Webware

Nokia announced Monday that it has acquired "social atlas" service Dopplr for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition isn't much of a surprise. Last week, reports surfaced claiming the deal was already done, but neither Dopplr nor Nokia would confirm it at the time. Those same reports suggested that Nokia would acquire Dopplr for $15 million to $22 million, but the official announcement did not mention an acquisition price.

Neither Dopplr nor Nokia immediately responded to request for comment.

Dopplr allows users to create trips and share them with friends. The service also provides users with help on each leg of their trip, providing tips and advice on hotels and restaurants. Aside from a Web site, Dopplr is available as an iPhone app. It's also integrated into social services such as Flickr and Twitter.

Nokia said that it doesn't plan to alter Dopplr. In a statement announcing the acquisition, Nokia said that "the acquisition does not change the current Dopplr service." Dopplr founder Marko Ahtisaari echoed that sentiment.

Finding the right services to help you save some cash (and headaches) when you travel can be difficult. That's where this roundup comes in. Below you will find a few resources to help you enjoy a better traveling experience whenever you want to get out of the house.

Get your trip on

Campus Visit If you have a high school student who wants to look for colleges outside of your area, go to Campus Visit and get an Amtrak coupon that gives that student 50 percent off his or her rail fare.

From now through December 13, Amtrak is offering students visiting a college campus the opportunity to save half of the cost of their train tickets. Whoever accompanies the student still needs to pay full price.

Campus Visit, a site that's operated by Collegia, takes care of the coupon process for Amtrak. You'll need to input where you're going, what school you're visiting, and whether or not there's an interview scheduled. As long as the application is approved, you'll have a discount coupon you can use when booking an Amtrak trip. It's a highly commendable service.

Campus Visit helps you get some discounts on Amtrak trips.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Hello Travel Hello Travel is the site for those who don't want to deal with booking a trip on their own.

When you first get to Hello Travel, you'll have the option to research different countries around the world. Once you determine where you want to go, Hello Travel lets you create a full travel itinerary on the site. It's then posted on its agents page where travel agents can review your itinerary, get in touch with you, and build you the trip you want.

I wasn't overly impressed by Hello Travel. Although the service is great as a premise, creating an itinerary took much longer than I would have liked. I'm also unsure what kind of agent response each trip will get. I'd prefer to work with an agent I know, but that's just me. Hello Travel is a nice idea, but your mileage will vary.

Hello Travel helps agents find your trip.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, although on the Web it can be followed by the threat of litigation.

Wired reports that travel search site Kayak.com sent Microsoft a "legal letter" this week based on Microsoft's Bing travel search tool looking too similar to its own. While the Farecast-powered travel search provides differing results from Kayak's, the company is citing its similarity in look and functionality.

A Microsoft spokesperson rebutted the allegation, telling Wired that the latest design was a joint venture with Farecast and the Bing team.

Microsoft redesigned its Farecast travel search engine in conjunction with the launch of Bing.com in late May. Both it and Kayak have the same basic query layout, along with results that can be quickly filtered with sliders and check boxes that sit on the left side of the screen. The two also share certain color patterns and design elements.

That may not be enough to hold up in court though. U.S. copyright law protects creative work that is put in "tangible form." For copied imagery and text that distinction can be easy. However, when it comes to Web design, things begin to get murky. Its defense often relies on the comparison of the code of two sites, as well as the infringement of any company brands or trademarks.

"It is a hard case for Kayak to make because all airline reservation sites look a lot alike--they are trying to convey the same information, so this is not surprising," says Jim DeLong, who is the chairman of the intellectual property practice at Kamlet Reichert's Washington, D.C., office.

"It looks like a legal area called 'trade dress.' And Kayak would be limited to arguing about the use of grey in the left column, and about some of the typography in the same place."

The two sites side by side (click to enlarge)

(Credit: CNET)

Travel search remains one of the most profitable parts of Microsoft's search business alongside its local and shopping search engines. Microsoft purchased Farecast in 2008 to boost its profile in the travel search market. It was then integrated deeply into Microsoft's MSN properties, and now Bing.

Other high-profile design similarities in recent history have involved AOL's beta site, which looked suspiciously close to Yahoo's front page; Google's Chrome browser logo; and Croatian Radiotelevision's BBC-like redesign.

Note: This story was updated at 12:07 p.m. PST with comment from Jim DeLong.

WorldMate, the popular travel planning and organizational service, has expanded its mobile reach onto the iPhone. The two different versions of the app, which were released late Tuesday night (one free, and a premium version that costs a hefty $19.99), give travelers tools to create and track travel itineraries including flights, hotel reservations, rental cars, and any appointments along the way.

