140 characters isn't always enough.

Last week (Feb 15-22, 2009) I visited the Iberostar Costa Dorada in Puerta Plata. It’s an all inclusive resort that is visited by Canadians, Americans, Brits, Belgians, Germans, etc.

Overall, I give this place a 5/10 based on the 7 other all inclusive resorts I have visited including 2 other Iberostar properties (Bavaro, Veradero).

Detailed Ratings

• Check-In: 6/10. It was quick, but the attendant did not inform me about things like safe rental leaving me to have to pursue that information after I had already gone to my room. They strictly adhered to the 3pm check-in rule, which I think is a bit tired — they were just unwilling to do the work to reallocate rooms.
• Customer Service: 2/10. I emailed the resort 2 weeks in advance and laid out some room preferences based on feedback I saw on dr1.com. They responded promptly telling me they would try to accommodate me the best that they could. When I checked in I was actually given a room that was the polar opposite of what I asked for (right next to the lobby). I probably could have bribed my way into a better room (have done it before), but I was determined on this trip to just go with the flow and de-stress. It turned out that it rained 3/7 days, so being close to the lobby had its advantages. Also, the resort is small — so not a big deal really. They just get an F for effort in this case.
• Room: 6/10. Everything worked, it was clean, but both of us had sore lower backs all week from the bed. We have had much nicer rooms elsewhere for cheaper, and they also came with room service which this resort does not offer.
• Grounds: 7/10. I think they cut back on labor and only have one crew working the grounds. I had dead grass in front of my balcony.
• Lobby Bar: 8/10. Very good service and there are decent brands like Johnny Walker, Tanqueray and Smirnoff. They lose points for not making drinks with fresh ingredients and using bar mix for everything.
• Pool: 5/10. It was freezing, has no built in bar, was filled with children. I like a resort that makes the pool area fun for kids and adults. This reminded me of a pretty municipal pool.
• Beach: 6/10. They struggle to keep it clean, and it is just not as inviting as Punta Cana. Very rough at times. Excellent if you are a proficient wind surfer, however…probably world class.
• Buffets: 5/10. Same things, eevvvveeerrrryy day and the cost cutting is pretty obvious compared to previous stays with this chain.
• WIFI: 9/10. It costs $13/day or $5/30 min…but it works very well but only in the lobby area. You can sometimes get a signal from rooms in building 9 that are closest to the lobby.
• Gym: 8/10. Good quality equipment that is in good repair.
• Spa: 9/10. I had a massage that rivalled anything I have had here in Canada from a registered massage therapist (RMT). We didn’t try anything else there, but they seem very professional.
• Entertainment: 3/10. (kids: 8/10). The entertainment is pretty repetitive and the same that you see at most resorts. They do go out of their way to make the kids have fun though, which may be an important selling point for the parents out there.
• Value for money: 3/10. I paid about $4500 for the package for 2 people through AC Vacations from Montreal, including Business Class seating on the flight. I feel I could have spent ~$3000 elsewhere in the area and had just as good or better experience.

Tips

If you are planning to visit this resort, here are a few tips.

• If you plan to charge or plug in any appliances with 3 prongs on the plug…they won’t work. You need some kind of adapter to go from 2 prong to 3 prong. A modified extension cord would work, or even something fashioned from some wire, a male 2 prong and a female 3 prong from home depot. I think the third prong is a ground. Also note that the plugs are all recessed so you can’t plug in brick chargers like those that come with your Blackberry, RAZR, etc. You’ll need an extension cord. iPhone 3G chargers work.
• TV has AUX input on channel 1. I had my Zune plugged into it all week.
• The maid hordes face cloths, and only willingly leaves them occasionally….so talk to her and she will give you them…but you usually have to go after her daily.
• Get the safe key when you check in. It is $2 a day.
• People reserve chairs very early in the morning… I mean 6 or 7AM!
• Pay for WiFi in the lobby around the corner from reception, right next to the internet room. They will give you an expiring username and password. Many power plugs in the lobby are disabled, so find a plug that has a lamp plugged into it.
• If you are desperate for real food, you can go late to the a la carte restaurants and bribe them to cook you a steak sandwich (I heard this from a British traveller I met there…)
• The hotel store only takes pesos or credit card. You can buy pesos at the front desk (32 for $1 US, 23 for $1 CAD all last week).

This morning I “un-friended” 67 of you. Sorry, but really — don’t take it personally. Its all part of a process that I have devised to make social media more useful to me.

Most of the 67 people I un-friended were people I either barely knew — perhaps they were colleagues that I rarely interacted with. Some were people who were just on facebook to be there, and really didn’t share or interact too much. A very small percentage of people I removed, well, it shouldn’t be a surprise to you and you know who you are. ’nuff said.

