traveling

RFID passport security for the rest of us

Here's the latest indication that RFID passports--and concerns about the security of the scannable information embedded in them--are going mainstream.

Until recently, passport pouches and wallets designed to block RFID signals from hackers have ranged from industrial-strength versions that resemble burlap sacks to Italian leather goods that go for $50 to $180. But now there's a reasonable compromise from Magellan's Travel Supplies, whose "RFID Blocking Passport Wallet" lists for $19.85. It may not be hand-crafted by European artisans, but it does claim to be top-quality leather.

Now if we can just find a … Read more

Overpay for airfare, then let Yapta find refunds

Budget travelers will snap up cheap airfares the instant a price drops, even knowing they'll have to squeeze into a fetal position on cramped, red-eye flights with lengthy layovers. Hopefully, a novel new travel assistant could help you be more discriminating.

Unlike Farecast (read more), which predicts fare fluctuations to help plan before you buy, Yapta also follows the costs of flights you've already purchased so you can take advantage of an air-travel secret.

Many air carriers will refund some of the difference if, say, the $1,000 Barcelona round-trip you booked in March now costs only $350. … Read more

Vayama: international travel ticket search 2.0

Vayama is a new airfare-ticket-finding service the likes of Expedia, Priceline and Travelocity. However, instead of focusing on domestic travel, Vayama is marketing itself as a provider for international flights. The service is also beginning to build what looks like a people-powered travel tips section to help newbie travelers with the post-airport journey into foreign cities that can often be confusing.

To begin any travel search, users can enter their data as usual, or use Vayama's neat touch-and-go map, which lets you zoom into various parts of the world to select arrival and departure cities. The map is powered by Microsoft Virtual Earth and is a nice way to see where airports are geographically located without having to look them up elsewhere. Each airport's dot is also proportionately sized for how big it is in real life. Large international airports such as LAX and JFK have big dots, whereas some of the stateside and municipal airports get tiny ones.

Once you've found your tickets, you can pick out your seat with Vayama's seat finder, which is presented in a slightly angled 3-D image. Seat finders for plane travel is certainly nothing new, but it's fairly simple to visually see the open and full seats--and even cooler to click an open seat and see yourself appear.

Before buying any tickets, you can also do some brief research on any city, which will show you how much it costs (in U.S. dollars) to get to and from the airport, as well as around selected cities using private or public transportation. To make those numbers a little more accurate, Vayama is building out its own people-powered reviews network, where users can dish on city information in exchange for discount credits on airfare.

In my brief testing this afternoon, some of the fares I searched for were very competitive with those I found on some of the major providers. Vayama was also a little faster in the search, although not nearly as comprehensive as my personal favorite flight-finder, Kayak.com, which found the lowest prices of the bunch.

One of the big things missing is a way to check if you're currently getting the best deal on your ticket, or whether it's worth waiting for a price drop; something you can do with Farecast, although not for international flights. Like any Internet shopping experience, ticket services like this are useful, but it never hurts to check the competition--especially when their mascots are gnomes and William Shatner.

To see a shot of the 3-D seat finder, keep reading.… Read more

Farecast: Out of beta, but still U.S.-only

Airline price predictor Farecast is officially out of beta today. We've covered the service before and think it's great. New features that have been recently added include FareGuard, which lets you buy insurance on FareCast's predictions (the company claims "predictive accuracy of 74.5 percent"), a "flight quality" selector that lets you eliminate nasty red-eyes from your predictions, an alert feature that will e-mail you when the cost of a ticket to a destination you desire appears at or below a price you specify, and my favorite newish feature, a grid that shows … Read more

Farecast Deals site launches

Farecast, an airline ticket prediction and purchasing service, has launched a new Deals section that helps people find the best prices on tickets within a 90-day window. Unlike the recently launched Fare Guard, the Deals section is completely free and competes with other discount travel sites like TravelZoo and CheapTickets to aggregate flights that sell for a fraction of their typical cost. The service is currently limited to 38 major airports in the United States.

The search results are separated by the best deals, last-minute flights, weekend and weeklong flights, and flights for families. There's also a section for … Read more

Marriott rooms plug in to HDTV

All Marriott hotel rooms in the U.S. and Canada will get a high-definition television by the end of 2009, the company has announced. OK, it's official: now I will definitely be going for Marriott over Motel 6!

Rooms will have a plug-in panel that lets guests connect laptops, camcorders, digital cameras and other gadget paraphernalia to a flat panel, high-def screen. The standard 32-inch televisions will also be equipped with a 25-watt stereo speaker system so guests can listen to tunes on their MP3 players, with no headphones required.

By the end of 2007, Marriott expects to have … Read more

National Geographic cell phone travels well

This seems odd at first, but I think I get where National Geographic is coming from.

For decades National Geographic has been delivering fantastic photography (and more recently, TV footage) that has moved people to jump on planes and travel to the farthest corners of the globe where our cell phones promptly refuse to cooperate. Now it seems like they're trying to make up for that.

The educational and scientific society announced Wednesday that it is partnering with Cellular Abroad to make the National Geographic Talk Abroad Travel Phone, a bar-style GSM phone that operates in more than 100 … Read more

STATravel193 is probably a great resource, despite the awkward name

Rule #15 of creating an Internet start-up: Short names are good. Just look at all the companies that are eliminating letters from their names--i.e. Flickr. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the brains behind STATravel193 got that memo. STATravel193 is a new social networking site created by STA Travel, an agency which organizes study-abroad logistics for students. The thinking behind "193" is cute--there are 193 countries in the world--but the site's name comes across as sounding like an AOL screenname.

Nevertheless, I'm hoping that Web users will be able to get past the awkward name … Read more

Wake up to loved ones on the road

We're never quite understood the mass appeal of digital photo frames, at least in the seemingly endless numbers that appeared last holiday season. But this is one product that we would actually use--a travel alarm clock with a built-in digital picture frame that can store up to 50 photos. The Royal clock frame has a backlit 1.4-inch LCD that Chip Chick says can display your pictures as a slide show too. And it's small enough to carry and whip out of your pocket when the parental bragging urge strikes.