The two versions of the app offer identical functionality for core parts of WorldMate's service, like a flight search tool, world clock list, currency conversion, and a heads-up display on what's on your schedule. However, the paid "gold" version comes without any kind of advertising. Feature-wise, it also adds niceties like an automatic flight status checker that, with the soon-to-be-released iPhone OS 3.0, will send you an alert if there's a delay or cancellation of your flight. It also plugs into Google Maps to tack together a rich map with all the places you're visiting on your trip.

Until it gets the live notifications, users of both versions will simply have to use the one-click "check flight status" link. This checks information against WorldMate's delay and cancellation tracker. It also lets you know about any last-minute gate changes.

WorldMate can put your entire travel itinerary in one app, and give you a heads-up if there are any delays or cancellations. It even has mini apps built in, like this currency converter (pictured right)

(Credit: CNET)

The app is quite polished and ran smoothly on my phone. You can get more full-featured versions of the productivity tools that are included in the app by using other, standalone iPhone applications, however WorldMate's strength is that it puts all of those things in one package. This may seem like a trivial matter, but since the iPhone does a lousy job at multitasking, it's nice to have a Swiss army app equivalent.

WorldMate faces competition from TripIt, which has had its own iPhone app since mid-April. It does many of these things in a free package. However, it does not yet have its own notification service. Instead, it takes any delay notifications you get from your carrier and updates its own information. It's also tied into third-party services (via its API) that can alert you to potential changes to your travel plans.

You might be using Expedia or Orbitz to plan your vacation (if you're taking one) this year, but there are some lesser-known travel search sites that could help you plan a better and less expensive trip. These sites will still help you plan your vacation, but they do it in a slightly different way that should help you save some cash.

Fly.com
Fly.com was recently acquired by travel media firm, TravelZoo. Since then, the site has become a great place to find cheap flights across the U.S.

Unlike Expedia, Orbitz, Cheaptickets, and countless other popular travel search sites, Fly.com doesn't require you to buy airline tickets on its pages. Once you input where you're leaving from and where you're going, the site finds flights from the airlines themselves. After you pick your flight, Fly.com redirects you to the airline's site where the fares might be a little cheaper. You can buy the flight directly from the airline.

Fly.com adds another layer to flight search by redirecting you to a different site. But by simultaneously searching through all the airlines and eliminating any hidden fees imposed by travel search sites, you should be able to save money with each trip by using Fly.com. I have.

Hotelicopter
Hotelicopter searches and aggregates results from sites like Hotels.com and Priceline to find you the best deals on both domestic and international hotels.

Hotelicopter should save you some money, since it finds results from over 30 different travel planning sites across the Web. Once you input a destination city, the site returns a list of hotels in that area. You can get information about the hotels and pick which place is best for you. Like Fly.com, Hotelicopter doesn't handle the booking itself, so it will redirect you to the site with the best deal.

Hotelicopter might not be as convenient as services where you can find and book hotels without leaving the site, but in this economy, saving every last dime counts. And based on my experience with the service, Hotelicopter will help you find you a great deal. It's a fine alternative to more popular travel search sites.

There are very few ways to view job openings, book a vacation, or find that perfect home without plowing through multiple websites and advertisements. Alertpedia is a useful website that saves you time by performing filtered searches based on what you're looking for. The search results are delivered in the form of a daily, weekly, or immediate email. The best part? No sign-up required.

Unlike websites like Kayak or Crazedlist, who deliver an immediate search result, Alertpedia saves you time by doing an automatic, periodical search. You can search for weather, traffic, jobs, travel, YouTube videos, and other categories.For example, if you are on a hunt for the best (cheapest) plane tickets from San Francisco to New York, fill out a one-time alert request, specify how often you'd like to be alerted, and Alertpedia takes care of the rest. You will receive weekly or daily emails with a summary of the current travel deals. This can be handy if you're booking travel in advance since it saves you time performing repeat searches on travel websites.

(Credit: Sharon Vaknin/CNET Networks)

A great application for Alertpedia would be for moms and dads. Parents can be alerted on recent health hazards such as the recent breakout of salmonella, or tips for dealing with asthma. Alerts on product recalls, like the recent hooded sweatshirts are also valuable for the health and safety of children.

Though Alertpedia can be very practical, it does have a few weaknesses. When using the service, users should be careful about what filters they choose in their searches. A very general filter, or search term, could lead to endless results. On the other hand, a very specific term could minimize results and render the service useless.

Alertpedia is best utilized for those looking for information on an ongoing basis. Users can not filter their alerts based on travel dates, or set a specific price range for their Craig's List searches. Most importantly, the results are not delivered right away. For those looking for immediate results, other search engines would be more useful.

Travel search site Kayak.com announced Tuesday that it has launched what it calls the "most comprehensive hotel information site on the Web": TravelPost.com. The site provides reviews, content, and rates on more than 140,000 hotels from 200 travel sites. Its content includes descriptions, photos, maps, and reviews from travelers and professionals, as well as integration with Kayak.com's rate search.

