From Boston Logan International Airport to...

Welcome on board! Today we will be flying from Boston Logan International Airport, and even though you don't probably know where we will be landing, don't stress out, you can figure that out during our flight.

This Sunday, as usual, Harriet wrote her Souvenir Sunday blog post, a post dedicated to fun and inexpensive souvenirs that somebody can find at airports. The souvenirs this time come from Travel Basics, a shop situated in Terminal E at Boston Logan International Airport.The shop offers a variety of travel basics, such as shampoo, toothpaste, and office and art supplies, at incredibly reasonable prices.

Harriet also suggests visiting the restaurant, Dine Boston, located across the corridor from Travel Basics. The restaurant has good service, and frequently updated menu, while your restaurant receipt ensures you will have an express service at the security checkpoint.

This post was a really good opportunity for Harriet to promote the Boston Logan International Airport Guide she has written for USATODAY.com, and she took advantage of it. Blogs can be a great advertising medium. Not only you can publish whatever you want without worrying about someone else editing it, your advertising will probably also be received as more credible, since behind it there is a person who by name recommends this product or service. There are more chances that blog readers will receive the advertising as a form of advice, instead of a way to sell them something; even if the product you are promoting is made by you.

Of course, an important feature is the way and the tone the writer will use. Here Harriet talks about her airport guide in a post which is highly relevant. Also the tone she is using is sincere and unpretentious. She also points out that her guides are updated monthly and include tips from travelers, prompting readers to share their own airport finds.

The effort to engage readers and motivate them to participate goes on by reminding that "Stuck at the Airport wants your souvenirs!" As Harriet has done in the past, she asks from her followers to take a photo of an inexpensive, local, and a bit offbeat souvenir and send it along. If the souvenir ends up being featured on Souvenir Sunday you receive a special souvenir. Harriet doesn't repeat her "engagements game" every Sunday, but she reminds it to her followers quite often. Blogging is all about participation and discussion and Harriet's "engagements game" can be a great way to initiate some interaction.

In my opinion Stuck at the Airport is a great travel blog. It is fun and has a lot of interesting information. It is not a "serious" blog, meaning it doesn't contain controversial points of view or deeper meanings. This is probably the reason why it doesn't get a lot of comments. Stuck at the Airport can be a fun habit for any traveler that wants to know everything that is going on around him, even at the airport. It is obvious that Harriet uses her blog to promote her other work, such as books and airport guides, but she doesn't do it in an annoying way. I would definitely suggest this blog to those who enjoy traveling, or to those who wish they could be traveling more.

After blogging for seven consequent days I got to really appreciate blogs as a medium. Blogs are, I realized, a great way to put out your point of view, but also discover other alternative points of view. It is a medium that enables you to start a discussion on whatever subject preoccupies you. Also blogs, as most Internet experiences, give you the opportunity to start by reading about a certain subject and end up, through links, watching a video about something totally different. Blogging can, I believe, be a very enriching everyday habit.

Our landing process has already started. I really enjoyed being your air-hostess for the last seven days. I hope you enjoyed it too. I will be more than happy to see you again in one of our next flights!

Traveling in time...

Welcome on board! Unfortunately today we won't be able to realize our standard daily flight, because of extreme weather conditions. But who needs an airport or an airplane to fly, when we have the Web? So, breaking every rule of logic, today we will be traveling in time using as a vehicle Harriet's blog post Daylight Saving Time: where to watch the clock.

Daylight Saving Time ends this Sunday at 2:00 a.m. and we will all have to set our clocks one hour back. Influenced by that Harriet wrote a story at msnbc.com about How time flies! Where to see the world's clocks.
The story talks about clock-worthy cities and Harriet is sharing some of this information in her Stuck at the Airport blog. Some of the featured clocks are Marriott's Custom House in Boston, the information booth clock at New York City' s Grand Central Station, and clocks from the Bily Clocks Museum, in Spillville, Iowa. In Bily Clocks Museum there are 43 carved clocks, made by Joseph and Frank Bily in the past 45 years. The Museum's clocks have a big variety of themes ranging from art, religion, history and culture, while some of them are more than ten feet tall.

A very interesting video is the one showing the mapping project that was done to celebrate the 600th anniversary of Prague's astronomical clock.



Harriet today in her post didn't actually talk about an airport story. Nevertheless, she didn't avoid posting. For me, a good blog should be published regularly. Having a daily interaction with your followers makes them want to come back and check frequently for new posts. It also shows commitment from the blogger's part.

