Travel Technology

HotelTonight blazed a trail in the U.S. as a first-mover in same-day, mobile hotel bookings. Although it has strong financial backing, achieving the same rate of success abroad may be a lot more problematic.

Satisfaction surveys are more important that ever to hotels that prefer guests to gripe in the privacy of a survey than online, but airing bad service on social media has a way of pushing hotels to make a change.

Still early in use cases being defined for Google Glass, when it comes to air travel. Treating Glass like how you would treat your mobile device usage would seem to be the most common use case, like here.

All business travelers want instantaneous information when keeping track of several flights, reservations, and meetings. According to this reviewer, Google Glass does all of that without travelers ever having to take their hands off the wheel.

Whether it's Flickr users or Facebook users, people often react negatively to changes. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's decision to eliminate Flickr Pro and her diss (since retracted) of professional photographers didn't help matters. Give her credit, though, for trying to modernize some of Yahoo's -- shall we call them legacy -- services.

Funded, lean and focused, Hipmunk can take its sweet, little time honing its product to get ready for a larger profile. Whether it ever emerges from beautiful product to major player is a very open question. There is plenty of money to be made even as a relatively small company, but Hipmunk's ambitions are huge.

You can read this story and, given the privacy implications, almost think it is a hoax. Sure, people can already take their smartphone cameras into public restrooms, but if you can indeed wink and take a photo with Google Glass, then there is literally nowhere to hide.

Google's drivers may feel skiddish about squeezing into some of the tight places that require mapping so Google has rigged all kinds of contraptions to map places such as hiking trails in the Grand Canyon. Google's quest to map the world is one of its most challenging -- and rewarding -- undertakings.

Is Seat Tracker worth $49 per year? Probably, especially when considering TripIt Pro's other fare-drop and notification features.

A map needs to do more than show a user what it thinks he wants to see; it must also be a base for exploration. A combination of personal data, friends' data, and basic infrastructure could hit the sweet, if not creepy, spot.