Airlines have lost my bags several times.  In most cases, my bags would miraculously appear a few days later, or in one instance, three weeks later and adorned with random stickers from around the world.  This latest MIA episode is different as my bag is completely gone, missing, vanished, a runaway.  If I could submit a picture of my red suitcase on the side of a milk carton, I would…

On my return trip from San Francisco to San Diego, my luggage arrived at the airport before me and by the time I arrived it was nowhere to be found.  What’s interesting is that it was scanned at the San Diego airport that morning and I was told that maybe it was picked up by someone else by mistake and that it happens all the time, but  two weeks later no one has returned my bag.   I figure that  my belongings are on a blanket on La Avenida Revolucion in Tijuana getting sold to tourists, or perhaps at this monstrous site: http://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/index.html.  What happened to the days of scanning bags and presenting luggage tickets before leaving the airport?  I wonder how often airlines lose travelers’ bags.

Ever since baggage policies changed starting in December 2004, including the ban on liquids and gels in carry-on luggage, the number of delayed or lost bags has climbed.  According to the US department of transportation’s consumer report, 191,971 total baggage claims were reported in June 2010 from all domestic airlines in the US.  For every 1,000 passengers, 3.72 bags were reported lost or delayed.  Globally, in 2009 25 million bags have been lost or were diverted to wrong destinations, with a whopping loss for the industry of about $2.5 billion in one year!  Part of this might be attributed to short staffing and strapped baggage handling systems, or the fact that there are wicked people out there that take suitcases from strangers…I digress.

Airports and the airlines in general have obviously taken a huge hit in the last decade and are cutting costs in every way possible.  Gone are the days of luggage scanner employees and welcome to everyone’s new favorite policy of paying a checked-baggage fee.  It is apparently not very cost efficient for airlines to lose baggage since it is most airlines policy to refund a customer for their lost belongings.  However, airlines make millions of dollars with checked bag fees!  If that is the case, I feel that there needs to be some sort of implementation towards figuring out the mishandled bags issue.

I’m sure the airlines and airports do their best not to have to deal with these issues, and maybe I just have really bad luck.  In the meantime, I wanted to pass on a few key tips when traveling courtesy of travellerspoint.com:

• Scan your passport, passport photos and paper tickets in your email account
• Store details of your emergency telephone numbers electronically so you know who to contact if your credit card or ATM card is lost or stolen
• Split up your valuables – this includes bank cards, cash, travelers checks –  as much as possible in different pockets or bags when packing
• Use small bottles that are easier to check by security, especially if you want to carry your bag on a flight
• Gifts – it’s a good idea to take small gifts while traveling, pre-wrapping them can be a waste of time if you are flying and your bags are opened
• Carry On – keep any medication and important papers in your carry-on bag.  On long flights with multiple stopovers, packing a fresh change of clothes is a good idea as bags tend to get delayed or lost on a long haul, multiple stop flights.
• Try to carry on your bag if possible to have it with you at all times!

For you travelers out there, be wary of the risks of checking your bag .  And if you happen to see a red Travel Gear suitcase in the San Diego area with my name on it, send it my way please!

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The intern “station” at gap intelligence is more or less a mobile unit.  In fact, it has already moved twice in the three months that I’ve been here.  Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy the change of scenery.  The new locale even boasts a window view.  On the desk to my right is a slightly less visually appealing pile of out-of-commission monitors, keyboards, PC towers, and the like (although it certainly could be worse).  We have affectionately dubbed it “The Computer Graveyard.”

One day, while working a “Graveyard” shift, I started thinking about our little collection.  All jokes aside, think about how quickly we find electronic equipment obsolete and how much stuff we accumulate because of that.  For instance, if you had to count how many electronic devices you own, how many do you think it would be?  Of course we all instantly think of the essentials – our cell phones, computers, and televisions.  But what about everything else?  Not counting household appliances, I can list around twenty separate pieces of electronic equipment in my home (that’s not even counting the miscellaneous cord drawer).  And at least six of those are either broken or outdated and not being used – or in other words, they’re electronic waste (e-waste).  Home gaming systems, landline phones, printers, fax and copy machines, laptops, keyboards, speakers, VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray players… the list goes on.  Once these items are junk, they are considered e-waste.

