Travel planning service Yapta has a cool new feature for registered users that lets you track price drops or award seats based on your frequent-flier mileage. It'll keep an eye out for deals that match how many miles you have saved up, and give you an alert when they're up for grabs. When used properly this system could net you free or heavily discounted tickets alongside letting you know about potential price drops.
In addition to tracking single seats, you can have it track deals on several seats on the same flight. This works for any number of seats, and can get you deals you might not see with single-seat searches.
On any flight you can now track price drops and free seats by your frequent-flier account balance.
(Credit: Yapta Inc.)Currently the program supports frequent-flier programs from five airlines, including Alaska, Continental, Delta, US Airways, and United. Notably missing are Southwest and JetBlue's rewards programs, however the two may be added later down the line.
Also worth mentioning is that Yapta does not currently give you the heads-up on any service or redemption fees that can be incurred when using frequent-flier miles toward a discounted flight.
A follow-up to my previous post on Qbox: they fixed whatever was preventing the player from playing songs embedded in MySpace pages, and I can now happily recommend it anybody who frequently listens to music on MySpace, Bebo, or YouTube.
As the Qplayer plays this Sigur Ros video from YouTube, I can conduct a search for a friend's band, and add songs from their MySpace to my playlist. The only drawback: search results appear in a separate window.
(Credit: Screenshot)A quick recap: the Qbox Web site lets you conduct searches for artists across MySpace, Bebo, and YouTube simultaneously. When results appear, you click a small play button on the Web page and the Qplayer launches and begins playing the song or video. You can conduct other searches and add them to your currently playing list, mixing audio and video in whatever order you like. The service is interesting because--like many younger music listeners--it makes no distinction between multiplatinum artists and your best friend's garage band. As long as they're on MySpace, Bebo, or YouTube, they're easily available from Qbox.
Qbox has the concept right, but the overall experience is a little more awkward than it could be--you can conduct searches from the player, but the results appear in a separate Web browser window. Then, when you select an option like "play" or "add to player" from the Web page in the browser, it adds the song back to the Qplayer playlist. I'm not sure why this back-and-forth has to exist, given that Qplayer is basically a modified Web browser--why not just display the search results window in a separate tab within the player? It also has an annoying habit of asking you if you're sure you want to close the player every time you try to shut it down--unnecessary dialog boxes are a pet peeve of mine. But I trust this is just a first iteration, and I'll be keeping track as they improve the service and the software.
Short of keeping a pen, paper, and notebook in your glove compartment, there's not really an easy way to track your driving habits between gas fill-ups. Enter MyMileMarker, a simple and useful solution for figuring out how much driving is costing you in gas, and how many miles you're likely to put on your vehicle in the course of a year. Best of all, you can upload your data to the service for free on the Web, or using your mobile phone.
Setting up your vehicle with MyMileMarker is about as simple as it gets--just put in the make and model of your car, or give it a nickname (useful if you're the type of person who names their car). Then, just give it a base odometer listing and your latest fill-up, and you're good to go. From there, you need simply add your odometer reading every time you add gas to your car, be it a fill-up or just a few gallons.
Figure out how much your car is going to cost you over the next year by recording your driving and gas habits.
(Credit: CNET NEtworks)Here's where the mobile aspect comes in. Instead of using their own mobile service (like a call center or an automated message process), MyMileMarker uses Twitter as their medium for users to send in mileage reports from their phones. Users just need a Twitter account, and to befriend "Mymm." Sending a private message to that user with your mileage will automatically update your records and place the timestamp in for you.
Once you've provided MyMileMarker with three reports, it will begin to crunch your usage statistics. The more you use the service, the better the predictions get. If you miss a few fill ups, the service will do its best to calculate your laziness, and take it into account for the annual forecast.
There are a few missing features I'd like to see added. One is an option to call in your stats using an 800-number, since you're often times busy enough while pumping gas to sit and type. Another is the option to edit past entries. You can only edit or delete your most recent entry, which means if you mistype the price of gas, or your odometer reading, you have to delete, and then re-enter the listing (which you can only do from the Web).
Of course there are several other ways to track your gas usage--like getting a credit card just for gas purchases, and doing monthly odometer tracking on a spreadsheet-- but if you'd like the added benefit of predictions, MyMileMarker shows how scarily expensive owning a vehicle can be. For another take on the service, check out SolutionWatch's hands-on with it last month.
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