Is impulse shopping dead? That's what Alice said!

Today I had a chance to play with Alice (Who the heck is Alice?…my wife asks).

For those of you who don’t know her, meet Alice - she is the answer to those grueling trips to your supermarket!

Its been about 38 months since my last trip to Costco - I figured out in my first year of membership that we don’t need a bottle (package rather) of ranch that lasts a full year.  Pizza places go out of business in that kinda time! What about TP? With that much toilet paper, how can we ever find room to store our kids? (once we have em).  Somehow between juggling my business and personal life, and therapy, I’ve elegantly delegated my wife’s moral obligation to be taking care of what we need for the house :-)  The problem - she (a seasoned impulse shopper) brings home stuff we don’t ever need.  My dog now has a collar in every color and probably as many treat brands as Tinkerbell!

Truth be told, the long lines make her nervous too and she usually goes to the supermarket next door. Occasionally though, I get a “babe, it’s a girlie***iblankedoutontherestofwhatyousaid***thingy today and could you make that trip to get us some toothpaste” phone call……I mean sacrificing a morning run across the golden gate for what, some paste?  No more! Say no to those infrequent, yet exhaustive trips!

I heard about Alice.com (in beta) on Twitter today.  I’ve eagerly signed up and have setup deliveries for all the toilet paper and paste we’ll ever need!  Of course guys, be savvy - Alice will send you reminders and you can save preferences but do your due diligence.  Even though they offer free shipping, unless you’re willing to wait 2 days without TP and resort to gross alternatives, be selective about your preferences and let Alice do all the work for you.

Amazon has a similar service but I don’t think they ever got it right. Alice.com has found a niche and it strictly focuses on that.  Their funding is limited but given the idea, combined with exposure to the millions who read my personal blog (I’d like to think that), I think Alice is poised for success.

The Aircraft Black Box - powered by Twitter?

My heart goes out to the friends and families of those who were lost in AirFrance Flight 447….I found out pretty early about the incident via someone’s retweet on Twitter.  With the little I’ve followed the story, I know it’s going to be a long time till authorities recover the blackbox, if at all.  Once they do, the little black box might be their only hope to figure out what happened.

With all the technology we have access to, why is it so difficult to track where an aircraft went missing? I don’t mean to write a business plan for American Airlines and I feel kinda morbid writing this post but what if we had Twitter inside the Black Box for every airplane?  What if automatic status messages were posted for each flight?  We’ve managed to get WiFi 35,000 feet above ground - what’s the hold up?

I know what you’re thinking - downtime! (sorry @ev).  But trust me guys, by the time this technology actually gets considered, Twitter would be ready to handle it!

Think about it:

- each time these sophisticated engines do a status check, a tweet is automatically posted
- early warnings are issued when there are system failures
- the onboard GPS posts a tweet, say one per minute, with the exact co-ordinates (ALWAYS letting us see where the aircraft is)
- a secondary mechanism (maybe the on board touchscreen entertainment console) allows passengers to post to the same twitter page

Not only could the ground flight controllers get early warning signs, potentially helping them guide the aircraft to safety but if there is an unfortunate tragedy like flight 447, at least hundreds wouldn’t be left wondering where the aircraft disappeared.

In addition to raising airline safety standards, wouldn’t it just be cool to follow some one’s flight?….full-on with maps and status updates?

I don’t know what the logistics are but I do know that the tiny “powered by twitter” symbol could potentially lead us to the black box or maybe just eliminate the need for one.