Electronics probably have the highest turnover rates out of any consumer products, yet they’re some of the most difficult to recycle properly.  These days, most of us are aware that the electronics we use in our homes every day are filled with toxins like lead and mercury.  You may have even seen disheartening images of poor children overseas rummaging through e-waste landfills for salvageable materials to sell.  What you might not know is that many of the companies in the United States that call themselves “recyclers” are still just shipping that waste to poorer countries with less regulation on hazardous waste disposal.

Recycling is becoming an everyday practice for more and more of us all the time.  Most of us have public recycling available for curbside pickup, although electronics are generally prohibited.  If you work in an office, your company probably participates in some sort of e-waste recycling program.  It’s pretty much standard procedure (and in most cases, mandatory) for businesses to do so.  But how much do you really know about what happens to those electronics?  And consumers are still responsible for generating the greatest amount of e-waste, but they don’t exactly make it easy for us “little people” to recycle old electronics.  But, there are places that will accept many of your household electronics for free, or even pay you for them!  You just have to know what’s out there.  Thankfully, if you’re able to read this blog, then you’re also able to access the websites that can hook you up with programs in your area.  Check out some of these links to get started.  If you don’t find what you’re looking for, search, baby, search!

Digital Tips recycling links:

http://www.digitaltips.org/green/donate-electronics.asp

The Daily Green’s electronics recycling how-to guide:

http://www.thedailygreen.com/green-homes/latest/computer-recycling-electronics-recycling-461219

Electronics Recyclers International, an innovative company that’s doing it the right way:

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Written by Adrienne Akre

Hi everyone! My name is Trisha Weinberg and I just joined the gap intelligence team as an intern.  I’m so excited to have found an opportunity like this to work in the field of public relations. I am currently a communication major hoping to transfer to UCSD this fall.  If there is one thing I’ve learned so far about finding the perfect career, it’s that the key to success is gaining experience.  I’m not sure what I want to do for a living and I don’t quite know when I’ll figure that out, so this internship is an ideal way to help me on my journey.

I’m originally from San Diego, a city I’ve come to love and appreciate so much more as I’ve gotten older. Maybe it’s because the majority of my time in LA for school last year was spent sitting in my car stuck in traffic! All I can say is I’m happy to be home; San Diego has everything I need and more.

In my spare time I like to read, shop, eat, attempt to cook, watch movies, and the list goes on. I have recently discovered the real joys of college thanks to my new favorite class, Wines of the World.  I’m nowhere near a true aficionado but I have my hopes up. I also enjoy spending time with my friends and family as well as meeting new people and going new places. I love traveling and would eventually like to set out abroad; I’ll go anywhere at this point (preferably a nation with good wine!)

At this point in my life, I just want to have fun with everything I do and be happy. I am very lucky to have found an internship here at gap intelligence so I only hope I will bring as much to this company as much as it gives me!

Hello everyone, my name is Adrienne Akre and I’m the newest intern here at gap intelligence! I’m excited to be here and looking forward to sinking my teeth into this PR thing. I just started my final quarter at UCSD, where I am majoring in sociology. I know, it seems strange that I’m a sociologist interning for a marketing intelligence company, but after spending four years in the field, I’ve decided to give sociology a break. So basically, I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do in life.

I found gap through UCSD’s Academic Internship Program and instantly thought it sounded like a fantastic opportunity. I am hoping to learn as much as I can and give as much back to gap as possible.

