Selling flights via the Web is a neat marketing ploy. In the few months since its inception, the British Midland Cyberseat site ( http://www.iflybritishmidland.com/) has proved a resounding success with hundreds of tickets sold and copious media coverage.But the Web has the interactive potential to do more than simply flog plane tickets to wired lifestyle junkies. With a touch of imagination, it could help airlines resolve one of their toughest dilemmas: what to do when a flight remains stubbornly underbooked and the departure date approaches?
Most carriers choose to fly with empty seats rather than fill up the flight with opportunist bargain hunters. The airlines' fear is that regular full-fare customers will resent overhearing scruffy students bragging over how little they've paid for their ticket. But what if airlines auctioned off any unfilled seats via the Web a couple of days prior to departure? Given widespread participation, an online auction would ensure that airlines maximised their return on otherwise empty seats, with no need to publicise ultra-low last-minute fares.
Or they could link entry to a Web seat auction with membership of an airline's frequent flyer program, thus making sure that participants would display at least a degree of loyalty. A properly conducted online seat auction would also provide airlines with valuable data on the exact prices that their customers are willing to pay for last-minute flights.
Cathay Pacific ( http://www.cathay-usa.com/auction.html) is already in the midst of its second Web seat auction, offering 40 first-class tickets from the United States to Hong Kong to the highest bidders.
Cathay Pacific's effort is, however, a rather tepid and tentative experiment: bids can only be tendered in the form of air miles previously awarded to passengers, and the auction is open for a whole month. It's more a PR exercise than a genuine effort to sell unfilled seats.
British Midland remains tight-lipped as to their future plans for Cyberseat, but the concept of online seat auctions is a great idea poised to take-off. All it lacks is a go-getting pilot.
- Tom Loosemore
Digital's awe-inspiring Altavista search engine (http://www.altavista.digital.com) has blown established Webmarketing practice clean out of the water. By providing a service that searches the entire contents of the Web or Usenet (a mere ten billion words) in seconds, Altavista has earned Digital shed-loads of Netrespect. Moreover, the service has supplied surfers with objective proof that Digital's 64-bit Alpha chip is a shudderingly powerful beastie. Add one refreshingly honest TV campaign, and Digital have hit upon a potent recipe for selling heaps of hardware to punters who can hardly fail to be impressed at Digital's understanding of the new medium. IBM would also seem to have twigged. Newsticker ( http://www.infomkt.ibm.com/ht2/ticker.htm) is a downloadable PC client that ticker-tapes news headlines across your screen. Click on a headline and see the full article displayed in your Web browser. The client also incorporates three small windows housing ever-changing linked Webverts. Gruesome Yankocentric news feeds aside, IBM will do themselves no harm having their name associated with this nifty new service.Vauxhall have followed a similar path with the Traffic Information Service ( http://www.vauxhall.co.uk/vectra-cgi/index), a colour-coded map showing average speeds on UK motorways. Rumours that Vauxhall sought to prevent bookmarking by changing the URL each day are, of course, utterly groundless.
Ah well, we're all still learning.
- Tom Loosemore
In the beginning, shortly after the creation of the first Web art, came the Word of the Art Glitterati. Descending from on high for a swift once-over, they poured vitriol and scorn on an art medium still in its infancy. Sarah Kent, art doyenne of Time Out, put it particularly sweetly: "I'd rather see art in a toilet than on the Internet."Such ill-considered derision can only be regarded as premature. Spurred on by the success of the ArtAIDS Web Quilt , the Arts Council has now agreed to put up funding for a variety of challenging new projects aimed at establishing the Web as a home for Serious Art. Small grants are winging their way towards several initiatives designed to stretch the medium, both conceptually and aesthetically.
Run by respected curator Peter Ride, Channel (see Wired 2.03, page 19) is perhaps the most ambitious proposal. Seeking to commission showcase Web sites by renowned digital artists, Ride also hopes to organise Web-based collaborations among over 80 UK arts venues. The Hub (http://www.ace.mdx.ac.uk/Hub/Hub.html) is aimed more specifically at multimedia creatives. Providing a platform for downloadable interactive art works, the site dispenses technical advice as well as assorted arty morsels of free(ish)ware. Set to blaze online in early May is inIVA, a new international arts organisation. It promises a whole series of major Web commissions exploring specific themes of race, gender and cultural identity.
Arts Council funding is also destined for individual artists such as Jane Prophet (of Technosphere fame - see Wired 1.08, page 21) to complete her new Heart of a Cyborg site and to Jake Tilson for his witty graphical wizardry on The Cooker. Top marks then to the Arts Council for biting the digital bullet. Their timely cash infusion will push at the boundaries of Web art. Don't mock - such a trend should benefit the whole Web by setting higher aesthetic standards and exploring new graphical approaches. It should only be a matter of time before both critics and non-digital artists wake up to the fact that, free from the constraints of the gallery context, the Web offers a radical new space for art.
Carey Young (c.young@rca.ac.uk) is doing a Masters at the Royal College of Art. She's read more sci-fi than is probably healthy.
Prior to intelligent agents, the geek holy grail was VR. The Firefly Music Recommendation Agent is to intelligent agents what the Doom 3D engine is to a pukka virtual environment: it's not the real thing, but who cares? It's great fun and it works like a dream.A development of MIT's seminal Ringo software, the agent asks you to rate music you've already heard and then compares your tastes with thousands of previous users before selecting other artists whose work you might enjoy. Its suggestions can prove unnervingly accurate - I never dreamed that I could get into Sebadoh.Cuter still, you can then order the recommended CDs online. Hell, why agonise over lifestyle choices when an agent can do all the work for you? Quintessentially '90s.
Music is but one arrow in the Firefly quiver. The site hosts a vibrant real-time community, replete with chat rooms, internal email and free personal homepages for users. In short, a true cyber community. Yup, and all this is offered via the Web. There's some mighty impressive on-the-fly HTML coding going down here, and the potential uses for this genre of personalised Web site are practically limitless. It's all rather disconcerting in a there's-just-far-too-much-smart-shit-happening-out-there kinda way.
Phil Gyford (phil@wired.co.uk) is Wired's LANlord and painted the wallpaper in Wallace and Gromet's "A Close Shave".