Monthly Archives: May 2019

American Airlines – Worst sign-in experience ever

You would think major corporations would have had enough time to make their sites easy to use and navigable by now. United Airlines has gone through several do-overs since their merger with Continental and now has a very well-designed, comprehensive, and easy to use site. Southwest has had a decent site for years. But American […]

What was Apple thinking?

After decades of work as a design engineer I find it intriguing to analyze new products and imagine the thinking that went into creating them. What was the goal? Was it durability, appearance or something else? Having been through the development process hundreds of time, that experience often provides some useful insight. Sometimes a product […]

The Chevy Volt comes to an end

In 2011 GM introduced the Chevy Volt. Since then it has sold more than 150,000 units, not matching its potential, but still impressive.  The Volt’s benefits were never well-explained by the company, but it was a significant step towards the future of electric cars. Hybrids, cars that use both battery and gas, have been synonymous […]

The Future of Uber

Uber went public last week at the low end of its predicted range, and saw the stock quickly tank. It was one of the poorest IPOs ever in terms of the first day loss in company value. And more than 3/4 of those that invested over the past few years hare also underwater.  It’s an […]

Capturing an aborted landing using the Flightradar24 app

FlightAware App One of my favorite apps for air travel is Flightradar24, While not the best app for checking flight schedules and gates – for that I like FlightAware – its greatest attribute is showing the status of all planes flying in real time on a map. It lets you view all of the planes in […]

United beats Qantas on my recent flights

It’s not often that United beats one of the other major International airlines, but during a recent trip, my experiences on United bettered Qantas on many of the touch points. Of course, this is sample of one and not necessarily representative of anything other than one isolated trip. I traveled between LAX to Melbourne on […]