I was born and raised right here in San Diego. After living in Marin County up in Northern California for a year, I realized that my heart was still in SD and I truly am a So-Cal girl. I live in Coronado with my boyfriend, almost six-year-old daughter (wow, time flies), and three crazy dogs. In my spare time, I like to relax with friends and family and try to get to the beach as much as possible, which is a lot when you live on an island. Much to my boyfriend’s dismay, living in Northern California gave me a taste for Indian food, so don’t be surprised if you catch the faint scent of curry as you pass by me! I’ll make sure to gargle after lunch, though!

Other than that, I’m just so grateful to have been given the opportunity to get my feet wet in the PR and marketing world. I’m thrilled to be here and hope to get to know everyone at gap very soon!

With the official onset of the spring season and semester, gap intelligence’s internship program is in full swing again! The department consists of two new enthusiastic and bright interns, Adrienne and Trisha (check out their blogs!), who will help to manage the public relations department here at gap.

gap intelligence’s internship program was first launched about a year ago. Now, in its second year, the interns are taking on more responsibilities and coming up with creative ways to help gap intelligence bloom. Like the Iris and Daffodil buds pushing up through the dirt, the PR department has grown into a full garden of its own.

You can expect to see more buzz circling around the highly-anticipated new Data Center Version 3 (DCV3), which will be jam-packed full of new goodies such as a quick stat section, news articles, a comments section, product life cycle tracking, and the freedom to contact any gap intelligence analyst with the push of a button.

Socially, gap intelligence’s Twitter site will be fluttering about with interesting industry-related facts, while gap intelligence’s Facebook will be getting a lot more company face-time as well…no pun intended.

gap intelligence’s internship program isn’t about coffee runs, faxing or filing, but instead focuses on the company’s PR initiatives and the interns themselves. Our goal is to give our interns valuable experiences as well as allow them to grow individually and professionally as they make valuable contributions to our company.

Our internship program is off to a fresh start this quarter and we are excited to welcome Adrienne and Trisha to gap intelligence, and look forward to working with each of them!

To check out gap intelligence’s posts, please visit our social media sites:

http://www.twitter.com/gapintelligence

http://www.facebook.com/pages/gap-intelligence/121745396019?ref=ts

I came home the other day and there they were at the front door…all three of them…just laying there…the Yellow Pages.  Why oh why do we still receive the Yellow Pages?  As I dragged them into the house, I wondered how many people throw them straight into the recycle bin.  Who uses the Yellow Pages hardcopy books anymore?

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Times have changed and the general public does not use the Yellow Pages as often since the onset of the internet.  When I search for a business online, I drop a name into a search engine and a split second later I get instant results.  The internet is quick and websites have plenty of informational content to answer most if not all of my questions.  Internet searches feature up to date sales and specials, maps, directions, images, music and arguably most importantly, customer reviews.

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Believe it or not, the Yellow Pages are the third most popular way to look for businesses after Google and Yahoo.  However, according to a comScore study, people are turning to the Yellow Pages less frequently.  Usage has decreased considerably and about 30 percent of local business searchers now spend more time online instead of offline, compared to 26 percent in 2007.  The Yellow Pages acknowledged the increased popularity of using the internet as a search tool and made its information available online.  There is even an app available through Apple for the directory.

So, while the Yellow Pages are no longer valuable for looking up what alarm companies there are in the neighborhood, I have found some new interesting ways to use those heavy books.  I use them to prop up my monitors on my desk, does wonders for the neck and posture.  They are great door stops, work well for a booster seat, or even duct tape them together and use them as a stair step for exercise!

While there are a ton of uses for those phone books that you will probably never open, Yellowpages.com in conjunction with Keep America Beautiful Works and AT&T Advertising & Publishing also offer to help you recycle old phone books.  (http://www.yellowpages.com/recycle)  The companies point out that Untraceable buy 12 Rounds move Shoot ‘Em Up full

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Spring Breakdown movie recycled phone books can be made into useful products such as “…animal bedding, home insulation, bathroom tissue, cereal boxes, roofing shingles…”  So, recycle or be creative – just don’t leave the Yellow Pages on the curb to rot!  I searched around online and found this nifty business card holder made out of a yellow pages directory, which can also be used as a picture holder. Gift wrap, garden mulch…you can’t do any of that with your fancy internet can you?  I might just spare my Yellow Pages this time and take up a new hobby of arts & crafts…what do you do with your Yellow Pages?

