New Priceline iPhone app makes point with electronic compass

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Priceline made available a new, free iPhone app, Hotel Negotiator Version 2.0, which uses the iPhone 3G’s electronic compass functionality.

With Hotel Radar, the name Priceline gives to the main enhancement in Version 2.0, users can point the iPhone in a particular direction and the app displays area hotels, including published room rate, star level and distance.

Not a bad mobile option if you are wandering city streets looking for a place to stay or to have a drink — or if you’ve already had a drink and are trying to find your hotel again.

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UK Travel Site Crunch: Data Week End January 23 2010

Most popular travel websites in the UK for the week ending January 23 2010.



Data includes Top Ten travel search terms and the Top Ten Agency, Airline and Destination/Accommodation sites.

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Wall Street Journal becomes latest in long line of mainstream media to try online travel

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News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal is to launch its own “online travel agency” this week – joining the ranks of almost every other leading traditional newspaper brand on the web.



WSJTravel.com, according to the pre-launch amble, will feature deals related to content appearing on the main online travel editorial channel on WSJ.com.



Launching on January 28, WSJ says it will have around 50 planned trips on the system for users to purchase.

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iSlate, Kindle and travel – a marriage made in heaven or heading for a quickie divorce?

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This week will probably see the launch of Apple’s Tablet – the iSlate (I had backed iTablet as the name but apparently there were copyright issues). So iSlate it is.



The unveiling of the product will give a big boost to the eReader category and resulting adoption.



Lazard Freres analyst Colin Sebastian has done an excellent research piece on the Tablet/Slate/eReader Market in his regular subscriber bulletin.

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TripChill builds Twitter trip notification engine

tripchill twitter

Mobile trip itinerary assistant TripChill wants users to Tweet their way through their travels by using a new tool to notify selected friends of milestones along a journey.



The simplest execution of the service allows a member to update their Twitter account from within their mobile TripChill application, similar to other Twitter connections with a range of travel managements systems.



The more advanced – and interesting – functionality lets users create databases of Twitter friends so that they can be sent a private direct message at different points along a trip.

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Five ways online travel agencies can get their Mojo back

mojo

There’s lots of discussions going round, especially in the consulting circus about the future validity of OTAs.



Will they (we) be around in ten or even five years from now, and what will we look like?



Metasearch websites, Google, Bing Travel and other new intermediaries are slowly paralyzing our industry.

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The Week in Travel Tech – January 17 to January 23 2010

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What you missed on Tnooz this week, Sunday 17 to Saturday 23 January 2010.



Read on to see the most commented articles, the most controversial topic, and every other article this week…

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TripAdvisor reckons it is the best place to work in the world EVER

video removed

UPDATE: Rather bizarre turn of events two hours after this article was originally posted.



TripAdvisor is either on a recruitment drive or has turned into one of those companies that likes to create quirky and edgy videos to show off how, err, quirky and edgy it is.



Or both.

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Airline-Wi-Fi provider books $176 million in new financing

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Aircell, which is implementing its Gogo Wi-Fi solution on the aircraft of major North American airlines, picked up $176 million in equity financing from new and existing investors.

Aircell stated that the proceeds will go “for capital investments for network expansion and operating needs during this rapid growth phase of the business.”

The company says it has installed its Wi-Fi service on more than 700 commercial aircraft and has commitments from nine airlines. Among them are Air Canada, AirTran, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Virgin America and US Airways.

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New website to shun British Airways, Cathay Pacific for Southwest, JetBlue

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A new website — coming “soon” — forsakes the comprehensiveness gods and will focus on discount airlines only.

Budget Center, which recently launched BudgetHotels through an affiliate deal with HotelsCombined, aims to launch BudgetAirlines.com in the next week or so, and plans to have an exclusive focus on low-cost carriers because “discounted flights and airlines are generally difficult to source on large travel sites such as Expedia and Travelocity and are being under-serviced to online consumers,” the company says.

The company says BudgetAirlines will search discount airlines — including Southwest, JetBlue and WestJet — but “will not search for flights from the major carriers such as British Airways, Cathay Pacific etc. as these airlines do not represent its target market.”

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