A couple of months ago I provided a list of new bits and pieces in the ‘Mango’ update to Windows Phone 7. One of the things I didn’t include was ‘local scout’. This feature can be accessed from the Bing search screen, or it can be pinned to the start screen. The first time I used local scout was in York – I was staying the night at a hotel and after seven hours of sleep I was ready for a spot of breakfast. However, I usually make a stand against expensive hotel breakfasts (all I want is a cup of tea and a couple of slices of toast) and so when they told me it was £15 for the continental breakfast I turned on my heels and left the breakfast room. That £15 wouldn’t have come from my pocket, but I don’t see why my employer should be ripped off.

Despite my principles I still needed feeding, so I checked out, got in the car and pressed the local scout tile. There was a McDonalds just over a mile away, and a McMuffin is a good way to start a day. I pressed the McDonalds entry, then ‘directions from my location’ and I was there in five minutes. Local scout saved Microsoft £12.

So, what does local scout make of Camberley? The screenshots you’re seeing here (click on them for larger versions) are based on the location of my house, and indeed the nearest of Camberley’s fine food and drink establishments is The Carpenters’ Arms. Having said that, there’s so many things bunched together in the town centre I don’t think the order means too much in this example. Clicking on any of the selected places provides the address, phone number, reviews and ratings, and of course the directions.

There’s also a list of things to see and do. I’ve been to the Vue cinema, but I’ve never been to the Surrey Heath Museum (which is a tragedy). Further down the list, out of view on the screenshot, is the Basingstoke Canal Centre. We’re going to leave that for a day when we’re really bored.

The third page on local scout, not pictured here, is shopping. And again, local scout gets it right… the Majestic Wine Warehouse is the nearest shop to us, located before we get to the town centre.

On each of the results page a small map appears at the top – clicking on it expands the map to full page and shows the locations of the exciting places in Camberley. There are two new hotels being built in the town centre, so why not consider a holiday here in the jewel of Surrey Heath?

It’s 19:45, and I’m in the Aberdeen-based Business Class lounge of a certain airline. I shall refer to them as ‘the airline’, which is a much politer term than they deserve. The story goes something like this…

14:16 – I’m in the middle of a meeting with a customer and a text message from the airline arrives on the ‘Berry. As we were talking about Sametime Unified Telephony I was involving my phone in a demo and got a chance to look at the text message about ten minutes later. It told me that my return flight was cancelled and that I should call this number. And it ended with “Apologies”.

During a break in the meeting I called the phone number provided. I listened to the options and none of them really fitted the situation, so I waited on the line as instructed. After about five minutes of silence (no hold music) I gave up and called again, and this time decided to pick option 4. After another five minutes my call was answered, so I explained my plight and gave my booking reference. I confirmed that I was Mr Adams, and was put on hold.

After ten minutes of hold music someone came back, and the conversation went something like this:

Agent: Hello, how can I help you?

Me: My flight was cancelled, I’ve been waiting on hold for ten minutes for someone to tell me what happens next.

Agent: What’s your booking reference?

Me: I already told someone my booking reference. They went away to find out what the alternative arrangements are.

(Pause)

Agent: So what is your booking reference?

Me: Hang on (found booking reference again and repeated it).

Agent: Mr Adams?

Me: Yes.

Agent: How can I help you?

Me: Well, my flight was cancelled…

Agent: What would you like me to do?

Me: Get me home tonight please.

Agent: Would you like me to book you on another flight?

Me: If that’s possible, yes.

Agent: Okay, I’ll see what I can do, please hold.

(Hold music)

Agent: There’s a flight at 20:30, would you like me to put you on that flight?

At this point I was severely tempted to respond with something like “unless you’ve got any other bright ideas about alternative methods of making a five hundred mile journey tonight” or just plain old “what do you flipping think?”, but Miss Customer Service Award Winner 2010 was my key to getting home so I decided to hold back the vitriol.

Me: Yes please.

Agent: Okay, that’s all confirmed, blah blah, flight details.

Any further apology? No. Clearly she was doing me a favour. Shame on me for inconveniencing her with my petty travel issues while she was trying to enjoy a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and read Heat magazine.

It’s now 20:11 – the replacement flight is delayed eighty minutes. I now recall that one of the options on that phone number was to let the airline know about your experience of their service. They can expect a call.