For an “opt-out” option to discontinue the Yellow Pages at your home, go to: www.YellowPagesGoesGreen.org

It’s funny, I’d been unknowingly getting prepped for this internship for weeks before even applying.  A close friend of mine started working for Circuit City last winter, and throughout his time there I heard a lot about the retailer’s final months.  I learned about the art behind retailing electronics including inventory, shelving, store design, and branding.  Our conversations jabbed at the effectiveness of a solid marketing mix, developed from researching the customer in terms of both numbers and psychographics.

When I first learned that gap intelligence was a market research company aimed at providing market analysis for electronics retailers, I thought it was such a coincidence.  Likewise, the timing could not be better!  I am currently at San Diego State University and working through my last few semesters towards receiving my degree in Business Marketing.  The nearness of graduating feels both exciting and resolute.

In my free time, I like keeping active and constantly learning.  I love all types of art and music, spending time with friends and family, and traveling.  My hobbies include shopping, running, drawing, writing, and learning guitar. (Can’t quite yet say I can actually play!)  My dream is to find myself in a career that is interesting, challenging, and hopefully a bit creative.  To me, success means to always have new goals to aspire to, and to surround myself amongst individuals who likewise inspire me.

I’m very excited to be here and to watch the growth of my own professional developments as well as those of the company.  I have a lot to learn, and hopefully, a lot to give!Captain Corelli’s Mandolin movie full

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The buzz surrounding Twitter definitely sparked my curiosity and I decided to check it out for myself. So what exactly is Twitter? Twitter is a social networking site that allows users to blog as well as answer the question “What are you doing?” by sending short text messages called “tweets” to friends, co-workers, family or anyone who is a “follower” on the site. You can send updates through the website directly, through your mobile phone, or via a third party application such as Twirl, Snitter, or the Twitterfox add-on for Firefox, and by the way, it is all free.

You can literally tweet about anything from the cup of coffee you had this morning to the movie you watched last night. The idea behind it is that you can exchange informal information in a quick way without the fatigue of checking numerous emails and IMs. That way close ones can know what is going on in your life they might otherwise be missing out on.

However, Twitter is not just for friends and co-workers anymore. It’s become a great news source including what people think about Obama, TV shows, events, and anything that is on their minds. Even Madonna uses the site to ask fans which of her songs she should add to her “Best of” CD. Many businesses are using tweets to their advantage by searching for a particular brand or topic and finding free honest opinions from consumers. Companies from CNN to numerous tech-blogs are sending out instant updates to share with their followers. People can also tweet about things that their companies are doing and get immediate feedback and opinions. As Twitter users say, if you can’t say it in 140 characters or less, your idea won’t get out there.

Surgeons at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital use Twitter while operating on patients to teach students in an interactive way. It’s not as dangerous as it sounds! There are numerous people working during the surgery so the surgeons themselves aren’t typing and operating at the same time. They broadcast their findings before, during, and after the surgery to other doctors and students as a way to transmit medical findings instantly to a wide audience. An NYU student developed a pregnancy belt, which his wife wore to notify him whenever the baby kicked via a Twitter text message to his phone. It seems that the possibilities are endless if you have the right imagination!

A growing number of people nowadays don’t want to use the web for private conversations but instead are making them public. Virtually 90 percent of Twitter users make their updates public so everyone can read them and communicate with one another in an open way, like birds. Founder and co-founder Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams used this philosophy when creating the name Twitter. They say it is like the sound a bird makes when they converge with others. So when you hear a chirp on your phone and look down to see what your friends are doing, you can move as one with them.

