I’ve regularly experienced Southwest boarding passengers in 10-15 minutes with no assigned seating. And I’ve regularly experienced large carriers like United that board by rows taking 30-45 minutes. Why? Bags travel free on Southwest so there’s less demand for overhead space. And as others have noted, unassigned is faster and surprisingly better than assigned seating. I’ve never had a bad seat on Southwest with no status, whereas unless I’m Gold status (50K miles/year) or above on a large carrier, getting a good seat is a source of stress, which is only multiplied if you’re travelling with a family – on 5 of 5 recent trips our booking has been split by the airline despite our requests to keep them combined.

On airlines like United, first class and then all the myriad tiers of frequent fliers board, often filling all the overhead space and then having to swim upstream back to front of plane as the remaining non-frequent fliers try to get to back of plane, and discover there is no space for their bags and then they have to swim upstream to check their bags. The last minute upgrades to First Class and serving of drinks and hanging of jackets add additional delays to the boarding process (although the latter two are not an issue on 757s and larger where the “lower classes” don’t have to walk through First to get to their seats).

On deplaning, the problem is reversed as frequent fliers now have to go towards the back of the plane to retrieve their bags against the stream of the deplaning passengers. If you’re a frequent flier, you’re only getting on the plane early to make sure you can get your bag in the overhead near where you are sitting. The whole process is inefficient and unpleasant for everyone.

Idea: (If they don’t want to follow the superior Southwest model, or won’t make the overhead storage bigger and/or enforce a smaller overhead bag) Could baggage handlers load the carry on bag into the overheads near the assigned seats and gate check the bags if they don’t fit? Then board from the back to the front, and from the windows to the aisles. Not a solution for late arriving aircraft and will add tangible costs of extra labor vs. intangibles of delays. But would be a nice service improvement.

Holland enjoying the waves in Far North Queensland

As Seth said yesterday, it’s the only holiday that really matters.  I sometimes have to pinch myself to remember the good fortune – our health, families, friends, jobs, house, food, the incredible climate and beauty of the bay area.  Especially given that so many others have had such a challenging year, I feel blessed to have had such a good one.  Every year we do calendars and cards, using a service like shutterfly, and it was such a treat to go back over the amazing photos this year looking for the best ones.  The digital SLR has not only increased the number of pictures 4-5X, but also hugely improved the quality, and pictures of our daughter’s complete and utter joy playing on the beaches in Far North Queensland will grace our cards this year.  (BTW, if you never searched online for coupons, it’s totally worth it.  Shutterfly wanted $25 for shipping – a Gogle search for “shutterfly coupons”reduced that to zero in under a minute).

Personal highlights of the year in rough chronological order include: the alt-MBA, training our new lab puppy, finishing the back garden, switching jobs, the first trip to Oz with Holland, finally starting this blog, discovering yoga, getting serious about trail running again, and several iPhone apps (see previous reviews of balloonimals and stitcher).

Henry reminded me of the ability to download TED podcasts which has filled long training runs with amazing and inspiring tales from people have made a career out of following their passions like Amy Tan, Al Gore, Dave Eggers, Katherin Fulton, John Hodgman, Brian Cox and Brian Greene.

One of my favorites, in tune with the holiday was Martin Seligman, on positive psychology.  The video is embedded below – it outlines the three components of happiness: pleasure, flow and meaning. The good news is you don’t have to be born with a genetic predisposition to have it, 50% of pleasure comes from surrounding yourself with friends and family, and success at flow and meaning will provide much more lasting happiness than pleasure alone.  Check it out – a great intro to the field, and maybe it’ll set you up for a 2010 to be thankful for

Is that a phone or a trumpet?

No, she’s not trying to eat the phone. And she’s not playing Ocarina.

It’s an awesome game from those whizzes at IDEO called “Balloonimals”. Outstanding child entertainment for the princely sum of $1.99 (funny how all the free apps on the App Store cause you to think twice about spending $2) The pics tell the story – choose a balloon color, blow up the balloon till it dings, shake (with all the squeaky rubber sound effects of an actual balloon being bent into shapes) and voilà an animal (t-rex, crab, unicorn, dog, snake, fish, kangaroo and baby joey) Tap the animal and it surprises with movement – feet stomping, claw clacking, you get the idea. The pièce de résistance is you can blow up the animals using a bike pump symbol until they pop. Holland plays with this for hours and the laughter and expressions on her face are priceless.

Ideo's beautifully executed balloonimals game

There are a wide range of great learning apps for kids – learning words, shapes and numbers. Couple this with a few movies, TV shows and games and you’ve got a brilliant child minding device in a very tiny package. It’d be nice if you could selectively disable some features like email and the phone when you give it to them, but you should be paying attention, right

This has really cemented the learning for me that the apps are really the killer app for the iPhone. It’s a great phone on an ok network. It’s a phenomenal piece of intuitive design and convergence that has transformed the smart phone market. But the endless creativity of the apps is what blows your mind.