…for Warren Elsmore and Matt White. While my journey from DanNotes last year was a little stressful, it’s nothing compared to the odyssey that they’re currently enduring to get home. Like me they were supposed to take a flight back home on Thursday but plans were scuppered by the volcanic apocalypse. Unlike me, they were in Denmark – I had the relatively easy journey from Edinburgh to London by train… not the most entertaining five hours I’ve ever spent, but at least I was on the same land mass as my home. Warren and Matt are currently driving from Copenhagen to Brussels, where they will take the EuroStar to London. Warren has the added ‘bonus’ of living in Edinburgh so will need to take the reverse of my train journey.

Warren is currently tweeting the journey and using a #greatgeekescape hash-tag. I wish you a safe journey guys.

It was Lotusphere Comes To You week in the UK, with two great events in London and Edinburgh… more about those in another post. But it was while in Edinburgh that I got an early morning text message from my airline-of-choice telling me that my flight was cancelled. The reason…? Because a volcano had erupted in Iceland.

C’mon, did they honestly expect me to be believe that?

Ah, Denmark. They have holes in some their coins, you know. Think how much metal that must save.

Anyway, on with the story. Back in September I was invited to speak at DanNotes, the Danish Notes User Group event – not about Notes, but about Lotus Connections. Of course I accepted, and wasn’t put off in the least when I discovered that the event was taking place in a town called Korsør (pronounced ‘Korsur’ because of that ‘ø’ character) which is half-way across Denmark from Copenhagen. I also discovered that my good friend and God-like genius Paul Mooney was also on the agenda, so it was shaping up to be an excellent prospect of a trip. But how does one get from Copenhagen to the far and distant Korsør? By train of course.

My first experience of Danish trains was pretty good. In August I made my first ever trip to Denmark and had to make my way to Lyngby, which is north of Copenhagen… a very easy journey thanks to a short train ride to Copenhagen Central and then another fairly quick hop to Lyngby. As I said at the time it was efficient, on-time, clean and reasonably good value. So without much fuss I discovered that a train went directly from Copenhagen lufthaven (sorry, airport) directly to Korsør in eighty-eight minutes. I arrived in Copenhagen, I purchased my return ticket, the train turned up and left on time, and even arrived at Korsør a few minutes early. I had a comfortable seat and there was even a power socket above my head. On arriving at the Grand Park Hotel I had no hesitation in telling people that I was impressed by the Danish train service. When they scoffed at this notion, I assumed it was merely because they’d never encountered the English trains and were therefore a little spoilt.

Whoever said that irony is a fickle mistress was more correct than they’ll ever know.

The delegates and speakers enjoyed an excellent dinner. I found Mr Mooney and we chewed the fat and laughed until tiredness caught up with me and I caved in for the evening. The next morning I did my talk on Connections, and also a half-hour slot on composite applications which was a late addition to the agenda. Paul was on his way home, and already Google Latitude was showing me that he was in the bar at Copenhagen airport. After lunch I ordered a taxi, leaving plenty of time to catch the train back to Copenhagen, my plans leaving me lots of time to check in at the airport before continuing on to Stockholm. Mrs A is reading this over my shoulder and said “that’s where it started to go wrong”. And she’s right.

According to the train timetable on the Interweb, my train back to Copenhagen airport was supposed to depart at 14:50. But arriving at the station at 14:20 I found that the next train direct (I mean with no changes) to the airport was at 15:14. This wasn’t a big problem as there was a train to Copenhagen Central at 14:43, and I could change there and continue to the airport with enough time to check in for the 18:10 flight.

However, a couple of stations from Copenhagen Central the train stopped for nearly half an hour. Someone was kind enough to translate the announcement which said that the train would terminate at the next station and then we’d have to change over to a local line (with more stops) to continue the journey. So I got off at Høje Taastrup station and waited seven minutes for the next B line train. Time was now becoming rather tight.

A number of stops later, things took a turn for the worse. At Danshøj the train stopped and minutes ticked away until an announcement told the passengers that the train was terminating and they should get off. Someone told me that a person had been hit by a train at Copenhagen Central and there were going to be delays reaching the station. By now it was 16:45, and I had half an hour left to check in. After getting off, another train came to the platform quickly. But two stops later, at Enghave, the train stopped again, and the ticket lady on the train said that we were stopping and they had no idea for how long. It was now 16:57. A train from Copenhagen Central to the airport takes around fifteen minutes, and I could wait up to twenty minutes for that train. I wasn’t even at Copenhagen Central yet. At this point I realised that if I stayed on the train I would miss the flight and the implications started whirring through my head and stomach.

