• Published on

    Can you trust tripadvisor?

    Can you trust
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    When Stephen Kaufer was planning a holiday in Mexico about a decade ago, he couldn’t decide which hotel to book, and a thought occurred to him that might have occurred to any holiday-maker: “Wouldn’t it be neat if there was a website where anybody could review any hotel or restaurant and share it with the world?” Wish you’d got in there first? Kaufer’s tripadvisor.com is now the world’s most popular travel website by a country mile with around 60 million visitors a month and growing. But is it really the answer to everyone’s travel-related prayers?
  • Published on

    Welcome to twenty thirteen!

    It's official. By a landslide (well, 3-0), visitors to this website have voted for the shorter version of how to say this year, so the vote is now closed, and I hope you'll all go around calling this year 'twenty thirteen' rather than 'two thousand (and) thirteen'.

    To be truthful, I'm relieved about this, as it seems pretty obvious to me, but I still hear people calling it 'two thousand and thirteen' every day, particularly news announcers on the BBC and CNN, who I would think should know better. After all, we didn't run around at the end of the last millennium talking about 'one thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine', did we? And can you imagine us texting each other at the end of this millennium, saying 'OK. C u at 4pm on 4 March two thousand nine hundred and ninety nine'? No way, we'll need shorter ways to communicate by then...if indeed humans are communicating at all.

    So thanks for your participation - all three of you - and enjoy all the wonders that twenty thirteen has in store!

  • Published on

    So what year is this?

    Don't get me wrong - I'm not that hungover that I still don't know which year we're in, but I'm having a problem with how to say it, so please help me out here and let me know how you say the name of this year.
    When I hear people say 2013, they seem to be split about 50-50 between these two ways, so let's see what you think is correct.