I also appreciated the fact that Harriet let us know that she was actually revising the story she wrote for msnbc.com. Through the link How time flies! Where to see the world's clocks she gave us the opportunity to go to her original story and take a look at it. Using links in a blog gives the blogger credibility. Links are the respective sources or footnotes of a printed article or book. They are probably even better than sources just because they are so convenient for the reader. The only thing you have to do is click on them. I personally click on links much more often than I look for a footnoted source.

There is no landing process this time... Or maybe there is? Traveling in the Web can make you tune out of everything else that is happening around you. That is, I believe, a different king of traveling.

Hope the weather will get better and that we will see you again at one of our next flights.

From London's Garwick Airport to...

Once again I would like to welcome you on board and wish you a nice flight! Today's point of departure is placed overseas at London's Gatwick Airport.

Harriet in her post Gatwick Airport's giant barcodes talks about some huge posters featuring barcodes that are used in the airport in order to cover construction walls and enable people to learn what's going on behind these walls. Passengers who have smartphones and are using the stickybits application will be able to scan the barcode and watch a video about the airport improvement program.

And for those of you that don't have a smartphone, or didn't have the time to download the application, this is what the airport video looks like:

Barcode campaigns seem to be more and more popular in airports. As the Testing a Bar Code Technology for Smartphones NYT article informs us, in Denver International Airport, the Colorado FirstBank is offering a free download of an e-book to the passengers who scan the barcode on the posters. Also in Clear Channel Airports, a large outdoor company, airline passengers will be able to download free crosswords and Sudoku games, after scanning a barcode. As the article suggests, barcode campaigns bring interactivity to public places and enhance consumer's participation, but consumer familiarity is not yet established and there are not a lot of users with phones equipped with scanners. In my opinion, barcode campaigns have a lot of potential because they are a great way to initiate a two-way communication with the consumer. They also create a feeling of curiosity; you just want to know what is behind the barcode.On the other hand, I feel like this technology, as all new technologies, is being used by many brands just because it is something new. Barcode campaigns can be a great tactic but there has to be a logic behind them.

It is amazing when you think what ads used to look like 30 years ago and what they look like now. Even more amazing is to try and imagine what they will look like in 30 years from now. In the passing of time, what changed advertising and the media world in general is the Internet. Marshall McLuhan, a famous media theorist, supported that "the medium is the message," meaning that the content isn't as important as the medium, and that the media, especially the new ones, have the power to change the scale, pattern and pace of our society. The Internet has certainly reshaped many aspects of our society. As Marshall McLuhan had predicted the electric media brought a universality of consciousness and made people reunite into one big tribe, the "global village." And what other medium, if not the Internet, can be characterized as a "global village?" The Web has not only in a way swallowed all other media but has also connected people in a different level.

Another famous McLuhan theory is his two media categories. According to his book Understanding Media, media can be divided into "hot," which are high definition, low involvement media, and into "cool," which are low definition, high involvement media. So in which category would McLuhan place the Internet? As Nick Carr, business writer, says in his article McLuhan would blow hot and cool about today's internet, the internet doesn't really fit into these two categories. Internet is high definition but also high involvement. In my opinion, the fact that the Internet has more or less swallowed all other media, by allowing us the watch TV, listen to the radio, read books, and play games, makes it hard to name it a hot or cool medium. Maybe even McLuhan would reconsider his categories, if he lived nowadays.

It is time to start our landing process, so I would like to thank you one more time for flying with us. I hope to see you again in one of our flights really soon!

From Santa Monica Airport to...

Welcome on board! I hope you have started enjoying your frequent fliers' benefits. Today we will be flying from Santa Monica Airport and if you don't know where you will be arriving don't worry, that's the beauty of our flight.

Blogs have certainly a lot to offer to their readers, but for me the most exciting thing they offer is original and alternative information. Blog is the medium to which I will turn to when I want to learn something I wouldn't find in the mainstream media. Talking about alternative information, Harriet today through her post informed us that on Thursday, November 4th, 2010 the metal band Metallica will be performing in a hangar at the Santa Monica Airport.



The performance will be part of the launch of a new video game called Call of Duty: Black Ops, and the money raised from the show will go to The Call of Duty Endowment, a non-profit corporation which helps soldiers' transition to civilian careers. Tickets for the concert will not sold, but the fans can go to the band's website to learn how they can win a pass. Personally, I am not a Metallica fan, but I am really excited that I got to know about this concert. It's just interesting to know that Metallica will be performing in an airport, and it is something I would never learn unless I followed Harriet's blog. That is why I believe blogs are a wonderful hub of information.

