travel

PlanetEye to blend travel photos, trip planning

Update: After this story went live, PlanetEye spokespeople contacted me to say that the version of the site reviewed here is not the site they'll be pushing out to the public. That site, scheduled to go live on July 10, will have the new, smarter Travel Pack feature that was pitched to me in a meeting. As I say at the end of the review, I recommend you hold off on trying the site until that new version is online.

With the cost of travel and fuel continuing to rise, I don't understand why anyone would launch or … Read more

United Airlines demonstrates what happens when pricing power gets out of control

I posted last week on Oracle's clever but annoying move of raising prices so they could discount and still maintain margins. Today I saw that United is raising prices AND requiring an overnight stay--the bane of the business traveler. This royal pain will start in October and remind us all how much we hate to fly.

Taking an economic view of the situation, I think we all understand that fuel prices have gone through the roof and that affects United dramatically. But I would think that it makes a great deal more sense to pack the planes full (… Read more

5 tips for a techie traveling abroad

This post is part of a multi-part series about tech abroad.

It's summertime and that means that people across the world are taking vacations to faraway places. Many people would be satisfied with checking in on their e-mail every couple of weeks, for five minutes, at an Internet cafe while on vacation. Techies like me, however, crave a higher level of contact with their information online. You may not be as much of a power user as Robert Scoble, however the world keeps moving even though you are abroad.

Everyone knows to bring power adapters to hook up their electronics, but here are some tips that you may not have considered, that I have gathered during my stay in Europe so far.

1. Free Wi-Fi is scarce, take advantage when you can. You may luck out and land at a hotel or hostel where they provide free Internet, but most of the time you are going to have to pay or go without access. Orange is a popular provider of paid W-iFi in Europe, for reasonable prices (15 euros for 10 hours). They have a lot of hotspots, but you are going to want to watch your time and not go overboard there. Some cafes will have free Wi-Fi and usually advertise it on a sticker in their window. For a more casual setting, the McDonald's, on the Champs Elysses in Paris, has free Wi-Fi to go with your Royale with Cheese. Some public places, such as the parks by Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower, also provide access.

If and when you find free Wi-Fi access, jump over to Google Reader and download your RSS items with its offline Google Gears functionality. If you take the couple of seconds to do this, you can catch up on your news even when you're not basking in the glow of free Wi-Fi.

2. With that said, bring your Wi-Fi enabled phone. iPhone users take note, a quick download of your emails onto your phone saves you a lot of trouble of lugging a laptop around. This helps you to leverage the scarce free Wi-Fi to the best of your ability. While you will benefit greatly from having Wi-Fi on your phone, remember to turn off data roaming, or else you will rack up a massive bill during your trip.

… Read more

Delta testing cell phone-based airline check-in

If you're flying Delta Air Lines out of New York's LaGuardia Airport, you can now flash your cell phone to get onboard. On Tuesday, the airline rolled out a partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to test out a "paperless check-in"--passengers download a boarding pass onto their cell phones and have it scanned by the TSA at the airport's security checkpoint as well as when they board the plane.

Fellow domestic carrier Continental is already testing a similar program.

The speedier check-in is limited to cell phone customers who can access the mobile … Read more

What happens in Vegas winds up on the Web

In the tech community, Las Vegas has somewhat of a bad rap. Sin City, after all, is home to so many large-scale industry trade shows (case in point: CES) that just mentioning the name is bound to induce a headache, and not in the I-got-plastered-and-lost-all-my-money sense.

The guys at Thrillist, the e-mail newsletter for 20- and 30-something dudes, may have changed that a bit. To celebrate their recent launch of a Vegas-centric newsletter (joining New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and soon Miami), as well as the fact that trendy airline JetBlue is one of their biggest sponsors, founders … Read more

Google's Brin books space flight

NEW YORK--Google co-founder Sergey Brin has put down a $5 million deposit to book a flight into space with the space tourism company Space Adventures.

The company announced Wednesday that Brin will be the founding member of its Orbital Mission Explorers Circle, a group of six individuals who will each make a $5 million down payment to book a seat on a future orbital space flight.

Google and its co-founder Brin have long support space exploration. The company has sponsored the Google Lunar X Prize, a $25 million competition to land an unmanned craft on the moon.

"I am … Read more

TravelMuse tells you where to go (on vacation)

If you can't make up your mind about where to go on vacation and are comfortable buying prepackaged vacation deals, there's a new site for you: TravelMuse. You tell it where you live, what your budget is, and what you like, and it will suggest destinations and hotels.

The idea could be a very positive contributor to domestic harmony. But how's the execution?

While the "Find Inspiration" feature of TravelMuse is smart and very Web 2.0-ish, the rest of the site has a somewhat retro business model. The content on TravelMuse is all professionally … Read more

Cut the cord with Logitech V320 wireless mouse, $10 shipped (after rebate)

For notebook users, a cordless mouse is essential gear. If your notebook has Bluetooth, by all means go for a Bluetooth mouse. If not, you can't go wrong with the Logitech V320, which Buy.com has on sale for $10 shipped (after a $15 mail-in rebate). Sign up for Google Checkout and the price drops to zero (after a $10 instant rebate).

The V320 relies on a USB dongle for 2.4GHz wireless communication with the notebook, which is a bit of a hassle. But at least you don't have to worry about losing it: The dongle tucks … Read more

Offbeat Guides: Build your own travel books

David Sifry, founder and former CEO of Technorati, has apparently had enough of new media and of blogs. His new venture is attacking a traditional business: printed travel guides. As of this writing, the site is in private beta. (Webware's invitations to beta test this service, mentioned in previous versions of this story, have all been given out.)

Offbeat Guides is a service for printing customized travel books. When you go to the site, it asks you five basic questions: Your name, your destination, your trip's dates, where you live, and where you're staying (if you know). … Read more