What is your specific use case? I used to work managing API's for one of the GDS companies
For screen scraping, there are a number of companies that do this already for multiple carriers. I'd suggest making use of one of these rather than reinventing the wheel. Example: http://xmldocs.travelfusion.com
Or you could start using a good travel agent, as they would do these things for you.
Is this a good time investment for you? You have a choice on what you spend your time on. You could install your own plumbing, write your own t's and c's etc. or you could pay someone to do it.
The travel industry is plagued by Trip planning startups that don't make it. I would have thought one of these might have open-sourced their code before.
Car make / model - there's only a finite set of these. Take a look at the categories on Autotrader or something similar.
Tire Sizes - ask your local mechanic how they would find this out? There's probably a catalogue they would use.
I have no idea what size the tires on my car are. But I do know the make, model (and year) of my car. I'd rather enter these details into the size, and the site could tell me what tyre size is recommended, and as part of that do a search for the prices.
Isn't there an opportunity to consolidate what the IT needs really are with the US Airways merger?
"Integration costs" can be allocated to supporting what the business actually needs, and in the long-term there will be a cost saving. I appreciate the reality is not so straightforward.
Yes, you're right. Hosting has a different meaning in the software industry - the correct term is 'Airline reservations system' but the colloquial term used in the travel industry is 'airline hosting'.
A really interesting book I read about this is Hard Landing by Thomas Petzinger Jr. This contains more than just a history of Sabre. I read it more because I work in the travel industry ;-)
Keep the pricing message simple. I'm not a fan of variable pricing - I like to know what the monthly cost is going to be beforehand. I appreciate tiers where I can see what I'm going to hit depending on growth over time.
Someone below said that you should base your pricing on cost - I completely disagree. You should absolutely NOT look at cost when you put pricing together - rather, you need to ask your customers about the value of what it is you're providing. For example, Heap will be saving the time and hassle of deploying a generic solution on a server and the time of customising it. Plus Heap will be improving their product every day whereas the self-hosted version would need a developer to add new features. These sort of things all add up - you'll be surprised what you find out when you ask your customers.
Pricing is hard. There are a lot of good articles and discussions on HN if you do a bit of searching.
I'm not saying that Heap have got the pricing right but you should absolutely NOT look at cost when you put pricing together - rather, you need to ask your customers about the value of what it is you're providing. For example, Heap will be saving the time and hassle of deploying a generic solution on a server and the time of customising it. Plus Heap will be improving their product every day whereas the self-hosted version would need a developer to add new features. These sort of things all add up - you'll be surprised what you find out when you ask your customers.
Pricing is hard. There are a lot of good articles and discussions on HN if you do a bit of searching.
I'm not saying that Heap have got the pricing right but you should absolutely NOT look at cost when you put pricing together - rather, you need to ask your customers about the value of what it is you're providing. For example, Heap will be saving the time and hassle of deploying a generic solution on a server and the time of customising it. Plus Heap will be improving their product every day whereas the self-hosted version would need a developer to add new features. These sort of things all add up - you'll be surprised what you find out when you ask your customers.
Pricing is hard. There are a lot of good articles and discussions on HN if you do a bit of searching.
This is a design concept submitted to for the 2012 James Dyson Awards. Unfortunately this design takes up more floorspace than the existing cabin layout, so they would need to iterate on the design before an airline will consider it.
I agree with the premise of this article. Entreporn is something that almost everyone I know who works for themselves has gone through. The important thing is to get it out of your system, and get on with building your company!
One thing I found useful was reading a set of books called 'The Naked Leader'. It essentially reduces an entire business book into a small chapter of 2 or 3 pages. I came to realise that many business books are these core points (that can be summarised in 2 or 3 pages) spread out over a couple of hundred pages.
I can't say I've never read a business book again. But it has made me very selective.
Here's a suggestion for your value proposition:
Collaborative notetaking made simple.
I actually started with a more complicated sentence [Real-time collaborative editing made simple] but then I saw Helen's comment below your blog post and think she has a more concise description.
I suggest you follow this up with a way (such as a story) of how a customer uses your product. This is where you can use the phrases: notetaking, realtime, and capturing ideas.
I understand why you're trying to steer people towards "notes" and "notebooks". You might not like the fact that people are going to assume your competition is [strike]Google[/strike] Apache Wave or Wikipedia (ok - I mean wiki software) or Evernote, but you need to come up with good answers to those questions and this is where you can focus on important features that you have. It doesn't matter who you think your competition is - it matters what your customers think your competition is. Keep in mind that people are familiar with Wikipedia, and understand the idea of editing a wiki. Use this to your advantage. You need to paint the picture of how this affects them by making it real to them i.e. zero in on their pain point - they may not even know that they have it.
For screen scraping, there are a number of companies that do this already for multiple carriers. I'd suggest making use of one of these rather than reinventing the wheel. Example: http://xmldocs.travelfusion.com