Maybe fortune does favour the brave – I left the train, ran up the steps, and was just in time to see a taxi about to leave after dropping someone off. I banged on the window, the driver stopped and beckoned me in. It was 17:00. I asked how long it would take to get to the airport and the words were music to my ears… “it’s rush hour, so maybe fifteen minutes”. And he was spot on, the cab stopped outside Copenhagen airport Terminal 3 at 17:15. During the journey he said there’s nowhere for taxis to wait at Enghave station so I was lucky to catch him.

The fun wasn’t over yet – inside Terminal 3 I looked at the check-in board and the instructions for SAS flight 1426 were… wait for it… go to Terminal 2. You’re kidding me. So I ran to Terminal 2, where the check-in board said – I’m not making this up – go to Terminal 3. I grabbed someone who looked like they worked there and they said yes, check-in for my flight was at Terminal 2. So at 17:23 I was at the check-in desk where a lovely young lady calmly told me there was no hurry because they hadn’t even assigned a gate yet.

And then I picked the slowest-moving queue for security. But by then I was serenely calm. Maybe even delirious.

Let me start by saying that I’m not knocking the requirement for airport security. In fact, thank heavens that they’re now very thorough even if they have started letting suitcases resembling small wheelie-bins be taken on as hand luggage – as I said years ago, if you need wheels to move the bloody thing is it ‘hand luggage’? What annoys me about airport security is the lack of consistency. At some airports you don’t have to take your laptop out of your bag – at some you do. This, I’m told, is because of the variety of equipment at different airports. Fair enough.

However, then you get a lack of consistency at the same airport… Heathrow for example. Some days you do have to remove your shoes, some days you don’t. I’ve even been there on days when one queue has to remove their shoes while the others don’t. So Mr Security, don’t get annoyed with me if I don’t follow the rules of the day immediately.

With all this in mind, I was interested in this article on the Beeb’s news site covering Manchester Airport’s trial body scanner. Like a scene from Total Recall (great movie) it provides an image revealing details down to a naked level (okay, not quite down to the skeletal level). It’s heralded as a breakthrough to please people who don’t like the traditional ‘pat down’. But judging by the sample images, it looks like it’s important to be confident about your choice of underpants.

Spokesperson Sarah Barrett says that passengers concerned about the revealing images could refuse to be scanned. That would seem to defeat the object… any potential wrong-doer concealing a weapon, or Wile E. Coyote (no doubt carrying something from the Acme Bomb Company), would immediately exercise that right. You’d hope that they’d then be subjected to the normal rigorous searches.

Reading on, I think I’ve experienced one of these scanners.

They work by beaming electromagnetic waves on to passengers while they stand in a booth

New York, 2005 – the 9/11 atrocities still fresh in their minds – I’m sure I went through one of these scanners to get up to the base of the Statue of Liberty. It surprised me at the time that the security checks to get onto the ferry, onto the island and then into the statue complex were more rigorous than the checks to go up the Empire State Building. Why surprised? Well the Statue of Liberty is out on an island while the Empire State Building is slap-bang in the middle of Manhattan. Whatever the reason, I can sleep safe knowing that I wasn’t wearing y-fronts that day.

I’ve noticed something strange. Opposite my hotel there’s a cinema surrounded by several cafes and restaurants, and last night the area was a hive of activity… loads of people in the cinema queue and waiting to be seated at the various eating establishments. Tonight, it’s like a ghost town.

Possible explanations… Tuesday is two-for-one night at the cinema… FC Copenhagen are playing a Champions’ League qualifier and the good people of the Copenhagen suburbs are staying in to watch it on television… or maybe there’s some other reason that I’ll never be party to because I’m not Danish.

Following yesterday’s post, I know you’re dying to know what the sign by the shower says and means. I’ll put you out of your misery… the sign reads:

Til forskel fra sæbe i bittesmå pakker gør denne sæbe både dig og miljøet renere.

And naturally this means:

Unlike soap in tiny packages make this soap you and the environment cleaner.

So not the first verse from Denmark’s 1997 Eurovision Song Contest entry. No, it’s the second verse from their 1983 entry which came 17th.

