Paying for Bags: Maybe a Good Idea?

It's a truism: air travel ain't fun.

Perhaps a couple of decades ago or so, flying was a relatively pleasant experience. Back then, security checks were generally quick and easy, packing whatever you wanted was commonplace, and need a pack of playing cards? well the airline often provided them (and newspapers, and blankets, and peanuts...) at no charge.

Now, you have to get to the airport at least an hour early in order to ensure you can get through the security line on tine, many airlines charge you for checking your bags, and playing cards?, well, you're lucky if you get a morsel of food for free, let alone 52 pieces of glossed paper with markings on them for a time killing game of rummy.

One positive side effect of all this, however, is that, scientifically speaking, flying lighter helps reduce the expense of fuel and thus making the trip more efficient. It reasons to say that every ounce of weight that is kept off the plane means the less amount of fuel that is needed to keep the plane flying. Pack less, save fuel.

As consumers, we have to keep in mind that despite the annoyance of paying for bag fees, perhaps we're making a small dent in the amount of fuel being burned. And burning less fuel is always a good thing...

Email Inefficiency

This is a call to all marketers and web designers at various email service providers, including, but not limited to Care2, Comcast, Hotmail, and Yahoo!...

Let's make email more efficient.

Altering one simple step would save countless hours for the collective masses of email checkers:

After entering my screen name and password on an email providers login page, ELIMINATE the next screen which basically says nothing more than how many emails I have in my inbox. I don't care about links to news snippets or cutesy articles or things you're trying to sell me, which are slipped into this meaningless page... I'm just trying to get to my email!

That is all.

Thank you.