Features
Gigs & Bytes: The Mile High iPod Club
Apple announced it has inked agreements with Continental, Delta, United, Emirates, Air France and KLM to install docking stations that will both power and charge iPods. Along with the docking stations, the airlines will also install screens on chair backs so travelers will have something larger to watch their iPod video files with.
But there is some confusion as to just how many air carriers Apple has on board for its latest iPod project. Two airlines – Air France and KLM – said Apple had jumped the gun regarding both company’s participation, according to Reuters.
“It’s way too early to confirm any such details,” said an Air France representative, while KLM noted that the airline had only conducted “informal contacts” with the computer company.
P2P Tickets
It wasn’t too long ago when ticket purchasers could either buy from the box office, a ticket service working with the box office or from ticket brokers.
Then StubHub came along in 2000 and changed the way people viewed the secondary ticket market. Instead of purchasing tickets from a broker who set the price, StubHub established a marketplace where individual ticket sellers could hook up with people looking for tickets.
Now there’s a new player in the ticket-exchange biz: TicketLiquidator.com, which recently launched its own person-to-person service. Up until now, TicketLiquidator acted as sort of a secondary market front end, linking customers to brokers. Unlike Web sites dedicated to individual brokers, TicketLiquidator was more like a portal for ticket seekers.
Now, like StubHub, individual sellers set the price here. However, TicketLiquidator does StubHub’s 15 percent commission one better by only charging 10 percent of each sale. For those looking for an alternative to StubHub, TicketLiquidator just might have the answer.
“This is an important step for us,” said TicketLiquidator.com CEO Don Vaccaro. “As in the past all of our inventory has been provided by ticket brokers in the regular business of buying and reselling tickets. Our industry is growing dramatically. We decided the time had finally come to serve the peer-to-peer market for ticket sales with a product that was cheaper for sellers and safer for buyers than existing business models.”