When I say I want things like Facebook to be more useful to me, what I mean is that I want it to be a list of people who I either know well, have a history with, are relatives or are people I generally admire and would not mind sharing things with on a regular basis. If you don’t quite fall into that category that’s no big deal since you very likely fit into the “professional contact” category, and are probably connected to me at LinkedIn so we’ll hopefully keep in touch.

Besides… isn’t it weird to have hundreds of “friends” on facebook, but you perhaps only spend time or talk to a handful of them? Feels that way to me.

Update: Check out this link — Burger King was running a program where you get a free whopper for every 10 friends you drop on Facebook. It seems they wanted to market their product by making you fat and friendless.

Just a quick review while I wait to board my flight…

Living in Ottawa I often find it better to fly out of Montreal (YUL), and if I have an early morning flight staying at one of the airport hotels is a no brainer.

Generally I go to the Hilton…but this time I tried Aloft which is next door to the Hilton and is kind of like a mini W hotel.

The checkin experience itself was great, they just swiped my credit card and handed me the room key — no signing, etc. The room was small but VERY trendy and functional complete with a big wall mounted plasma. Another neat feature is a desk mounted connection station so you can connect your HDMI, VGA or standard component video/audio right into the TV. Wireless internet is free and works well.

There is a lounge area, which is very comfortable with good music playing but beware… drinks are W style…that’s to say… $$$. The 24 hour snack store in the lobby is a nice touch…nicer so if it was stocked with fresh food consistently

The only negative I can really point out is that the shuttle service to YUL is nowhere near as frequent as the one from the Hilton next door.

All in all, I give the place an 8.5/10 for an Airport hotel.

I just got a new Zune 120, and discovered that the following settings work pretty well for converting/ripping videos for viewing on the Zune 120. These setting may also work on the Zune 80 and earlier because I am not using the h.264 codec.

I am primarily converting Xvid content, but as long as you have the K-lite codec pack, you should be fine with other content — in theory at least .

(This is for Handbrake 0.9.3)

• Output settings: M4V file, Large file size, web optimized are unchecked.
• Picture Settings: Crop=Automatic, Size=Don’t change, Anamorphic=Strict, Filters unchecked or none.
• Video: Codec=MPEG-4 (FFmpeg), Framerate=Same as source, 2-Pass=unchecked, Target Size=empty, Avg bitrate=1200
• Audio: source=Automatic (unless you know better…), codec=AAC, Mixdown=Stereo, Samplerate=48, Bitrate=160

Now, this works for me, and I have not done extensive testing. Your mileage may vary.

I created a preset that can go in the Handbrake installation directory, in the file “user_presets.xml”.

It looks like:

The above would have to be pasted under the root node of the user_presets.xml file along with any other custom presets you may have.

Good luck!

Hi everyone,

MixMatchMusic released a URL shortening service today that is oriented toward Music related content, called tra.kz. I decided to whip up a quick actionscript library for it, which you can all use for fun.

Download it here: Trakz.zip

Here is how you might use it:

import mx.controls.Alert;
import kz.tra.Shorten;
import kz.tra.events.TrakzEvent;

private function callTrakz():void
{
    var trakz:Shorten = new Shorten("myAPIKey");
    trakz.addEventListener("urlShortened", uS);
    trakz.shortenURL("http://adobe.com/go/foobar");
}

private function uS(event:TrakzEvent):void
{
    mx.controls.Alert.show(event.shortURL + " Failure: " + event.failed.toString());
}
]]>

Ping me if you need an API key…

I’m working a bit more on my media manager, and cooked up this useful code that others may benefit from. It uses the TRYNT Movie IMDB Web Service (v2) which, given a search term will return some IMDB URLs. Surprisingly, IMDB has no public API, so the TRYNT guys are using a data replica from IMDB on their own database I think… Here is the first pass code… I’m cleaning it up locally but it is good enough to see how this works…

private function openIMDB(aviName:String):void {
  var movieName:String = aviName.slice(0, aviName.indexOf("."));
  var svc:HTTPService = new HTTPService();
  var vars:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
  vars.t = movieName;
  svc.url = "http://www.trynt.com/movie-imdb-api/v2/?" + vars.toString();
  svc.resultFormat = "e4x";
  svc.addEventListener("result",handleIMDBQuery);
  svc.send();
}
private function handleIMDBQuery(event:ResultEvent):void {
  if (event.result['movie-imdb'].error == "true") {
    mx.controls.Alert.show("Unable to find this movie on IMDB.", "IMDB error");
  }
  else {
    var url:String = event.result['movie-imdb']['matched-url'];
    navigateToURL(new URLRequest(url), "_blank");
  }
}

Note to the TRYNT people… My application is for personal use, so I’ll put the attribution right here. If I ever publish the AIR app, I’ll include your icon and a link to it…