Another characteristic of blogs I really appreciate is their interactivity. Blogs offer a two-way communication; they are a medium that encourage discussion and participation. When you follow a blog you don't just get to read, you also have the opportunity to comment and give feedback. That is, in my opinion, why blogs can be so engaging.

Harriet in her blog Stuck at the Airport allows comments, but doesn't seem to be getting a lot. It's almost five days till the last time someone commented one of her posts, and that was actually a tweet. That doesn't necessarily mean that people don't follow her blog. I believe that it is the theme and the nature of the blog that don't favor participation. The information presented in the blog is really interesting, but is not "controversial" enough to start a conversation. It's a blog that is really fun to read, but I don't think there would be anything really to comment, apart from how fun it is.

Harriet in the past has tried an interesting way to engage her followers. She concluded one of her Souvenir Sunday posts by saying:

Have you found a great souvenir while you were stuck at the airport? If it costs around $10, is “of” the city or region and is, ideally, a bit offbeat, please snap a photo and send it along. Your souvenir may end up featured on a future edition of Souvenir Sunday. And if it is, we’ll send you one of our favorite souvenirs.

I found it a really good effort to solicit her readers and make them participate more. It also shows that she enjoys getting feedback; that she prefers collaborating with her followers in order to write her blog, than writing it by herself. And that is what makes a blog engaging.

The landing process has already started, but I would like to make a last announcement: At the back of your front seat you will find a form, which we would really like you to fill in. It will be a great way for us to get to know you better. We would love for example to know where each of you end up being at the end of our flight.

Thank you very much for flying with us today. Hope to see you again in one of our flights.

From Kelowna International Airport to...

I am very excited to welcome you back on board! Today, we will depart from British Columbia's Kelowna International Airport with an, as usual, unknown destination. Just a quick announcement before we take-off: as you may have noticed our departures indicator was out of order for the last two days, but the problem is now fixed and you can go back and remember our previous flights' itineraries (titles).

Harriet's post today, mmm... donuts at Kelowna International Airport, is about a new exhibition, which will be taking place at the departures area of the airport from November 8, 2010 till May 9, 2011. The John Hall: Sweetness and Light exhibition will be featuring two large paintings, one full of licorice candies and the other filled with doughnuts. The artist behind these delicious paintings is John Hall, a Kelowna-based realist painter.

Got hungry? I did... It's amazing how pictures and more specifically photos can generate certain feelings. Words can of course generate feelings too, but it is much harder. You have to be an expert in the use of words in order to be able to transmit feelings through your writing. On the other hand, you can have the same result with a picture, which is much easier. I believe that pictures fit perfectly in the blog medium. Writing online is not just about writing. It is about the whole experience of online reading. A well-written blog includes pictures, videos, and links; it enhances interactivity. Harriet's blog Stuck at the Airport is, I believe, an example of a well-written blog. It includes a lot of pictures, sometimes videos, and many links. In general, the blog's graphics work aesthetically very well. They are not overwhelming, neither boring. The blog can be characterized clean and engaging.

A quite old article named "Mirror, Mirror On the Web," which was published in The Nation in 2007, talks about how the era of Web 2.0 has found people celebrating as the most special person in their lives no other than themselves. Harriet, following the trend, definitely celebrates herself in her blog. Or should I say promotes herself? Whoever follows Harriet can, apart from reading her blog, buy her books, find her USAToday Airport Guides, read some of her columns on USAToday.com, follow her on Twitter, and find her on Facebook. All that on top of the typical "More About Me" section that bloggers have. And that is not necessarily bad. I suppose I would also grab every opportunity to promote myself. Isn't it funny though how "promote myself" sounds so much better than "celebrate myself?"


Apart from the Harriet brand there are also some other advertisers. The advertisements on the blog are certainly not a lot. The ads are classic Google AdSense ads and they are placed at the right sidebar and at the very bottom. The advertisers are mostly local and promote among other coupons, car rentals, and travel websites. Apart from the Google ads there are also advertisers that appear at the end of the right sidebar, under the title "Advertisers." These ads seem completely incorporated in the blog and promote cheap airport parking and airport parking connections. In my opinion, it is really nice that the blog isn't bombarded by ads, because that gives it a cleaner look. The ads that already exist are not very engaging and it seems weird to me that travel related brands haven't discovered this blog, that ranks fifth in Google, in order to take advantage of it.

Time has passed so quickly that I almost forgot that we are ready to start our landing procedure. I hope you enjoyed the flight and I will be more than happy to see you again on board. Enjoy yourselves!

From Sioux City Airport to...

