Seems travel site Orbitz is beginning to add (in a small way) analytics to their ticket sales aggregation. I requested possible flights to London. The resulting menu of possible flights came back, topped by this new factoid: “Lowest fare below beats this trip’s 30-day average by $15.” This isn’t much on its own, since we don’t know whether the average is calculated from a) what people have paid b) the lowest offers or c) all ticket prices. (My bet is b.) In any case, the calculation represents Orbitz’ first step beyond pure reitteration of traditional travel functionality.

Application service providers start off selling an Internet enabled version of a traditional software service, but really come into their own when they leverage their meta view and massive data stream and layer automated consulting on top of the traditional service.

Sparteneity: “We do websites. Small ones. For ‘low-end’ clients, such as minor non-profits, musicians, artists, writers, and even (yes) local political candidates. But only if you are ready and willing to have a weblog as a central part of your site.”

Jennifer Bayot: “Krista S. Boughey of Hanford, Calif., recently learned that she and her husband, Britt, would have to pay $8 a month to receive paper invoices for their auto and student loans from USAA. Online statements and automatic payments would be free.” And “A number of studies and surveys show that the average company saves about $1 a bill by moving from a paper-based system to an electronic system.” Other companies are joining the pay-for-paper herd. The trend should deepen other online habits and suck more people into e-life. Once you are compelled to pay two bills online, why not do them all there?

Ever angered by web-stupidity, Olivier Travers, “Since there’s absolutely no value for me to give real information about myself to 99% of web sites that ask for it, I’ve made it a policy to feed them with the less credible bullshit I could come up with. I understand publishers want to profile users to answer advertiser requests, [but]… I have yet to see a site which does anything even remotely useful to me with my personal profile… Join me and make Afghan rich old ladies the fastest growing segment in online demographics. You need to make $200K or more a year.”

You’ve already read it, but for the record, here’s the fanstastic interview about Google’s UI approach. They’ve got eight people working full-time on UI.

Cashets “are designed specifically for small purchases — $1 or less — that you ordinarily can’t make on the Internet because sellers have a minimum.” Seems astonishingly simple. (Via BoingBoing.

Launched Sunday, Groxis’s Grokker is the latest attempt to offer a visual representation(s) of information groupings. “84 percent of Web surfers go no further than the first page of document titles in searching for information,” quotes the NYTimes.

According to an oft-told anecdote, “President Clinton once blocked an attempt to allow television stations to buy daily newspapers in the same city because, he said, if the so-and-so who owned the anti-Clinton Little Rock Democrat-Gazette had owned the leading TV station in Little Rock, too, Clinton would never have become President.” From Nicholas Lemann’s profile of Michael Powell in Ocober 7, 2002 edition of The New Yorker.

The New York Times Company played hardball in pushing the Washington Post Company to sell its 50% share of the International Herald Tribune, an internal Post memo said today.

The Herald Tribune, co-owned by the two newspaper groups, lost $10 million in 2001 and is set to lose $7.8 million in 2002, a source told me. Although the international paper’s circulation is 263,000, a record high, the IHT has been hurt by a collapse in travel and mobile phone advertising.

The New York Times has taken an increasingly aggressive stance internationally, partnering earlier this year with Le Monde to publish its own news in English in the French daily newspaper’s pages.

The two companies have been negotiating in recent weeks about the IHT’s future.

The Post memo said, ”If the Post did not sell, the Times said it would start its own international edition anyway, intending to sell as many copies as allowed under the IHT partnership agreement. The Times also said it would block any cash infusion into the IHT.”

”The Post was prepared to sustain the IHT’s modest operating losses until further efficiencies could be achieved and business conditions improved. But the Times made clear that staying the course was not an option. So it was not possible to remain in partnership with an unwilling partner.”

”This decision was made with great reluctance and sadness, and little choice,” the Post memo said.

In its own internal memo, the Times said, “We have been extremely proud of The Times’s role in the IHT partnership, which began in 1967. Over the past 35 years, the IHT has earned its reputation as the premier international newspaper for opinion leaders and decision makers. During this time, The Washington Post has been an exceptionally good partner. Now, as we await the closing of this transaction, we are anxiously looking forward to working even more closely with our IHT news and business colleagues as we continue bringing quality journalism to its readers around the world.”

The deal was for less than $75 million, a source told Reuters.

The IHT is based in Paris, France and employs 250 there.

The Washington Post Company reports Q3 numbers: “Revenue generated by the company’s online publishing activities, primarily washingtonpost.com, totaled $9.1 million for the third quarter of 2002, versus $7.7 million for 2001; online revenue totaled $25.3 million for the first nine months of 2002, versus $23.1 million for 2001. Local and national online advertising revenues grew 51 percent and 50 percent for the third quarter and first nine months of 2002, respectively. Revenue at the Jobs section of washingtonpost.com increased 11 percent in the third quarter of 2002 but was down 6 percent for the first nine months of 2002.”