I thought the lounge in Tokyo was outstanding. All the drinks, food, shower, internet, etc... you want included in the admission fee. The lounge at DFW is a joke compared. They had apples and packaged cookies + water. Everything else had to be purchased separately.
I'm always suspicious of sites that break without 'www'. Either the DNS was setup by a novice and/or someone with little knowledge, the platform that runs it is a convoluted mess or something else is horribly broken. I know that's not really a fair indicator, but "what else is wrong" and "how badly is the rest of it is cobbled together" are the first 2 question that pop into my head.
It has been argued that putting a web server on a bare domain (without the www) is broken, since you aren't supposed to e.g. use a CNAME on the bare domain (and many hosting providers use CNAMEs to give them the ability to change the IP address hosting a site if something goes wrong in one datacenter).
Argued by whom? That seems like an archaic holdover from the early days of the web with no bearing on what's possible today.
We aren't supposed to link to resources that don't exist either and (while it's not specifically about DNS) that's exactly what URL rewriting is used for today.
Granted, you don't always have to follow the RFCs...
> the DNS RFC (RFC1033) requires the "zone apex" (sometimes called the "root domain" or "naked domain") to be an "A Record," not a CNAME ... Never one to let a RFC stand in the way of a solution to a real problem, we're happy to announce that CloudFlare allows you to set your zone apex to a CNAME
http://blog.cloudflare.com/zone-apex-naked-domain-root-domai...
To be fair, NFS Has had a history of doing things old-school (which is fine for most of their clientele), but the availability implications of Heroku is for something completely different. Also they're a special case with a much more complicated backend.
I don't see, in their FAQ, how they deal with "you can't put CNAMEs in the zone apex according to the RFC, but cloud hosting providers like Heroku want me to set a CNAME on any domain pointing to my site".
If you only have a dedicated box, or if you have a full time on-pager sysops team, then, yes, it's easy enough to set A records on the zone apex pointing to your web server.
American Airlines’ Admirals Club Welcomes Klout Users in Nearly 40 Locations
At Klout, we know that understanding your influence through the Klout Score, Moments and analysis is just one step toward being recognized for your influence. We launched our Klout Perks program to recognize influencers with amazing products and experiences, and have partnered with major brands like Sony, Nike, Microsoft, Disney, Audi, Gilt and many others in an attempt to keep upping ourselves. Influencers clearly like this recognition – we delivered our one millionth Perk last week!
We think we’ve found another way to top ourselves…
Today we’re announcing a partnership with American Airlines that gives Klout users access to nearly 40 worldwide lounge locations including San Francisco, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, London and many more. Starting today, if you have a Klout Score of 55 or higher, you can gain access to the Admirals Club by going to aa.com/klout. You do not have to be an American Airlines passenger to be eligible for this Perk.
[Picture of an airport lounge with upholstery from the 70s]
This is only the beginning of the momentum we’re seeing with businesses and brands who recognize the power of Klout to further reward their best customers, and introduce themselves to a great breed of new customers.
I just created my Klout account and it seems to meassure your popularity in various social networks. Seems like a win-win for the site and the proverbial -famous person- if they can get free perks.
How is this sustainable though? Are they selling their data?
It looks like the business model is taking money to provide perks to people with a high score who in turn do free social advertising. Sounds more sustainable than Facebook or Twitter's model.
I removed myself from Klout over a year ago. This is the first time I've come close to regretting that choice- but then I remembered that I never fly with American Airlines.
But I can see how this could be an interesting win-win for both companies- you care about your Klout score more, and you're more inclined to fly with American Airlines.
That said, most people I know that are on Klout joke about how they've been identified as experts in topics they know nothing about. Klout is either genius, or it's waiting for someone to reveal how inaccurate their entire model is. I removed myself after I realised I would never get past x points until I linked my Facebook account. It is a personal account that has no bearing on my professional life- why would I do that?
Even if you're not flying AA, you can still use this pass to gain entry to the lounge. From the post: "You do not have to be an American Airlines passenger to be eligible for this Perk."
