Robot spider terrorizes lazy translators!

I come across so many poorly translated websites on the internet that it gave me the following idea as to how a language translation company could generate leads: build a robot or spider program that crawls websites searching for errors. Program the spider so that once it finds an error, it then notifies the programmer and automatically emails the website owner or webmaster. Some standard blurb like "Dear Website Owner, while looking at your website we saw that there are errors in the translation into English. This creates an unprofessional impression of your website and your services. If you would like this and any other translation errors corrected, please email us."




I'm not a computer programmer, so I have to ask those who ARE and are reading this: how feasible would this be? I imagine you'd probably need to be able to program the spider to find a specific incorrect phrase like "The customers is satisfied". Or could you set it up to substitute the word 'customers' for any plural noun, so that when it comes across the plural noun clashing with the 'is', it can identify it as an error and flag it.

Cheap accommodation: sleep in a New York coffin !

So next idea: I realized recently that there are next to no capsule hotels in New York City. Are there any at all? For those who don't know, capsule hotels (or coffin hotel as they are sometimes known) come from Japan and look like this:



Guest space is reduced in size to a plastic block roughly 2 m by 1 m by 1.25 m, providing room to sleep and that's about it. There may be a TV if it's a fancy shmancy one. The capsules are stacked, two units high or more. Luggage is usually stored in a communal locker area away from the capsule. Washing facilities are communal. The advantage of such a hotel is the price, usually around $16–34 per night.

I mentioned it to a friend who got extremely excited by the idea. Since we were at a bar and therefore unable to access the internet, we made various conjectures as to what would be involved.

- male and female capsules to be separated into different areas
- vending machines in the communal area could bring in additional revenue
- set it up near railway station therefore probably the Penn Station area, maybe 10th or 11th Avenue where rent / property would be slightly cheaper.
- need to prevent homeless people adopting it as some kind of dosshouse. Prohibitive pricing therefore necessary?

We became convinced that there must be some regulatory hotel body that prevents their existence in New York otherwise surely there'd be a few.

This morning I checked on wikipedia and saw that there's just one hotel listed in NY as being a capsule hotel:

http://www.pickwickarms.com

(But I think this is a misnomer. Their rooms are HUGE compared to what you get in a real capsule hotel)

If you were a tourist in NYC and on a low budget, would you stay in our capsule hotel?


UPDATE: June 25

OK. So in order to judge whether or not there's going to be some law that'll stop this particular idea, I did about 4 hours research on the internet.

- Yotel is the brainchild of Yo! founder Simon Woodroffe
- The central London Yotel will be priced at £80 for an overnight stay, and the airport hotels at £40 for four hours
- A third hotel will open in central London in 2007, as part of a plan to be in all prime city centres and key airport locations in the next five to 10 years.
- EasyHotel plans to use demand-based pricing to reduce vacancies. The fewer people want to stay at a given time, the lower the price will be. (Easyhotel is from the guy who gave the world Easyjet, Mr. Stelios Haji-Ioannou, a Greek lad). EasyHotel plans to rent rooms for $9.75 a night.

If you're interested, here's where I did the background reading:

http://www.frommers.com/articles/4359.html

http://www.caterersearch.com/Articles/2006/03/16/305754/hotels-touch-of-luxury-on-a-budget.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/travel/08cheapchic.html?ex=1273204800&en=50bad28e4ef64f4c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

http://www.japanaddicted.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2431


So, I learned much about small cabin-like hotels from the likes of Yotel and Nitenite, but precious little about capsule hotels in the USA.

Why not?

Why not? Why not?

Whynotwhynotwhynot, goddamit?!

Coz they really do not seem to exist! The only two references I came across for capsule hotels were from two guys, Brett and Brehd, that run a blog commenting on building developments in Knoxville (Jeeze!):
http://www.knoxpatch.com/?p=553

And a techie guy named Jan Chipcase who even has a photo on his blog: a view from his capsule hotel in San Francisco:
http://www.janchipchase.com/blog/archives/2007/03/ideo_presentati.html

Is that real, Jan? Or did you photoshop it? Because I can't find ANY other reference on the internet to capsule hotels in San Fran!

So I emailed the trio of characters above, but so far have heard nothing back.

Another thing I did was create the following text:

Hello John,

I came across your website while doing some research on the internet. I am investigating the feasibility of opening a capsule hotel in New York City. (I'm sure you have at least heard of the concept, which comes from Japan?) No one seems to be able to tell me whether such a densely packed hotel is actually legal or not according to city laws. Do you have any wise advice you could provide me with or at least a few pointers? Is there some paragraph of hotel regulations that would immediately knock our business concept on the head...

Sincerely,


...and email it to all the following hotel experts of some degree or other:

1. various professors of law and real estate at the Hotel and Hospitality School of Cornell http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/

2. Hotel Industry Consultants www.pinnacle-advisory.com

3. Juliana Shallcross, Senior Editor of www.HotelChatter.com

4. Hotel Industry Consultant www.jeffcoy.com

Feedback ranged from " I don't have any experience or knowledge on this type of hotel" (which I found kind of amazing, considering even I had heard of capsule hotels and I've never been to Japan!) to advice referring me back to one lawyer here in New York that I had actually phoned up and quizzed already.

The longest and most helpful response came from ...

5. www.melvingoldconsulting.com with Mr. Gold from the UK even offering to put me in touch with the Yotel people!

But the end result? No one really knew off the top of their head.

So, finally, I threw together the following mock-up of an ad and put it on craigslist to at least get a feel for what demand there might be out there:






.....................
CRAIGSLIST: New York accommodation - inexpensive and cool sleeping quarters

Inexpensive accommodation available for tourists in midtown Manhattan area. Our Japanese style capsule hotel offers you a clean and compact sleeping module. An ultra cool and hip place to stay in The Big Apple. Bathrooms are communal but very hygienic. Male and female quarters are separated. Friendly and welcoming staff. Ideal for students or those on a low budget. We are located a few blocks west of Penn Station. For $70 per night, you will not find cheaper accommodation in such a great and convenient location.

To enquire about availability, email us:

1. your exact dates and
2. number of guests

We will email you back more exact details about our accommodation facilities including photos, availability and how to reserve a sleeping capsule.
.....................

...and, because I know that Craigslist removes it's postings within 7 days, I'm also throwing it up over here too at this spin off blog: http://new-york-capsule-hotel.blogspot.com/


But so far, about 4 days later, how many people have responded?

None.

Are we barking up a wrong tree here?

Input and ideas welcome... Help!