Ah, the days when you didn’t have to pay extra to check bags onto a flight. Just about every US carrier, with the notable exception of Southwest, now charges for checking the 1st 2 bags onto your flight. Where you can pay the bag fee at the airport when you check-in, some airlines have integrated payment into their online check-in process. One such airline is AirTran. In their case, they simply hacked existing Web functionality to do so, and along the way insulted me for checking a bag onto my flight.

As I checked in for my most recent flight online, I was prompted to select the number of bags I was to check. I selected 1, and clicked the button to continue. On the next page, I was surprised to see the Web page title – pay for excess bags – as you can see below.

The following image is a crop of the page title.

What? This is not an excess bag, it is my only bag! As someone who builds Web sites, I know why this is the way it is and what their developers did. They simply changed the threshold value for what is an “excess” number of bags from 3 to 1 – remember, AirTran and other airlines used to allow you to bring your 1st 2 bags for no additional charge. Where the functionality works fine, by not changing the words on the Web page, AirTran is being misleading, not to mention snarky. And it doesn’t end with the page title – look at the label of the submit button, which I have cropped below.

As you can see, it is labeled “purchase bags.” I am not acquiring a new bag, I am paying a fee, and one which to begin with I don’t want to. Please don’t sugar-coat the messaging, as it would be better to simply label the button as “submit” or “continue” rather than to attempt to be creative.

I fault this with the AirTran Web site product manager or whoever in their marketing department is the business owner of the Web site. Don’t blame the techies here, as it functions correctly, and that’s probably all they care about.

This is a good example of not knowing about what your customers look at everyday. Print out all of the pages of the Web site and put them on posterboard if need be, so that when a change is required, the function as well as the form are in sync.

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I heard form the folks over at Connect and Conserve which is run by Adobe and the U.S. Green Building Council. If you sign up for a free trial of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, which is their Web-based collaboration service, $25 goes to a local school to help it go green. If you sign up for it through The Hot Iron, and as I am in Chicago, it will help a Chicago school.

I’ve used Connect Pro before, as well as its predecessor Macromedia Breeze. It has a robust yet easy to use interface, and I would consider it one of the best services in its class. So give Connect Pro a try, and by greening a Chicago school it will mean I pay less taxes. Right?

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Yesterday I was not planning on writing in The Hot Iron about the 8th anniversary of the terrorist hijackings and attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. I of course remembered the day, and thought about it quite a bit. However it wasn't until I read a post on Barry Moltz's blog about the 9/11 anniversary that I decided to comment on the post. His post featured tweeted messages from people, and my comment was surely longer than 140 characters. I had blogged on 9/11 a couple of years ago, but not in detail. The following is the comments I wrote.

I was in the Back Bay of Boston, across the street from the Prudential Center, the second tallest building in the city. Where my office was, I could see planes from my window heading west. Did I see any of the planes leaving Logan that morning that were hijacked? Maybe, maybe not – it was like me saying I see the L trains going by today.

When we got news, it was like everyone did – choppy, continuously retracted, and then we couldn’t get anything on the Web and we hovered around the few TVs in the office to hear the news. Around 10 am ET they closed our office.

When I walked out the door, I realized there was nothing below me – in the Back Bay, there are all kinds of tunnels – subway, highway and train, and started walking towards the South End to get on “solid land” and then started calling friends. For some reason I drove into the city that day, and gave a few people rides back out.

The day before I had flown home from a wedding into Logan. The next time I flew through there, the airport was dramatically different. What looked like slapped-together dividers was the new security setup, and State Police had automatic weapons, which looked extremely awkward. Every time I fly through there I always think about what it was like before.

I had 3 friends affected by the terror attacks. One missed his bus for a meeting in one of the Towers and that’s why he is still here today. A friend worked in tower 7, the 3rd building to go down, and was working from home. Another had transferred to the PATH train to NJ at WTC and when they hit Hoboken they were told to get off, and when he got outside he saw the second plane hit the Towers. Also, someone with whom I served on an advisory board with, though I had never met, was on one of the planes out of Boston.

When I got up this morning and started my day I didn’t think of it right away. When I went to an office building today in the Loop and saw elevator banks wide open, aka not protected with security as all buildings in Boston became after 9/11, it then hit me.

A month and a half later my (then) fiancee ran the NYC Marathon. She had to be on the buses to Staten Island at 6am for a noon start due to the increased security. I recall walking around Midtown and there were very few people, even at the Today Show. We went down to Ground Zero and saw some of the cleanup that night. The subway only went to Canal Street and we had to walk from there. I’ll never forget the smell, not to mention the sight.

It is something I’ll never forget, and I know from what was done to us that day, it has made impacts on many things I do, great and small, everyday.

mp/m

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Here’s your opportunity to get a great domain name - redmug.com. I have decided to sell this domain name, and am using Bido.com, the social domain name auction service. You may recall a few weeks back I was a guest speaker during a domain name live auction. Now I will be sitting on the sidelines watching as redmug.com goes on the auction block.

Redmug.com can have many uses. As pictures, it can refer to mugs that are red, or for a more general application to coffee or travel mugs. The word “red” in itself is very common on Internet-based businesses. Plus mug has other meanings, including your face.

There is no reserve for the auction of redmug.com , and the opening bud starts at US$28. The auction will be on Wednesday, September 16 at 2:00 pm ET, 1:00 pm CT. You must register with Bido to participate in the auction. Even if you’re just interested in watching it, the Bido site has some unique features, like the 2-step, secure login process, which rivals ING Direct, in my humble opinion.

See you at Bido on September 16, and bid early and often on redmug.com!

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The next likemind will be Friday, September 18, 2009 in dozens of cities around the world.

In Chicago, it will be at Argo Tea, 140 S Dearborn St. at the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets in the Loop from 8:00 am to 10:00 am.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, social media, et. al. For more information on likemind, you can read this great article on likemind from the New York Times.

No RSVP is required. You are also welcome to join the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

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