Beyond that, TravelPost features Google Maps integration to allow users to search for geographic details about possible vacation spots and its filtering and sorting tools let users narrow their preferences by star rating, property type, brand, and location.

Perhaps most compelling, users will also be able to filter their results based on the reviewer, so they can find similar people to get the most relevant review. Reviewers can be searched for by age, gender, budget, purpose of stay, and which sites they reviewed a hotel on. The site is live now.

Zemanta, a tool that allows users to add relevant content to blog posts and e-mails, announced Tuesday that it has added Last.fm content to its platform. According to the company, bloggers who use the Zemanta tool will be able to add contextual links relevant to Last.fm's tracks, videos, and artist pages. Bloggers using the Zemanta application will start writing about a song, album, or artist, and the tool will instantly pull in the relevant information from Last.fm. (Last.fm is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET News.) The new feature is available now.

Online advertising firm Linkstorm announced recently that it has raised $2.8 million from a variety of angel investors. According to the company, it plans to use the funding to expand its sales and improve its platform.

Online casual game provider Three Melons has raised $600,000 in funding from Santander Bank, the company announced Tuesday. According to the firm, it will use the capital to pay for its expenses and invest in growth. No further details of the funding round were disclosed.

Kayak has a new iPhone application that gives mobile users the same travel search tools found on its Web site. The company is pitching it as a way for passengers who have been stranded at an airport to quickly find and book another flight. I look at it as a better way to navigate travel sites that do not play well with the iPhone's sometimes finicky browser, which is nice since Kayak simply pulls all the results together in one place.

At first blush, power users of the site may find the application a bit lacking, but the advanced features lay hidden. For instance, it does not let you filter how many travelers are in your party, or what airlines you'd like to search from. You can, however set these options after the initial search has been done. The same can be done when searching for hotels to narrow down the results by the hotel's star rating. Ideally it would be nice to set these filters ahead of the search, as it could speed things up if you're on a spotty data connection.

Once you've found a ticket you want to buy there are only two ways to do it: either calling up the airline, or buying it through Kayak.com in Safari. This second option is where things really break down since you have to deal with the carrier's interface, which is neither iPhone-friendly, nor a part of the Kayak application. This is too bad since the application could do some handy things like save your credit card information, and turn your newly purchased flight into a calendar event to stick into your phone's calendar.

On the flip-side of that, the app includes one of Kayak's most useful features--its trends reporting. Here, you can tell it what travel route you're contemplating and it shows you what pricing has been like over the past month, and what it predicts it will be in the next two weeks. In my case this got me waiting a week to buy a ticket for an upcoming trip.

There's also a handy listing of each carrier's telephone number in case you need to speak to a human. This is great if you don't feel like looking it up. Included is how many people had searched for flights through that carrier during the past week, which is cute but somewhat useless.

One thing that's sorely missing, and what I hope will be included in a future version is a built-in calendar. For now you have to pick dates from a simple drop-down menu, which is great if you know exactly when you're traveling, but when brainstorming a potential trip it's nice to see the days of the week. Luckily, at the time I was near my desktop computer to give Outlook a quick check, but you're clearly not going to have that when out and about.

See also: Taking travel services into your own hands: Becoming an on-the-go iPhone travel agent

Kayak for iPhone lets you search for flights and hotel reservations on your phone, and check out pricing trends, too.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

It's almost spring, which means it's time we all start planning our vacations for 2009. To do so, we need sites to help us research new places, decide where we want to go, and figure out what we can still afford.

I've picked five sites that try to do just that. Each site offers outstanding resources to help you find the right destination. And thanks to their user communities that often discuss affordability, you can make a better-informed decision about the price tag.

Driftr
Like other services in this roundup, Driftr relies on the intelligence of the traveling community to provide information about where to go around the world and how to get there. And although much of the information is useful, Driftr isn't a well-trafficked site, so you won't see as many reviews from tourists as you would on TripAdvisor.

Regardless, I liked Driftr's design because it makes researching areas around the globe quick and easy. Its home page features a clickable map that allows you to explore user reviews for places both at home and abroad. In fact, the vast majority of the world is covered by Driftr and almost any country will have at least one review.

At first glance, that's great. But once you start drilling down into the different countries, you quickly realize that the number of reviews for individual locations are generally few. In fact, when I searched for tourist reviews of Florence, Italy, the site only returned two. That's not enough to make a decision.

Aside from reviews, Driftr also allows you to upload photos and videos and discuss the best way to get around a particular city. All those features come in handy when people are actually employing them, but on some pages, only a few sentences were left to discuss the viability of going somewhere, which, once again, leaves little room for you to decide if you want to visit.