Welcome back on board! I am very happy that you decided to fly again with us today. Our departing point is SUX (Sioux City Airport), from where Harriet greeted us this morning.


Today, her post Airport codes explained in 300 seconds drives us back to one of her older (August 8th, 2010) "Souvenir Sunday" posts about SUX Souvenirs from Sioux Gateway Airport. The incentive for this flash-back is a presentation about "Airport City Codes" that a blog follower put together for an event and was kind enough to send it to Harriet. Please look at the small screen in front of you and enjoy this quick and useful presentation.



It is interesting, almost magical to me how these blue underlined words or sentences can move you from one place of the online space to another without even realizing it. For me, links are the reason why you never know what is the destination of your online flight. You create your journey on your own as you go (or should I say read?) along. As the Greek poet Cavafy says in his poem Ithaka, what is most important is the journey, not the destination. Harriet's link drove me to to her older post about offbeat souvenirs from Sioux City Airport and who knows where I will go afterward. The mobility that links bring make reading much more exciting. Links give you a freedom that books cannot offer you.

The blog post that Harriet refers us to is one of her "Souvenir Sunday" blog posts, which talk about offbeat, quite cheap souvenirs that someone can find in airports. The "Souvenir Sunday" and the "Museum Monday" posts that Harriet writes every Sunday and Monday respectively, remind me in a way of the character that newspaper columns have. You know, if you follow Harriet's blog, that every Monday you will read a post about a museum and every Sunday a post about souvenirs. These posts create the same security and anticipation that your favorite journalist's newspaper column does. Harriet doesn't just post on a daily basis. She is also consistent about her themes on certain days. Even her tone, substantial but not too formal, reminds me of the way a journalist would write about traveling. After all she also writes columns in newspapers.

As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan has pointed out, new media cause anxiety, and sometimes people take the new media and put it in the place of the old media in order to feel more comfortable. Perhaps, the resemblance that Harriet's post themes have to newspaper columns, is just her way to confront the new media of blogging.

As I am being notified it is almost time for our landing. Once again I hope you enjoyed the flight and I will be more than happy to see you again in our next flight.

From MASS MoCA Museum to...

Welcome on board! I am very happy to be your hostess at this exciting adventurous 7-day online flight and I hope you enjoy it too.

Before we take off I would like to tell you just a few things about our point of departure, Harriet Baskas' travel blog "Stuck at the Airport." Harriet Baskas is a writer and an award-winning radio producer. In the past she has written several books, profiled airports for Expedia.com, and created airport guides for USATODAY.com. She currently writes a weekly Well-Mannered Traveler column on MSNBC.com, a monthly column about airports for USATODAY.com, as well as air travel columns for MSN.com and other outlets.

Harriet Baskas decided to start writing about airports and airport amenities after having her own bad experience of being stuck for several hours at a small airport at Seattle. Having run out of things to do, she finally discovered an almost hidden sign and door, which led to an amazing Observation Deck. After that trip she felt the need to visit airports in search of observation decks, interesting restaurants and other airport amenities that anybody stuck at an airport would love to know. A lot of the information she gathered were published in 2001 in her book "Stuck at the Airport."

Now, her blog "Stuck at the Airport" keeps informing people about airport profiles, news and airports amenities, so that they never again get bored at the airport. The blog also includes information about hotel amenities, close dining options, and even attractions and museums, for those who decide to leave the airport terminal. All these might seem useless or even exaggerating for someone who isn't a frequent flyer, but I think these tips can be life-saving for someone who has to spend a big amount of time in airport terminals. Imagine how much Tom Hanks would have appreciated having read such a blog before getting stuck to The Terminal...

This Monday Harriet keeps her "Museum Monday" promise and writes about one more of the 700 aviation and space museums that exist in the country. Her goal: to visit all of them!


Today's museum was MASS MoCA, the MA Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, and the exhibit Harriet talked about was a three-part project by Michael Oatman called All Utopias Fell.
The basic part of the exhibit is an Airstream trailer that looks as if it has just landed on the museum's roof. Parachutes and solar panels give a sense of a crash-landing.
The Airstream itself is called The Shining, and visitors can
actually go inside and explore the craft, which combines elements of domestic space,a laboratory, and a library. Once inside, visitors have the opportunity to take part in interactive activities related to solar panels. Who could imagine there would be such an exhibition only a few miles away from the airport terminal you are stuck in?

As it is almost time to start our landing, I would like to leave you with a song, which I think could be a great music background for our flight.



I hope you enjoyed the flight, and I will be more than happy to welcome you back at our next online flight tomorrow.