtle blending of 4 or 5 genres in one fantastic power ballad.

Peer1, the excellent colocation provider — Yankee runs out of its colo facility in New York City — has a blog. All Internet Service Providers should have a blog.

Which reminds me: Kevin, can you please set up an RSS feed of this page (probably only accessible if you’re an ISN customer)?

Roy Neel, the new CEO of the Dean Campaign writes a very interesting post about where the campaign will go from here. After seeing three of the seven candidates in person, I would have voted for Dean in New Hampshire. I still might do so, logistics willing, in the New York Primary in early March.

Several years ago I was called to participate in a session at Holland College where a new e-commerce course was being developed. As is the tradition at the College, various industry people joined with various educators to develop the curriculum, with an emphasis on the practical.

During the introductions, several of my industry colleagues described their professions in such an acronym-laden way that I had no idea what they did: ERP, MIS, EDI, CRM and the like. I protested, and suggested that we all endeavour to not use acronyms for the rest of the session. The reaction to this was not positive: you would think that I had asked people not to talk at all.

People who speak in acronyms claim that they’re a “handy shorthand” that allows conversation to proceed more efficiently. While that may be true, what goes unspoken is that they are also used, whether conciously or not, to construct a wall between those “in the know” and those not.

You’re at the hospital and your doctor orders a “CBC and Chem 7.” What does it mean? Who knows? The doctors and nurses are speaking a foreign language, in plain hearing of those most deeply affected by their mumblings, and this acronymania, while it lets them zip around more quickly, serves only to further elevate their position as all-powerful medical gods. Which isn’t good for anyone.

I remember talking to a colleague several years ago during “IT Week” on Prince Edward Island. She had been telling her mother, over the weekend, that she was going to be presenting at an “IT Week special event.” Her mother wanted to know what “it week” was — what was the “it” she was talking about?

People in Government are fond of talking about the RFP (Request for Proposal), the RFQ (Request for Quotation), the RFI (Request for Information). They rattle off these terms like they know the difference between them. I once asked someone what the difference was, and they couldn’t tell me. Apparently nobody actually knows.

The worst offenders here are my friends in the federal government: during a trip to Elections Canada in November, I sat back and watched several colleagues there have a conversation that consisted almost entirely of acronyms. When I asked them to speak in plain language they reacted much as my Holland College group did: “that’s just how we talk!”

So here’s my humble request: if you’re an acronymaniac, take the next week and try and speak acronym-free. Treat it as a game if you wish: see if you can actually pull it off. I think what you will find is that you can speak to a much broader range of people, with greater clarity and understanding, than you ever imagined.

Let me know what happens.

Sitting in the lounge at YHZ, waiting for a flight to YYG after leaving BOS this morning after a week in NH at YPI where, in my off hours, I revelled in the games of the DNC. Looking forward to seeing CLM and ODLR.

CBC is reporting that “Island heritage activist Catherine Hennessey forced crews to stop cutting down an old tree in Charlottetown Thursday morning.” While this is technically true, it was, in fact, my very own consort Catherine [Miller] who spotted the tree about to be felled, called Catherine [Hennessey] and the media and ran over (leaving Oliver in the care of my mother) to spiritually chain herself to it.

Catherine would never seek credit for this herself, of course, and credit isn’t really what’s important. The tree is among her favourites — we look at it right out our front window — and she merely wanted to ensure that if it was going to be cut down it was for a valid reason. That still isn’t clear.

Oliver is being well-schooled.

Because of Air Canada’s new “lean and mean” schedule, it’s no longer possible to leave Boston late in the day to fly to Charlottetown — the last flight out is at 2:20 p.m.

As a result, I’m leaving Dublin this morning at 9:00 a.m. for a day of seemingly endless travelling, including a very special 2-hour layover in the Halifax airport.

Next time I fly I’m going to see if Prince Edward Air’s new Charlottetown to Halifax service can link up with Delta’s Halifax to Boston service; if it prices out about the same, the mere fact of being able to avoid Trudeau (nee Dorval) Airport in Montreal would be worth the additional complications.

Back on the Island tonight at 7:30 p.m. Can’t wait.

Have you ever talked to anyone who’s worked in a call centre? They universally describe their call centre jobs a ones with low pay, high stress, and few prospects. And the latest news about call centre layoffs in Bloomfield, and Montague demonstrates just how secure these jobs are.

Industry types call call centre work “intense.” Take a quote from this story for example:

“Call centres have a high turnover rate, due to the intense nature of the work. The search for employment and rewarding work keeps many working in call centres always looking for new opportunities,” says site administrator Luc Theriault.

And PEI’s wage rate is euphemistically called “competitive,” as in this snip from this HRDC publication:

The provincial government continues to support the development of the call centre industry in P.E.I. This, coupled with a wage rate in P.E.I. which is very competitive, could attract new business and provide a favourable economic climate for existing companies to expand.

And yet call centre jobs are promoted as “IT jobs” and the naive public is led to believe that answering the phone for Reader’s Digest is somehow akin to writing code to guide the Space Shuttle home to earth.

And our tax dollars are given away — $292,000 to Souris, $70,000 in Charlottetown, $1 million in Charlottetown, $490,000 in Wellington, for example — to lure new call centres to the Island.

While some might say that it’s elitist to look askance at any new jobs on Prince Edward Island, surely to continue to invest in these transitory jobs is foolish: let’s invest in high-value, sustainable IT jobs rather than throwing our money away to build more digital sweat shops.