I like Driftr because of its potential, but right now, it's not an ideal site due to its sparse user support. As more people join the community, it may be a more worthwhile site, but until then, only use Driftr if you want to go to popular locations like New York City or Rome.

RealTravel
RealTravel is a well-designed site that, much like Driftr, uses the power of the community to deliver travel guides to those who want to learn more about a specific locale. And generally, it delivers a great experience.

The first thing that struck me about RealTravel was its friendly design. Unlike some sites, which feature too much information on the home page, RealTravel makes it easy to find what you're looking for as soon as possible. Want to go to Rome? It's right on the front page. How about Prague? Yep, it's there too. Simply put, finding frequented locations was quick and easy.

Once I started diving into the travel guides, I wasn't as impressed as I was with the site's design. Generally, the travel guides feature basic information you can find on any respective city's Web site. And like on Driftr, the community isn't active enough, yielding a site that's relatively light on solid details about a particular place.

That said, there are some city pages--Rome and Prague, for example--that offer outstanding information, since they're frequented by quite a few RealTravel's users. Those pages offer travel guides, flight guides, a look at where to eat, and more, which makes the site shine. But if you want to travel somewhere that's off the beaten path, don't waste your time with RealTravel. Its community and best content is focused on major locations.

TripAdvisor
There's quite a bit to like about TripAdvisor. Not only does it rely on its huge community to provide great research tools for tourists, it's the best site in this roundup.

TripAdvisor is designed relatively well, although its home page is a little cluttered. Once you get past the clutter, though, you quickly realize that TripAdvisor's destination pages make it easy to find information about a particular city, restaurant, hotel, or landmark. And since there are so many users, you won't have a shortage of good information to go around.

To evaluate TripAdvisor, I looked through its Cancun pages. I went to Cancun on my honeymoon in November and feel I have a solid understanding of the city, where to go, where to stay, and what to do there. TripAdvisor's Cancun pages, thanks to users, delivered the most informative reviews I saw on any of the travel sites.

That said, TripAdvisor's best features--its users--is also its biggest issue. Sometimes, especially with new hotels, TripAdvisor won't help you decide if you should book a room. Some patrons have a bad experience and blow it out of proportion. Others love it so much, they fail to mention that the rooms are smaller than they look in the pictures. On popular locations, that issue is easily fixed thanks to sheer volume, but in less-frequented locations where only a few reviews exist, you'll need to find outside evidence to make a judgment.

TripAdvisor is the most popular travel-research site and it's easily the best, thanks to an active community and extras like photos, videos, and partnerships with travel sites that make it easy to book a vacation. TripAdvisor is your ideal travel research site.

UpTake
UpTake is a unique travel search site because it requires two things from its users: that they travel in the United States and that they know what they want to do.

UpTake is designed well and it makes searching for locations quick and easy. In fact, it's the best-designed site in this roundup.

But when I started digging deeper into UpTake, I was a little disappointed by what I saw. Instead of a site that offers vacation information on destinations all over the world, you'll only find articles and reviews on places in the U.S. Worse, the individual listings were fraught with poor reviews and worse descriptions, making the site practically useless. That said, the sheer number of listings--UpTake returned 49,000 results for New York City--might make some want to use the site since there are so many more options than on competing services. But quality should trump quantity.

As much as I didn't like the listings pages, I like that UpTake allows you to search for places based on what you're trying to accomplish on your vacation. Whether you're looking for a romantic getaway to Hawaii or a fun-filled trip with the kids to Florida, the site will automatically find locations that satisfy that desire and allow you to compare your options. It's a simple feature, but one that I really enjoyed using and is easily UpTake's most redeeming quality.

Virtual Tourist
Virtual Tourist is a nice travel research site that cuts down on all the extras you might find in sites like TripAdvisor and keeps it to the basics: the best restaurants, the best hotels, and the best places to visit.

That sort of simplicity defines Virtual Tourist and also makes it a great choice for when you want to plan your next vacation. I searched for locations like Prague and Paris, and each time, it delivered a slew of great resources that I was able to read through and find detailed information on.

Much like the other sites in this roundup, you'll be forced to evaluate each Virtual Tourist review on a case-by-case basis. For example, one review of a hotel in Rome, Italy, features two reviewers. One claims the hotel is the "nicest hotel" the reviewer has ever seen, while the other says that the hotel "is inundated with vermin." Who should we believe? Once again, more input from third parties is needed to make that decision.

Regardless, Virtual Tourist makes it easy to find locations with the help of its "Tour Guides" section and generally, each of those pages are populated with outstanding information. It may not be TripAdvisor, since it has fewer listings and less users, but Virtual Tourist is a great alternative for those who want a different view on some of the finest locations around the world.