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Jason and I have noticed something odd about Google’s Blog Search. We can both type in the identical search query at the exact same second and get differing results. Anyone else noticed this?

I recently flew to Miami with a friend. We purchased what we thought were direct flights (according to Priceline), however after departing, we were told that the flight would be stopping over in Chicago before continuing. A minor annoyance, but at the time, confusing as we and several other passengers were unaware of this until we actually began to land in Chicago.

Today I received an email apology from Priceline:

It has come to our attention that your trip that departed from Detroit - Wayne County(DTW) on 9/13/2007 involved an intermediate stop which may not have been disclosed prior to purchase.

We apologize for any inconvenience. As an expression of our thanks for your business, and with regard to any inconvenience this may have caused, we will be processing a credit of $50 per ticket to the credit card used for this purchase.

That’s fantastic. What a nice way to handle that and ensure that I will definitely be using Priceline again.

Weeks after I posted about Pearle’s miserable attempt at social media, I revisited their site assuming they would certainly have added something to it by now. I guess I am too optimistic. Either their agency clearly doesn’t get it, or Pearle has hampered them from doing what looked like a great idea.

All I see on the local news in Detroit lately is how poor the airlines are doing and how many flights are being canceled. In particular, Northwest has become the whipping boy for the local news affiliates. For the most part, they are correct. Too many flights are canceled, too much luggage is lost. I’d like to balance it a bit with a recent personal experience.

I had a business flight to Chicago recently. For the return flight, the plane was a few minutes late arriving at O’Hare, nothing critical. We were all boarded and buckled in in record time. I was in first class, so I got to see the commotion up front. Minutes later, the pilot announced that there was a hydraulic leak and we would have to deplane while they fixed it, a process taking no longer than 30 minutes.

We all grumbled, but deplaned quickly, happy that we weren’t being held hostage on the plane. Making our way to the NW World Club , we saw a flight attendant telling us to turn around and re-board. I’ve already pre-boarded; now I get to re-board. Next I suppose is e-board.

This is where I was impressed with Northwest. So far this sounds like a very poor flight experience, but they really turned it around for everyone. We were each given three coupons:

1. US$10 or an in-flight drink
2. 1,000 World Perks Bonus Miles (or Air France)
3. $25 off the next flight

Any one of those would have been nice. Getting all three? Outstanding. Thank you, Northwest. Confidence restored.

This morning I saw an intriguing ad on television. An elderly gentleman related things he had seen as a result of his age: “I have seen an American flag with 45 stars.” He later says his name and that he is 102 years old. The ad ends with a link to pearlevision.com/ihaveseen. Sounded like it could be a fascinating testimonial site, so I checked it out. The site has the same lush B&W photography that the TV spot has.

That’s where it falls apart. A stream of attractive people (with glasses) cycles through. There are no controls, only a single link that sends one to Pearle Vision’s main site. That couldn’t be all of it, I thought. Moving my mouse over the slideshow of beautiful myopics, I noticed an occasional play button, so I chose one. It was the elderly man I had seen in the TV spot. Flanking either side of the video were previous and next buttons. Next sends one to another video, this one of an opthamologist. Previous send you back to the slideshow. That’s the entire site. No other testimonials.

What an utter waste of time. No upload link. No call to add your own story. Pearle’s agency really dropped the ball on what could have been a great concept. Maybe the site will evolve, but who’s going to wait around to see? No client or agency should cave in to releasing a site before there is content to support it. Users simply won’t return to see it through.