Master for Webs

Archive for June, 2009

The airline has introduced electronic upgrades that enable passengers with full-fare coach tickets to purchase upgrades to first or business class. Previously available in paper-coupon form in booklets of four, the 500-mile upgrades also enable Premier members to upgrade from most published fares. Four 500-mile upgrades cost $200; Premier members can purchase them for $125.As with the paper certificates, the airline will issue complimentary electronic upgrades to frequent fliers based on flight activity; Premier members receive four free upgrades after every 10,000 miles flown. Each 500-mile electronic upgrade will be valid for one year. If the upgrade goes unused, United automatically credits 500 miles to the passenger’s frequent-flier account. Read the rest of this entry »

In the beginning, online banks had a simple strategy: With the money they saved by not owning expensive, marble-clad branches, they could offer high-interest, low-fee bank accounts that would bring customers flocking to their virtual doors. Read the rest of this entry »

The Web site was created by Marya Charles Alexander, a self-described “solo-dining maven” and freelance writer from South Pasadena, Calif., who also edits a newsletter of the same name. The site profiles “solo diner-friendly” restaurants in the U.S. and Canada that offer good cuisine without the company.

But solo diners may be disappointed to learn that the Web site serves as a mere appetizer for the print version of the quarterly SoloDining.com newsletter, which costs $29 a year. The site does have some restaurant reviews available under the “Current Hot Restaurants and Tips” for 11 states, Washington, D.C. and Canada, but in the majority of cases only one restaurant is profiled under each state.

Those interested in perusing the “100+ Top Solo Dining Restaurants” must pay $9.95 to receive a hard copy; the remaining “special reports” including the 75 tips for dining alone and “Top New York City SoloDining.com” restaurants are also $9.95.

Fortunately, it is possible to doggie-bag a few useful tips from the site itself, and readers are encouraged to contribute comments, which spice up the offerings. For example, Don Sakland, a solo diner from Cambridge, Mass., cites these warning signs when ordering take-out food:

1. Anyone taking your order is busy to distraction.

2. A language barrier exists.

3. A customer-service department is nonexistent.

SoloDining.com is sponsoring a contest for patrons to nominate their favorite dining spots. The top three winners will receive a $100 gift certificate to the solo-friendly restaurant of their choice.

Hotwire is expected to announce Wednesday a major expansion of its travel offerings, as the fledgling Web site takes aim at much bigger rival Priceline.com Inc. Read the rest of this entry »

HTML clipboardHow can something as simple as chinos be so complicated to buy? Khaki trousers, after all, are supposed to be the fashion world’s answer to vanilla ice cream. Same color and consistency no matter what the brand. Always cool in the summertime. And usually a lot less memorable than the toppings.

Like blue jeans, chinos are a classic — with a lineage that stretches from British soldiers in colonial India to John F. Kennedy and just about every frat brother in creation. Chinos’ longevity is a testament to the power of simple ideas: Wear them to work or wear them to run with the bulls in Pamplona and nobody will hassle you.

So leave it to the likes of Banana Republic and L.L. Bean to give the noble chino an identity crisis. Think you know what color khaki is? The pants we ordered turned out to be anything from off-white to light coffee. To confuse matters, Web sites offered us alternative shades like “British khaki,” “dark” and the enigmatic “new khaki.”

Adding to our confusion was the question of style and cut. On its Web site, Brooks Brothers offers four types of twill for its chinos, ranging from “stretch” to something called “enzyme washed” with little explanation of why you’d choose one over the other. J.Crew offers four cuts of chinos, though its Web site explains just how they’re supposed to fit and what kind of mood they’re meant to evoke.

To keep things simple, we ordered the most basic chino each catalog site offered. We picked a classic model with pleats and cuffs (when possible) and went for the color that’s labeled, or most closely resembles, khaki. And we ordered each in the same size 34.

But when the pants arrived, something grabbed us: Almost every pair was either too tight, too baggy or too long. Banana Republic’s chino was tight-waisted with nearly two extra inches on the inseam. The best fit came from L.L. Bean, which isn’t surprising since its site allows you to download a measuring tape.

How do you test a pair of chinos? We gave them a tumble in the washer, loaded up the pockets and took a very spoiled dachshund for five Sunday walks. We wore each pair for a stretch at the office with a jacket and tie, too. This led us to the following chino doctrine: Wash first, judge later. To our amazement, all of the pants that were too long shrunk to an acceptable range. The laundry also revealed a lot about fabric: Our stonewashed J.Crew pants came out wrinkly, while the Banana Republic pair seemed to take a firmer shape.

Two pairs seemed like candidates for early retirement. Our Brooks Brothers entry left us sore even before we tried them on — the overnight shipping charge was a whopping $21 — and we never ended up warming to them. Nice engineering touches like a reinforced leg seam didn’t keep these chinos from looking lumpy and uninspired. J.Crew’s roomy pants didn’t shrink at all in the wash, but came out feeling floppy.

