If this is the good life then count me out

The NYT has an amazing article about two people who own a new travel site and have been going around the world staying in luxury hotels and visiting posh stores. The author must have had some fun writing this article as it simply skewers these two nincompoops as they go into Hermes and hear there is a wait for a Birkin bag, (c'mon who doesn't know that after all of the celebrity obsession about that and Oprah's recent incident), yelling at waiters to assemble bagels, raising their eye-brows because the Waldorf Astoria has old carpets, and putting down the entire West Side. As for Brooklyn I'm glad they don't seem to know where the bridge is. The idea of their site is so old that one has to think that this is could simply be an exercise to take tax-deductions while acting like swells. Their site "backed by international investors" is a subscription site with an accompanying book. The market they are going after already has some very expensive "exclusive" guide that are made by Louis Vuiton and sold in places like Paul Smith (how and why I know this tragic fact has to do with a meeting we once had for cityreads where we were urged to create "exclusive tours") The site that they are reviewing for CarnetTravels even looks like a dotcom. It features an animated fictional character named Eva and a flash interface. Flash is a particularly woeful interface for travel sites as one would normally want to print out information. Even the idea of having a guidebook and an accompanying website is old hat. Why not have a digitally printed book from web site content that is updated from fresh reviews.

Flash as used for databases is simply problematic in my view unless it is data you would really want to just use online. Use of travel sites usually involves research in preparation for a trip so I think it is more useful to be able to easily print pages.  I also find a not-for-profit site called Place Matters to suffer from the same usability problem. Place Matters started out as a project to use the internet to enable people to nominate and record important places. It was a great idea that could have been done so much simpler and better.