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By
Leslie Walker Washington
Washington Post LAS VEGAS
I was eating a sandwich at my desk in Washington last week
when I suddenly wondered what it would cost to fly here
on the spur of the moment to attend the Consumer Electronics
Show.
I went to Expedia.com, typed in "Baltimore" and "Las Vegas,"
and almost instantly saw that the round-trip airfare would
be about $500. When I selected a flight, the Web service
automatically presented a list of hotel deals at casinos
that still had rooms available, some at under $50 a night.
A half-hour later, I was booked to leave on Sunday. The
total package cost $737 for four nights.
The point isn't that I got a bargain; I met people here
this week who purchased much cheaper flights. It's that
Expedia.com has grown so idiot-proof it can help you book
a trip on a whim over lunch. The experience shows how the
big Web services that survived the dot-com crash are starting
to prove their utility. While some still waste enormous
amounts of my time, others are proving valuable in subtle
ways, as I discovered on the way here.
Buying an electronic ticket, for instance, let me bypass
a long line of paper-ticket holders at Baltimore-Washington
International Airport. Continental's e-ticket machine asked
me to stick in a credit card to identify myself, then spit
out a boarding pass a few seconds later. A minute later,
a ticket clerk called out my name to check my bag and I
was on my way to security.
The show's organizers helped me prepare for the extravaganza.
Before I left, software on their Web site enabled me to
download into my handheld the weeklong schedule of events
and a list of more than 1,800 exhibitors. With time to kill
on the plane, I scrolled through the electronic agenda,
clicking on the names of speakers and receptions that interested
me to add them to my calendar. And the searchable list of
booth numbers was nice.
On the show floor, a start-up called HereUare provided a
wireless network that let me zap my digital photos back
to The Washington Post's Web site from my laptop computer.
Usually, I have to wait until I return to my hotel room
to transmit my photos. But HereUare was one of many companies
here touting the benefits of a rapidly growing wireless
Internet network standard dubbed "wi-fi."
All in all, the experience reminded me how the Internet
can change people's behavior when it's quick and easy to
use, in contrast to early Web services that typically made
you click through 10 or more pages to learn anything. In
the past year, Expedia.com and other surviving dot-coms
have greatly simplified their established features even
as they added new ones. Expedia doesn't always have the
lowest fares, but I find it easier to use than rivals, especially
since it added "change your search" boxes on the side of
your computer screen that lets you modify one part of your
itinerary and reprice it all without retyping the rest.
In addition, Expedia and other Web sites have been tweaking
their designs to work on mobile devices, though they still
have miles to go before ordinary people will book flights
from cell phones. I don't even carry an Internet-enabled
cell phone yet because the tiny screens on the ones I've
tested so far proved annoying. That's part of why I came
to Las Vegas, to check out how the Net is going mobile.
I don't usually attend the Consumer Electronics Show because
it revolves around hardware. Increasingly, though, Internet
connections are being built into electronic devices of all
kinds, throwing business models for entire industries into
flux. Makers of products as varied as TVs, home stereos
and cars showed off prototypes containing embedded Internet
hookups. Many were designed to let people pull down music,
movies and text from the Internet.
Yet manufacturers seem unable as yet to design menus simple
enough to help people manage their expanding personal libraries
of digital content. Much of what I saw was too complicated
for anyone but Albert Einstein to figure out, and too expensive
for all but Bill Gates to take home.
Device makers are confronting a similar kind of menu madness
that Web sites had to overcome in the early days, only compounded
because screens on portable gear tend to be smaller than
those on desktop computers. But much as Expedia and other
established Web services managed to simplify their menus,
I suspect established gearmakers will eventually simplify
their newfangled Internet radios and Web-linked home thermostats.
After all, I doubt I'd even be here if Expedia hadn't offered
a package deal I could buy quickly. I was in no mood to
research and pay for flights and hotels separately.
Other Web sites helped me judge whether Expedia was feeding
me good information. Google.com, my favorite search engine,
found the official show Web site in a heartbeat, along with
every hotel I searched on.
I checked out a few hotels directly at their own Web sites
and make other price comparisons as well. Rival service
Travelocity.com offered nothing as cheap as Expedia, and
a visit to Continental.com showed the carrier's ticket price
was more than double Expedia's. In the end, Expedia closed
the transaction quickly because it had previously stored
my credit card number, along with my frequent-flier number
for Continental.
A few clicks and three days later, here I was at a show
known as the Gold Coast of Gadgetville.
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