We had a tough time deciding between our two finalists, Polo’s Andrew Pant and Banana Republic’s Smithfield Chino. The Polos overcame some long odds out of the box: Until we washed them, their deep pleats made them look like parachute pants. We loved Polo’s coffee color and superior cotton, and they won the coat-and-tie competition hands down.

The Banana Republic chinos felt durable, with two front buttons and a reinforced waistband. Shallow pleats and pocket flaps gave them a modern look. One problem: Our 34’s were disco tight. But for $8 less than the Polos, we’ll happily order a bigger size, and name these our Best Overall.

Companies have spent millions of dollars jazzing up their Web sites so investors, customers and employees can have instant access to all kinds of information over the Internet and avoid the delays of snail mail and the hassle of corporate switchboards.

Marketing materials, product information, financial documents, management biographies and other information once found in outdated annual reports or Securities and Exchange Commission filings are now freely available online. But that doesn’t mean pulling information off a Web site is necessarily easy, or even user-friendly.

Though high-speed Internet connections are gaining popularity, for now most visitors to a corporate Web site still get there via dial-up connection, which isn’t fast enough to make the most of a live Webcast of a fourth-quarter conference call. While laptops and other portable devices with wireless Internet connections also are gaining steam, they’re still not fast enough to conveniently download an annual report, for instance, in the form of a portable document format, or PDF. And it can be incredibly irritating when fat reports loaded with colorful charts and graphics clog up an office printer.

Indeed, sometimes there’s nothing like a good old-fashioned hard copy, with space to make notes in the margins and actual text to highlight. That’s why it’s just as important that visitors be able to easily order documents off a Web site and have them delivered via regular mail.

A sampling of the Web sites of five of the nation’s most widely held stocks revealed a wide range of ease of use. All are equipped to take online orders for investor kits, but some are far easier to navigate than others. Content of the kits also varied, from very informative to quite sparse.

Microsoft Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. received the highest marks overall, including most navigable sites, fastest delivery time and most informative investor packages. Compaq Computer Corp. came in as the most cumbersome site to get around, and both Compaq and Ford Motor Co. had disappointing investor kits. The least impressive kit came from was AOL Time Warner Inc. The media giant boasts an impressive Web site, chock full of information and it was easy to get around. But the investor kit offers precious little information about the newly combined company, which completed its merger last month.

Then there are the sites that didn’t deliver — literally. Airliner UAL Corp. and financial-services firm Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. didn’t get reviewed because their kits never showed up. UAL promises delivery in three to five days, and I received an electronic note confirming that my request had been received and my order would be mailed promptly. But because of a computer glitch at CCBN.com, the Boston-based online investor services outsourcing firm used by UAL, none of the orders placed in early February were filled. A spokesman for CCBN said the problem has been fixed.

Even though I received an electronic message from Morgan Stanley saying that my package would be mailed out to me, the firm couldn’t locate a record of my order. Not that it would have mattered. Morgan Stanley, which handles between 250 and 300 such orders a month in-house, says it put a hold on fulfilling investor kit requests until its new annual report is ready this spring.

International travelers need not be out of touch for one second, thanks to CellPhone Rentals Limited, a company based in the United Kingdom that does exactly what its name implies.

Customers who place an order for a cellphone in advance of their trip will find it waiting for them upon arrival. Arrangements can also be made to deliver it to a home or business before departure for an additional charge.

The phone rental is available in 100 countries, and allows users to move between different international locations without having to set up roaming facilities. The phones are equipped with automatic network selection, so users can make and receive calls anywhere there is cellphone service. Equipment rental costs $4.80 for a day, $28.80 a week or $96 for a month.

The Web site has a list of current calling rate charges in countries ranging from Albania to Zimbabwe. Rates for peak-hour calls to the U.S. range from 64 cents a minute in the U.K. to $11.55 a minute to phone home from Yugoslavia.

Incoming calls are free, but voice-mail retrieval is charged at U.K. rates, (approximately 40 cents a minute). Those accessing voice mail from other countries are charged the cost to call back to the U.K.

The phones are equipped with text messaging, voice mail and other accoutrements; additional features such as a car charger, headset kit or modem hookup are available for an additional daily rate. Customers are given a pre-paid postage box to mail the phone back at the end of the trip.

Eeek-mail
New at shockwave.com, just in time for Halloween (director Tim Burton’s favorite holiday): the adventures of Stainboy, an odd little anti-superhero who doesn’t talk but always prevails over the hideous things that go bump in the night. The first three episodes of the new Web-only series, which will seem hauntingly familiar to fans of Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” are online now, and more are promised. Perhaps best of all, you can e-mail macabre greetings to friends and family.

Eat, Click & Be Merry
Food is in these days — especially online. The Internet has spawned a host of food-related destinations that appeal to all types of cooks and eaters: gourmets, gourmands, weekend boilers. We found a few that make cooking and eating even more fun than they already are. Netflix.com Kills The Video Store
Why drive when you can click? Netflix.com rents virtually every DVD ever published — and there are no due dates.