Even still, I fly out of JFK most of the time, and the sheer number of terminals means their lounge is unlikely to be in the same place as my departure gate.
In order to connect to this company that lives by social media, I have to give them permission "to access [my] public profile, friend list, email address and News Feed."
Why hasn't anybody whistleblown the value of that kind of information? I'm sure it has a monthly or annual price and it may even be written down somewhere.
I think you misunderstand their pricing structure (as portrayed in the story). It's a penny or more per attribute, per person. How many items would the abovementioned FB profile access garner per Rapleaf? From my experience in market research and by looking at the linked price sheet, it doesn't appear that Rapleaf supplies PII.
While that looks bad, it's only really bad if they don't validate it against Klout in some way afterwards.
Or if they actually care. After all the point of this "reward" is to advertise AA and their lounges. As long as the abuse isn't massive, it shouldn't matter much to them.
I deal with quite a few voucher programs at work, and a lot of the time validating that the requirements are met is not ever on the agenda, as people who "beat" the system also bring in more potential customers
How many dollars does it cost to get a bunch of twitter followers? facebook, linked in?
It would probably cost the same as paying to use AA lounges for a yer.
I'm ambivalent at best. Is creating a new class of privileged "influential" people a good idea? I'm not sure, but I think people should be rewarded based on the quality of their influence, not on the strength of it alone. At least, that seems like a more "free market" approach.
For those who are jealous... it looks like this just gives you a one day Admiral Pass that you must use before July 31st. It's not like you get continued access to their lounges.
So high Klout users get one one-day pass and you hand over your e-mail address to AA. The promotion makes sense - AA.com gets publicity and likely some tweets from popular Tweeters, etc. And they get a chance to upsell people to a club membership.
Having just logged into the AA/Klout thing, you'll note that they're actually just giving away a 1 day pass with a chance to win a free year in their Admirals Club
The article you link to has nothing to do with one-year Admiral's Club memberships. It's about unlimited AAirpasses, something AA stopped selling decades ago.
(With the Admiral's Club membership, you have to assign a name to the membership, and you can only show up there if you look like the person on a photo id with that name. So there is very little abuse and you can go as much as you want.)
The parent's point was that AA has a bad track record for honoring their deals. The linked article was fascinating and shows how, if the contract/promotion/product they owe you is used too much despite not violating any of the terms, they will still go after you.
AA advertised a lifetime of free flight. They made people pay a lot of money for it. The users weren't abusing it. They were operating according to the terms they signed up for and indeed paid top dollar for. Despite not breaking any rules, AA still revoked their access to the service the customers paid for.
The parent's comment totally applies. The subjects in the article were not abusing the system. AA was abusing the system.
Adding a /s to a non-sarcastic comment doesn't make it sarcastic. If that were true, people would add a /G to signify that their comment was a great work of literary art. For something to be great, it has to be great. For something to be sarcastic, it needs, at the very least, some snark.
Also, this isn't Reddit. Just write what you mean.
His comment was perfectly clear, enjoyable, valuable, relevant, and came with a link to a great article.
The fact that you're insulting him for his valuable and interesting contribution is an outrage. Why don't you go pick on someone else, someone who doesn't contribute, who doesn't post great links, who doesn't have an entertaining style.
Not everyone has to be a robotic autistic technical writer on this casual internet forum.
Posts should be judged by their content and style. Your nerdy hatred toward the colloquial /s tag comes off as dry, dweebish, vindictive pedantry.
I'm aware that you represent the HN Zeitgeist to some extent but that pretty much just exemplifies the problem here. You're engaging in the "automatic middle brow dismissal" that pg has identified as majorly obnoxious.
You think sarcasm tags are "too urban" for HN. How fucking classy of you. /s
I really appreciate the critique from someone who's had an account for two days. The personal attacks were an added plus. And, I like how you didn't actually read any of the thread you're replying to.
Nice work. A+, would read again!
(See how I wrote a sarcastic post without needing a "/s" tag? The written word is pretty cool!)
