701 not out

This last 100 posts has flown by. It is time for my regular "not out series" where I recap the last 100 posts and remind you of the themes that have been dominating the blog. I started almost three years ago with 101 not out and continued with 201, 301, 401, 501. and 601 not out.

I spent a lot of the last 100 posts attending and covering the big online travel conferences of Oceania, Asia and the US. A couple of highlights:

From TRAVELtech in Sydney

• Richard Noon of Webjet estimating the Australian turnover of Expedia, Zuji and Travel.com.au; and
  
• WorldNomads the inspiring Footprints charity program with the fantastic marketing and conversion benefits.

From Eyefortravel in Sydney

• Me talking about helping consumers navigate too much information;

From WebInTravel in Singapore

• Alfred Chang of Ctrip sharing his views of the market share "online" in China;
• Ram of PhoCusWright hosting an interesting round table on India with heads from Makemytrip and Yatra; and
  
• Phillip Wolf and Ram Badrinathan of PhoCusWright and me talking about online travel, Google, UGC, the Economy and (of course) Asia.
  

From PhoCusWright in LA

• I tried to sort out all of the trip planning sites and mobile applications;
• We heard interesting stories from the bosses of Expedia, Priceline and Kayak; and
• We came across the interesting way in which an offline publisher in Germany (MairDumont) is supporting and online trip planner (TripWolf).
  

While I was busy at Gabfests the world went into an economic death spiral:

• XL went bust, Alitalia too (kind of); But
  
• Uptake, HomeAway, and TripWolf managed to raise some money, bucking the trend.
  

I touched on some (in my view) interesting themes including

• Whether or not BA did a good or bad job point all of their Highlife content online;
• Whether or not Google has too much influence over how we design our websites and content strategies; and
• Whether or not you should use paid search as a place for a he said, she said bitch fight.
  

And in BOOT news

• We watched live on the Internet as a family member escaped from the horrors of the attacks on Mumbai
  
• We hit 1,000 subscribers;
• You heard me talk to Addison Schonland;
  
• I saw a man die at Hong Kong airport;
  
• We joined the Recombobulation Revolution!!!
  

I'm having a blast writing, I hope you are enjoying the reading.

PS - in case you happen to be counting this is actually post 703