Ryanair trying to fleece you some more

I wrote early last month about the costs of flying on a budget airline http://www.kking.co.uk/blog/2009/04/flying-on-budget-airline.html well it seems Ryanair have trumped me with a charge for printing out your ticket. There seems to be some completely wrong and criminal about charging some for a essential document of journey. I don't mind paying for food or them charging for fast boarding as all of these charges can be avoided but charging you to £10 pounds per return to print your ticket at home or £80 pounds at the airport seems criminal and a sign of a money grabbing and dishonest company.

"Ryanair passengers face a £5 charge per flight to print out their tickets at home as part of moves to abolish check-in desks and increase revenues. The policy replaces Ryanair's practice of offering free online ticketing and charging anyone who opted for face-to-face check-in £10. In future, anyone who arrives at the airport without a pre-printed check-in card will have to pay a £40 "boarding card re-issue fee". In-built restrictions to the online ticketing system mean many customers will be unable to print their tickets when they book, raising the chances for penalty charges from customers who think they have completed the process.

Wow to a penalty charge of £40 pounds if you don't have a printer or if like me someone else say like a promoter of a music gig in another country mormally books the tickets for you, now we didn't see that one coming. I love the Daily Mash take on it

RYANAIR URGED TO SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP
In a statement released yesterday Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary said: "Cock-a-doodle-do! Everyone pay attention. These are my new rules.

"You will print out your own boarding pass and pay me for the privilege of doing so. If you do not have a printer you will pay me £40 for not having one and you will then wear a paper hat that I will make for you. The hat will cost £40.

"You will complete a quest. Probably involving a rare gemstone. You will bring me the gemstone wrapped inside a cheque for £40.

"Luggage is a sin and you will be punished for it. Therefore your holiday will last no longer than 14 minutes. If it does I will kidnap your goldfish and charge you £40 a leg to get it back."

A spokesman for the British Psychiatric Institute said: "Ryanair is no longer something to be hated, it is something to be pitied. It's as if Mr O'Leary has suffered some kind of severe mental trauma. Perhaps he has finally flown on one of his own planes.

"He needs to be sedated, isolated and subjected to a twice-daily programme of powerful electric shocks. If that doesn't work we will have to carve out a hefty chunk of his frontal lobe.

"In the meantime we would urge other airlines to step in and start flying to Ryanair's destinations as soon as possible. For the love of God, please."

UPDATE: Damian Corrigan, of about.com asked Ryanair some of the questions http://gospain.about.com/od/ryanair/qt/ryanair_questions.htm interesting replies

Cathode ray YouTube

Guy Clapperton has written a great article in the Guardian about the convergence of Internet and Television. This has been what I've been believing for some time and when friend Neil King from Global Insight pointed me towards Young and Rubicam analysis of current global situation which can read as a PDF http://pubs.yr.com/aaagh.pdfThe quote I pick up on "Expect the internet to look more and more like TV as this recession progresses."

With manufactrers like one I work for Root6 Technology and encoding products like ContentAgent are more and more focusing on the new age of Digital TV. We announced last September that we would be supporting Dobly Digital Plus.

“The incorporation of Dolby Digital Plus will be a significant addition to our post production deliverables,” said ContentAgent Product Manager Kevin King. “We are already fulfilling client demand for multi channel audio as part of an automated workflow and it’s clear that further advances such as Dolby Digital Plus will play an increasingly important role in the HD content experience.”

“Dolby Digital Plus is the next-generation audio technology for all high-definition programming and media. It combines the efficiency to meet future broadcast demands with the power and flexibility to realize the full audio potential of the upcoming high-definition experience. Built on Dolby Digital, the multichannel audio standard for DVD and HD broadcasts worldwide, Dolby Digital Plus was designed for the delivery formats of the future, but remains fully compatible with all current A/V receivers. "

Compatibility is a major factor in what i the future otherwise we will end up with the 2 tier society where we have the techno haves and the techno poor. Its a fine line we will tread and with a recession in tow we have to make sure we don't fragment society even more.

I friend commented on twitter about being home with his family and that after lunch they were all talking to each other on facebook all in the same room but only communicating via the web and social applications and not talking face to face. Therefore is he wondered if society had fell so low? Facebook and Twitter are technologies of the here and now are they going to be around in 5 or 10 years who knows but what we do know i that technology has shaped our society from the stream train to the airline. But are we using them as a society to the determent of other more human social interactions and does that make use worse for it?

On a personal note I closed by Facebook account as it seemed to be asking more and more of me to the determent of my life

Technology has changed our lives and just as television nearly wiped out cinema before its rebirth in the 1980's. Television advertising has been wiped out by the internet, especially as Personal Video Recorders and PC media centres having the ability to strip out adverts from the programmes that they have recorded. Companies like ITV, C4 and Five need fine a new away to advertise in the modern age, how would people react to adverts in the middle of a internet delivered program? We will see the face of television changing before our eyes and in our lifetime as the pipes grow bigger expect more to come down the wire and over the air. Mobile Television is a key to this growth, be it on your phone or other device the television is in your pocket.

futher reports from Y&R can be found at http://emea.yr.com/