I did write what I meant, that the gift of just a one day pass is much less impressive than the way this post was titled originally. (Hint: it didn't say one day pass)
I then finished off my comment with a sarcastic remark, which you did not understand and proceeded to stew over for multiple days. Lol! /G
Let's do a promotion that will either feel underwhelming or feel like a bait-and-switch, and we'll promote this only to people who are outspoken and influential.
Who is savvy enough to have a 55+ klout score who doesn't already have lounge access via any of a bunch of different avenues (AmEx, PriorityPass, FF program, etc) already?!
The real story here is that all of the U.S. airlines are in an embarrassing state, not only financially, but in terms of cultural standing and morale.
Flying used to be glamorous-- 50, even 30, years ago. Now it's just as expensive (except on three or four high-traffic routes over which deregulation actually worked) but it's such a negative experience that no one looks forward to a flight. First class and lounge access are supposed to bring that back, but those fail as well.
The appeal of flying in the old days was that you were guaranteed to be seated next to an interesting person doing something that either was exciting, or seemed it at the time ("international business"). Also, there was serious investment by the airlines into the quality of the experience: pilots actually told you when you flew over the Grand Canyon. That all got cheapened along the way. Also, attempting to create an "interesting people club" out of transportation is doomed to failure. Uninteresting people have money, too, and there's literally no way of keeping MWOCs (Money WithOut Culture) out. Plus, the airlines are constantly going bankrupt and have proletarianized the experience (baggage fees, uncomfortable chairs) to the point where it doesn't feel like a premium product, but they've also had to sell off the premium parts (first-class upgrades) for whatever coin-shavings they can get, to the point that they no longer feel special.
Airlines are desperately trying to revive that brand and allure, but it's gone forever. It's old technology put to a mostly uninspiring use. The flight is something that you learn how to sleep through, not part of the experience.
Before, frequent flyer programs were their attempts to find the interesting people and create something compelling. That might have worked in 1997; but in 2013, this generation's interesting people are in about 15-20 city centers (New York and San Francisco come to mind, but also places like Austin, Seattle, and Chicago) and generally do what they can to be locally self-sufficient (i.e. they don't fly more than a few times per year).
This Klout partnership is the newest attempt to create an "interesting people club" out of the flying experience and, like all others, it will fail.
I'm not saying that I like or even support this. Obviously, the idea that any commercial purchase would take someone into an "interesting people club" is the height of douchery. But appeals to douchery can make highly effective marketing.
I am saying that there was a time when air travel (yes, commercial flight, even coach) had an allure. Airlines are desperately trying to revive that experience-- that's what those "exclusive" airport lounges are about-- but they're not able to do it and it's probably not possible at this point.
You're completely off base when you assume that prices have remained steady. Are you taking into account that it has not moved despite inflation? Take a look at this following link which shows an aggregation of flight costs.
The old regulatory regime had serious flaws, but I don't think we're comparing apples to apples. Sure, a few flights have become cheaper, if you fly at the right time and play the game properly, and if you're taking high-competition routes. If you're taking low-competition routes, you're getting screwed. It's most likely that the reason for gross fares to decline is that a lot of those routes aren't flown any more, or there's one plane a week. They went from expensive to nonexistent, bringing the average fare down but reducing the quality of service.
On the other hand, if you're going from one mid-sized city to another, you're unlikely to get a sub-$300 fare. If you go to Europe in the summer, you might see over $1000. We are far from being able to declare adequacy, much less victory, on the airfare problem.
We need some regulation to crack down on seasonal hikes and a lot of the bizarre "custom pricing" nonsense (like differences in fares based on when someone makes the reservation) but probably not as much as there was before 1980.
90 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 187 ms ] threadWe aren't supposed to link to resources that don't exist either and (while it's not specifically about DNS) that's exactly what URL rewriting is used for today.
> Using URLs of the form http://example.com/ creates a number of problems, and we strongly recommend that you avoid it. http://faq.nearlyfreespeech.net/q/baredomain
> zone apex domains (also called bare, naked, or root domains) ... have serious availability implications https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/apex-domains
Granted, you don't always have to follow the RFCs...