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Happy 30th birthday to the compact disc! It?s amazing that 30 years ago a few Dutchmen at Philips with some help from Sony created the Compact Disc as part of an optical digital audio disc demo in 1979. Three years later on October 1, 1982, Billy Joel?s 52nd Street became the first CD album released in Japan alongside Sony?s CDP-101 Compact Disc Player. Empire buy

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Seems like only yesterday when I bought my first CD, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? by The Cranberries back in 1993 and made the transition from tapes to CDs. Over the years, my CDs have collected more and more dust and have recently only been used to download music onto my computer and then recycled into coasters. Like the revolution witnessed in the 1980?s, the music medium is transforming once again as digital storage emerges and replaces CD collections.

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Like most consumers, I download data onto my personal computer and then synch it from one device to another or stream through a home network to an entertainment system. The drawback of this is if my hard drive crashes, all data is lost and is very difficult to recover. My computer has a 500GB hard drive that comes standard on most home computers but sometimes this is not enough space for some, including myself. So I switched from storing data on my hard drive onto a home server.

A home server acts as a central storage hub for a consumer?s personal content and multiple devices can link to it in order to stream or otherwise access music, video, or other data. A home server will even automatically backup all the content stored on any connected device and servers are far less likely to crash. According to a Forrester Research survey, the number of people viewing photos on their computers rose from 26 percent in 2002 to 47 percent in 2007. The percentage of those owning a MP3 player went up from 3 percent to 36 percent during the same time period.

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My digital content has grown substantially over the years and burning everything onto a CD is not feasible anymore. Personally, I download music off of iTunes, store it onto my home server, and organize all of my content digitally. Apparently many consumers are going this route as studies show that over the past few years CD singles sales have drastically fallen.

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Sine I download all my music via the internet and store all my data onto my home server, CD usage for me has dropped substantially. CDs went from a new music medium, to data storage devices, which eventually led to the emergence of digital content. I?ll always be reminded of the CDs 30 year history every time I place my glass on that Cranberries CD on my coffee table.

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As I was talking to my uncle in Poland the other day and my aunt showed me her new haircut over a webcam while my grandmother listened in on a landline from her home, we all reminisced about how not so long ago we would have had to make a reservation with an operator to make a long-distance phone call. If you were lucky and got through, you literally had to yell into the phone to be heard. The conversations were always way too brief.

Skype is a public voice over IP (VoIP) application that allows users to call each other from PC to PC free-of-charge and set up conference calls between multiple users. It also offers additional services for a small fee that allows users to make calls on landlines via Skype-out, calling in to the service (Skype-in), voicemail, instant messaging, file transfer, and video calling. Skype is available in 28 languages and is used in almost every country around the world. Thus far, there have been over 250 million downloads worldwide.

Skype was created by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis both from Tallinn, Estonia in August 2003. Since its creation, the service has experienced rapid growth and was acquired by eBay in September 2005 for $2.6 billion. To this day, the service continues to gain popularity among a variety of user types. With the current recession, many companies are looking for ways to reduce communication charges. However, many organizations are skeptical of the open VOIP network.

Some of the drawbacks of Skype include no central call-log from an organization and the file transfer is only person to person. The limitation means that calls cannot go through a company?s email for virus-scanning, logging, and content control, allowing viruses and Spyware to possibly enter while confidential information leaves the organization. Additionally, voice and video calls cannot be recorded because the encryption is proprietary.

Most established businesses are not interested because they have already made significant investments in their telecommunication infrastructure including voicemail, conference room telephone systems, video conference equipment, telephone wiring, telephones, headsets, speakerphones, telephone operators, call center equipment, printed and online telephone directories, local and long distance contracts, etc. It is clear why companies would hesitate to change their intricate phone systems with Skype. However, many believe that as the technology improves and gains popularity within the corporate market, Skype will eventually become the norm.

In the meantime, I will keep reminding my grandma that she doesn?t need to yell into the computer?s microphone and continue to acknowledge that my Aunt?s hair looks great.? I?ve now installed Skype onto my G1 phone so that my friends and family can reach me at a moments notice even though we are about 6,000 miles away from each other. What a small world indeed!

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