TripPlanning
Latest
Google makes it easier to keep track of travel research
Google is introducing new features that will make it easier for you to keep track of your travel plans. When you're putting a trip together, you might end up juggling a lot of information like flights that you're keeping an eye on, hotel options and restaurants or sites you're interested in visiting. Beginning in October, Your Trips will help you manage all of that info, organizing what you've saved and searched for and letting you resume planning where you left off. Additionally, Google will assist with your planning, surfacing things to do, day plans and travel articles in Search that will become more customized as you settle your dates and hotels reservations.
Daily iPhone App: Road Trip Weather
There are plenty of weather apps, and lots of navigation apps, but there are few apps that allow you to plan a road trip taking current conditions or forecasts into consideration. Road Trip Weather does that. The US $0.99 app allows you to input your current location or starting point, a mid-point on your trip, and your destination. After some quick calculations, a map will show your route and some color codes will show good weather, bad weather, and weather that is worth noting. If you click on a point on the map, you'll get some details about conditions. This app is not a navigation app, just a quick way to get an idea what to expect. You can set it for a start time on the current day, the next day, or the following day. I found the information accurate and a good place to turn if you are planning a road trip. The app points out some issues I'd love to see others tackle. Most navigation apps have no built in weather. Both Garmin and Navigon, for example, do have some bare bones weather data, but I think there is a need for more information in navigation apps. Why can't a severe thunderstorm that crosses an interstate I'm on get noted? How about tornado warnings along my route? Many nav apps include traffic warnings, but in-depth weather warnings don't seem to be widely available. Road Trip Weather is a nice little app, that serves a good purpose. The app is universal, and works fine on any iOS device and requires iOS 5.0 or later. Some screen shots are below. %Gallery-142802%
Google and ITA's OnTheFly app update puts flexible flight planning in your pocket
Google went through a lot to buy ITA and its travel software, and we saw the acquisition first bear fruit in the form of Mountain View's web-based Flight Search. Now the partnership has produced version 1.2 of the OnTheFly airfare booking app for Android, iOS and BlackBerry. What's new? Flexible date searches that let you peruse departures 35 days at a time, plus a price graph that shows the most fiscally prudent times to travel. Additionally, globetrotters can access their itinerary search history and see price changes for those fares throughout the year. Nice job fellas, now let's work on bringing bargain-basement fare finding for the final frontier in the next revision.
