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Newest iPhone Travel App Hits iTunes Courtesy Of USA Today

October 16, 2009 at 9:18 AM | by | Comments (2)

For reasons passing understanding, national newspaper USA Today has launched its own iPhone travel app. The USA Today AutoPilot boasts TripIt integration, real-time flight stats, and various city-specific directories.

Ignore for a minute that most of this app's TripIt and weather features are already offered natively by, um, the TripIt iPhone app. Ignore also that there are great city-specific guides for tourists and that if you're turning to USA Today you might not be getting the most nuanced suggestions. The bigger question is: why? Who at USA Today woke up and thought "you know what we need to solidify our brand? An iPhone travel app."

As it turns out, USA Today actually provided reporters with an answer to that question:

'USA TODAY is synonymous with travel. Travelers love us and we love being everywhere they need us with innovative new products,' said Matt Jones, vice president of mobile strategy and operations for Gannett Digital.

Oh. We didn't realize that USA Today is synonymous with travel. Our bad. We do know that they have three travel sections to their website: Today in the Sky, Hotel Check-in, and Cruise Log.

Seriously, what's the deal with random companies producing iPhone travel apps? There are already a zillion apps for flight tracking and status. Does USA Today just have this pile of cash and they had to spend some of it because it was filling up their bank vault (answer: no)?

Let's get back to what we're good at, shall we? And that goes double for you hotel companies, who are basically building apps to let us confirm that the hotel still exists while we wait for our luggage. Less of that and more figuring out why we can't get wifi in our rooms in 2009.

Related Stories:
· USA Today Autopilot [Official Site]
· USA Today releases...an iPhone travel app? [CNet]
· iPhone Travel Apps [Jaunted]
· USA Today [Jaunted]

Comments (2)

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Return to » Newest iPhone Travel App Hits iTunes Courtesy Of USA Today


Cruise App

The advertisment for Hampton Inns at the bottom of the app image displayed in your post probably answers they "why" question. I agree with your comments overall however. For a native "countdown, converse and cruise" app check out "Always Be Cruising" Interested in your opinion Omri.
Ryan Wahlstrom on October 17, 2009 at 9:44 AM #Permalink

iPhone

Absolutely, iPhone applications are dazzling a lot of consumers. So far, the quicker Adobe and Apple get over their individual beefs, the better it will be for every person. The OS 4. iPhone won't run Adobe flash - though it's tempting to mock Apple zealots who got advances to get in line to purchase their new trinket and won't stop slobbering - ha ha, it doesn't do everything Droid Does! - and here I thought the idea behind smart phones was versatility and functioning as a PC and cell phone at once. Apple DOES have a point, in that Adobe eats up a fair degree of computing, and the iPhone OS does feature code that will translate Flash into an iPhone welcoming version.
Justtus on April 19, 2010 at 5:12 AM #Permalink

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