> the DNS RFC (RFC1033) requires the "zone apex" (sometimes called the "root domain" or "naked domain") to be an "A Record," not a CNAME ... Never one to let a RFC stand in the way of a solution to a real problem, we're happy to announce that CloudFlare allows you to set your zone apex to a CNAME http://blog.cloudflare.com/zone-apex-naked-domain-root-domai...
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1034#section-4.3.3
To be fair, NFS Has had a history of doing things old-school (which is fine for most of their clientele), but the availability implications of Heroku is for something completely different. Also they're a special case with a much more complicated backend.
If you only have a dedicated box, or if you have a full time on-pager sysops team, then, yes, it's easy enough to set A records on the zone apex pointing to your web server.
At Klout, we know that understanding your influence through the Klout Score, Moments and analysis is just one step toward being recognized for your influence. We launched our Klout Perks program to recognize influencers with amazing products and experiences, and have partnered with major brands like Sony, Nike, Microsoft, Disney, Audi, Gilt and many others in an attempt to keep upping ourselves. Influencers clearly like this recognition – we delivered our one millionth Perk last week!
We think we’ve found another way to top ourselves…
Today we’re announcing a partnership with American Airlines that gives Klout users access to nearly 40 worldwide lounge locations including San Francisco, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, London and many more. Starting today, if you have a Klout Score of 55 or higher, you can gain access to the Admirals Club by going to aa.com/klout. You do not have to be an American Airlines passenger to be eligible for this Perk.
[Picture of an airport lounge with upholstery from the 70s]
This is only the beginning of the momentum we’re seeing with businesses and brands who recognize the power of Klout to further reward their best customers, and introduce themselves to a great breed of new customers.
Go to aa.com/klout to get your Klout treatment!
How is this sustainable though? Are they selling their data?
But I can see how this could be an interesting win-win for both companies- you care about your Klout score more, and you're more inclined to fly with American Airlines.
That said, most people I know that are on Klout joke about how they've been identified as experts in topics they know nothing about. Klout is either genius, or it's waiting for someone to reveal how inaccurate their entire model is. I removed myself after I realised I would never get past x points until I linked my Facebook account. It is a personal account that has no bearing on my professional life- why would I do that?
What could possibly go wrong?
Allow us access to your Facebook and Twitter, we'll pay you $2 a month for the privilege.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/14/personal-data-adver...
I don't know what it would be worth it if you were targeting a specific person.
http://fly.aa.com/klout/api/reward/
A JSON dump of all the rewards codes.
Or if they actually care. After all the point of this "reward" is to advertise AA and their lounges. As long as the abuse isn't massive, it shouldn't matter much to them.
I deal with quite a few voucher programs at work, and a lot of the time validating that the requirements are met is not ever on the agenda, as people who "beat" the system also bring in more potential customers
This is the first and only time in my life I'll ever be pissed that my Klout score's not high enough...
Edit: In all seriousness though, does anybody know how I can raise it just one point?
Edit: As an aside, if anyone wants to get coffee in the Seattle area sometime in the next couple weeks, shoot me an email (it's in my profile).
Getting a couple tweets widely re-tweeted seems to have the biggest impact for me.
Now, if only we could use HN karma for something useful...
I just retweeted you to help the cause. Have a good flight!
How many dollars does it cost to get a bunch of twitter followers? facebook, linked in? It would probably cost the same as paying to use AA lounges for a yer.
I don't consider myself influential to alot of people, but there are a few.
screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/4iflZt0.jpg
And it enters you into a contest to win a one year pass. So this is a one time freebie + contest promo, not an ongoing perk.
Having just logged into the AA/Klout thing, you'll note that they're actually just giving away a 1 day pass with a chance to win a free year in their Admirals Club
check it: http://cl.ly/image/3g1f2h04002J
If you use that yearly pass too much during that year, watch out: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/05/business/la-fi-0506-... /s
(With the Admiral's Club membership, you have to assign a name to the membership, and you can only show up there if you look like the person on a photo id with that name. So there is very little abuse and you can go as much as you want.)