Good evening everyone. I am in Denmark, which is enormously exciting as I’ve never been to Denmark before. I’ve been telling everyone I was going to Copenhagen, which was true in a way – I landed at Copenhagen airport, passed through Copenhagen on the train, but eventually got off at Lyngby (which I think is pronounced Lungbu). So you’ve probably guessed I’m not on holiday – Lyngby is the location of IBM’s main office in Denmark. Some observations:

• Out of the window of the airplane I saw the huge bridge which stretches to Malmo (that’s in Sweden) and a huge wind farm. On the subject of Malmo, when I looked up hotels on IBM’s travel system it suggested Malmo. Malmo is in another country, but it is within 30 miles of Copenhagen… so it was so wrong but yet right.
• The first thing I noted after disembarking was a video screen sporting a Windows Blue-Screen-of-Death. I gave up taking photos of these a long time ago, but it’s comforting to see familiar things when travelling.
• The Danish train system is inexpensive and (based on limited experience) efficient. Mind you, compared with English trains… you know what I mean.
• If I could compare Lyngby to an English town it would be Staines, which is ironic and a tiny bit depressing.
• The hotel room doesn’t have tea-making facilities, which means that right now I’d rather be at (pick a location from the air) the Hilton at Manchester Airport.
• I have absolutely no idea what the sign by the shower means – it might be something to do with re-using towels or not wasting water, but it could also be the first verse from Denmark’s 1997 Eurovision Song Contest entry. Either way, I haven’t got a clue. If I get really bored I’ll type it into Google Translate.
• BBC iPlayer only works in Britain, so I can’t watch tonight’s episode of EastEnders.

I’ve just got back from a trip to Dublin, and before I left I considered that I haven’t travelled many domestic business miles this year. A quick check on the bmi Diamond Club web site confirmed my worst fears… I’ve been downgraded from Silver membership to Blue Plus. Okay, to put this into perspective, it’s not actually my worst fear… I can think of several things that are far worse. Anyway, I digress… this means that I will still be able to get a complimentary cup of tea and sandwich on a bmi flight, but I’ll no longer be entitled to use the business class lounge (unless my ticket qualifies).

So, now I’m going to have to make sure I travel the miles again to re-qualify for Silver membership. This means gathering 16,000 membership status miles. By coincidence (and as if to rub it in) my shiny new Blue Plus membership card arrived today, ready to take over from the Silver card at the end of this month. The enclosed letter explained about the 16,000 miles to re-qualify… or I could just pay £150 now. Do I want to pay £150 for the occasional pleasure of sitting in an uncrowded area and having a free cup of tea and biscuits? Errr… no.

On the subject of travel, a couple of observations…

1. Hotels charge too much for breakfast… €19 this morning for a cuppa, some scrambled egg, bacon, mushrooms and toast. When paying that much I feel obliged to eat as much as possible to get my money’s worth, but I can’t.
2. Airlines have gone soft on people again over “hand luggage”. Can something really be described as “hand luggage” if it requires wheels to move it? And this rule about one item… one is less than two. Half to be precise. One is not two. Surely that’s not hard to understand. And surely it’s not hard to enforce.

What do you buy for the woman who has everything? A box to put it all in? This was the dilemma for the current Mrs Adams as she approached her thirty-tenth birthday, and after hours of deliberation she decided that she’d like to go on a trip rather than receive material goods. Of course it did occur to me that a trip to some locations in the world might result in the heavy-duty purchase of material goods, but my attempts to persuade her that the Falkland Islands or Borneo were top-notch short-break locations failed miserably. Chicago (home of the Smashing Pumpkins, the Blues Brothers, Al Capone, and that musical, can’t remember it’s name) topped the wife’s wish-list, and so it came to pass.

I have yet to survey the wreckage of the family fortune, and I fear that I might have to do it under the influence of alcohol. The cases that were fairly light on the way out were ominously heavy for the return journey. Anyway, that aside – hey, it’s only money – Chicago is a great place to visit for a short break. The weather was fantastic (maybe a little too warm for my liking, but better than the miserable crap here) and the sightseeing was interesting and varied:

• The Sears Tower – the tallest building in the USA, and with the longest queue to match, Lauren and I went up while the wife shopped. At one point during the queuing process there was a sit-down seven minute movie about the Tower’s origin (which was very interesting).
• The Adler Planetarium – also visited while the wife shopped, Lauren and I watched ‘Cosmic Collisions’ in a 180° theatre, followed by a 3D movie, and then visited the exhibits.
• The John Hancock Center – the fifth tallest building in the USA, but with the fastest lift reaching an ear-popping 20 mph. As with the Sears Tower, the views were incredible.
• The John G Shedd Aquarium – dolphins, beluga whales, sea otters, loads of different types of fish, and (we just caught it before it departed after Labour Day) a komodo dragon which didn’t move but was impressively huge.
• Navy Pier – shops, a fair, live music, food, and fifty thousand people.

Some other observations – taxis were relatively inexpensive (compared to a London black cab they were almost free), the bus service was punctual and cheap, people were very friendly, and there was loads of places to eat and lots of choice.