AA advertised a lifetime of free flight. They made people pay a lot of money for it. The users weren't abusing it. They were operating according to the terms they signed up for and indeed paid top dollar for. Despite not breaking any rules, AA still revoked their access to the service the customers paid for.
The parent's comment totally applies. The subjects in the article were not abusing the system. AA was abusing the system.
Also, this isn't Reddit. Just write what you mean.
The fact that you're insulting him for his valuable and interesting contribution is an outrage. Why don't you go pick on someone else, someone who doesn't contribute, who doesn't post great links, who doesn't have an entertaining style.
Not everyone has to be a robotic autistic technical writer on this casual internet forum.
Posts should be judged by their content and style. Your nerdy hatred toward the colloquial /s tag comes off as dry, dweebish, vindictive pedantry.
I'm aware that you represent the HN Zeitgeist to some extent but that pretty much just exemplifies the problem here. You're engaging in the "automatic middle brow dismissal" that pg has identified as majorly obnoxious.
You think sarcasm tags are "too urban" for HN. How fucking classy of you. /s
Nice work. A+, would read again!
(See how I wrote a sarcastic post without needing a "/s" tag? The written word is pretty cool!)
Does a two day old account give you a logical reason to dismiss my detailed criticism?
Or does a two day old account disguise my identity allowing me to comfortably criticize influential people?
For all you know, Jon, I could be your mother.
I then finished off my comment with a sarcastic remark, which you did not understand and proceeded to stew over for multiple days. Lol! /G
What could go wrong?
I just signed up hoping I has >55, but I am only 54, maybe adding some other random accounts social media accounts will nudge my score higher.
I tried American Airlines lounge access with Google Glass on and I'm never letting my Klout score go under 55! Never.
scoble.
;)
http://aa.com/klout
Flying used to be glamorous-- 50, even 30, years ago. Now it's just as expensive (except on three or four high-traffic routes over which deregulation actually worked) but it's such a negative experience that no one looks forward to a flight. First class and lounge access are supposed to bring that back, but those fail as well.
The appeal of flying in the old days was that you were guaranteed to be seated next to an interesting person doing something that either was exciting, or seemed it at the time ("international business"). Also, there was serious investment by the airlines into the quality of the experience: pilots actually told you when you flew over the Grand Canyon. That all got cheapened along the way. Also, attempting to create an "interesting people club" out of transportation is doomed to failure. Uninteresting people have money, too, and there's literally no way of keeping MWOCs (Money WithOut Culture) out. Plus, the airlines are constantly going bankrupt and have proletarianized the experience (baggage fees, uncomfortable chairs) to the point where it doesn't feel like a premium product, but they've also had to sell off the premium parts (first-class upgrades) for whatever coin-shavings they can get, to the point that they no longer feel special.
Airlines are desperately trying to revive that brand and allure, but it's gone forever. It's old technology put to a mostly uninspiring use. The flight is something that you learn how to sleep through, not part of the experience.
Before, frequent flyer programs were their attempts to find the interesting people and create something compelling. That might have worked in 1997; but in 2013, this generation's interesting people are in about 15-20 city centers (New York and San Francisco come to mind, but also places like Austin, Seattle, and Chicago) and generally do what they can to be locally self-sufficient (i.e. they don't fly more than a few times per year).
This Klout partnership is the newest attempt to create an "interesting people club" out of the flying experience and, like all others, it will fail.
wtf am I reading?
I am saying that there was a time when air travel (yes, commercial flight, even coach) had an allure. Airlines are desperately trying to revive that experience-- that's what those "exclusive" airport lounges are about-- but they're not able to do it and it's probably not possible at this point.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-airl...
On the other hand, if you're going from one mid-sized city to another, you're unlikely to get a sub-$300 fare. If you go to Europe in the summer, you might see over $1000. We are far from being able to declare adequacy, much less victory, on the airfare problem.
We need some regulation to crack down on seasonal hikes and a lot of the bizarre "custom pricing" nonsense (like differences in fares based on when someone makes the reservation) but probably not as much as there was before 1980.