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Tags: Airport WiFi / Free WiFi / WiFi / Holiday Travel / Airports / Airport News / Google / → All Tags
Google Gives The Greatest Gift Of All: Free Airport WiFi Over The Holidays
Flying for the holidays and intrigued by the possible availability of free In-Flight WiFI? How about free WiFi in airports as well?
You may be entitled to a Christmas, Hannukah or Kwanzaa gift, compliments of Google. The multi-billion dollar corporation is bucking up and plans to help soften the blow of flight delays this holiday season by offering free wifi at select airports all over the country. This promotion begins November 17 and will run through January 15, 2010 at 47 airports nationwide. Some of the airports that will offer free wifi with your delays include Miami, Las Vegas, Houston, Boston, Seattle, and even little terminals like Toledo and Central Wisconsin.
Unfortunately, this "B-list" of airports excludes "A-list" hubs like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Dallas. Either way, we are thankful for any freebies this holiday season. For the complete list of airports, check out Google's cute little holiday WiFi website here.
Related Stories:
· Google Free Holiday Airport WiFi [Official SIte]
· Google and Microsoft Battling To See Who Can Provide More Free Holiday WiFi [Jaunted]
· Delta Gives Free In-Flight WiFi For The Holidays To Trick You Into Shopping eBay [Jaunted]
· In-Flight WiFi coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo: jessamyn]
Tags: Free WiFi / Airports / Airport News / WiFi / Technology / Airport WiFi / In-Flight WiFi / Bing / Google / → All Tags
Google And Microsoft Battling To See Who Can Provide More Free Holiday WiFi
When the tech world's two major borgs square off for travelers' time and attention, that can only be good news for the rest of us. Google had already arranged for free WiFi on Virgin America flights and—as of this morning—they're also giving it away at more than 40 airports across the country. But that's small time compared to the deal Microsoft just struck to promote their search engine Bing.
Bing has worked out an arrangement with WiFi provider JiWire which will allow users to get free Internet in exchange for doing just one search on Bing. This is a campaign that will reach all of JiWire's hotspots which, more or less, amounts to just about everywhere:
Tags: Google / Travel Sites / City Tours / → All Tags
Google Enters The Travel Market, Will Create Your Next Vacation For You
There's probably a good chance that the recession is keeping you home this summer, enjoying a staycation and maybe kicking back with some virtual tours. But if you're still planning to leave your neighborhood for parts unknown, Google is ready to help you plan your vacation.
The Internet search giant just unveiled its new Google City Tours, a service designed to outright create whole itineraries for travelers. Type in the name of your city and City Tours will return a series of trips designed to take you around the area's major landmarks. It displays locations, hours, and even the estimated time you should expect to spend at each site.
Tags: Healthy Travel / Winter Travel / Google / → All Tags
Don't Go Where They've Got The Flu
The flu is coming! The flu is coming! We hate to be the ones to break the bad news, but the first cases of that winter bug have started showing up all over the country. Actually this year hasn't been so bad, as we're already relatively late in winter for the flu to start breaking out.
What does this have to do with travel, you ask? Well this winter, for the first time, you can embrace your inner hypochondriac and base your travel plans around where people do and don't have the flu. How? Through Google of course, the same people who control every other aspect of our lives.
Tags: Google / Google Earth / Travel Tech / Maps / → All Tags
Adventures of Link: Google Earth for All. Sorta.
One of the great things about Google's pantheon of services is that you can access them from any computer, anytime, anywhere. But Google Earth has always been an exception to the rule--until now.
The search company has just announced that 3D, pan-planet maps will be coming to a browser near you via a Java plug-in. (For now, it's only available for Windows machines.)
You probably already know why we're so excited about it: Now we can virtually fly around our Kid Rock Fight Venues Map!
Related Stories:
· Google Earth, Meet the Browser [Google Lat Long Blog]
· Google Earth Software [Official Site]
· Google Earth coverage [Jaunted]
· Google Maps coverage [Jaunted]
Tags: Google / Travel Websites / Websites / Flight Status / Flight Tracking / → All Tags
Adventures of Link: Flight Tracking 101
The overlords of the Internet at Google have upgraded the search engine's flight tracking powers. Before the new search feature debuted, you'd only get a list of links to track your flight, some of which didn't always work. Now Google's integrating FlightStats' data directly into a search results page. (This has the added benefit of making the service more BlackBerry friendly.)
You can also get the same info by texting GOOGLE (466453) your airline and flight number. If we're near a computer, though, we like digging up all sorts of flight info from these more propeller-head oriented sites:
Related Stories:
· Google Adds Flight Status Info [Budget Travel]
· FlightAware [Official Site]
· FlightStats [Official Site]
· FBOWeb [Official Site]
· Travel Websites coverage [Jaunted]
Tags: Google Earth / South America / Maps / Google / → All Tags
Google Earth's New Diplomatic Incident
It wasn't too long ago that a village of Germans was up in arms over Google Earth's misnaming of Mount Hitler near Munich. Now there are much greater problems stirring, and this time Google Earth hasn't misnamed a village, but rather moved it into another country.
The government of Chile (along with many Chileans) are quite unhappy to see on Google Earth that the village of Villa O'Higgins is now shown as lying in Argentina. Villa O'Higgins might be small, but it's named after a Chilean independence hero and they definitely want it to remain in Chile. Google Earth says "we are working with our partners to get more precise data for the region," though surely a request from the Chilean government should already carry some weight?
Related Stories:
· Google Earth Moves a Village [Reuters]
· Google Earth Your Way to Mount Hitler [Jaunted]
Tags: Google / Travel SMS / Flight Status / JetBlue / → All Tags
Google SMS Flight Check: For Keeping Tabs On JetBlue
Google just added free flight status and airline info to their SMS Service.
We tried it out on the beta site, checking an infamously not-so-on-time flight--JFK to BOS on JetBlue.
According to Google, which gets it data from Flightstats.com, JetBlue flight 1006 from JFK to BOS, is on time.
Departure is scheduled for 12:05 out of gate T6. Cool feature.
To use it text the airline name and flight number to shortcode 466453 ('GOOGLE' on most phones), and the status information will be sent to their mobile device. They can also text a specific airline name, and Google will send back the main number for that airline. Nice. Certainly should save us from spending way too much money dialing 411.
This is available for flights departing or arriving in the United States, and it is free from Google, though standard carrier rates for sending and receiving text messages still apply.
If this turns out to be half as addicting as texting NBC during reality shows, in hopes of winning $10,000 in one of five hidden cases, our phone bill is going to be Twitter sized very quickly.
Related Stories:
· SMS Flight Status Check [Google]
Tags: Google / Google Maps / Google Maps Mash-Ups / Weather / → All Tags
Google Buys East Coast Heat Wave
Yes, it appears Google even owns the current heat wave.
Some enterprising young web two pointers put together WeatherBonk. So now we can see exactly what the difference in temperature between Central Park and the Hamptons is with just a couple of scrolls to the right. Great. This mash up is complete with web cam look ins, though since we don't see any sweat on the web cam photos we can't be sure the shots are really live.
Now if only someone would come up with a Google maps mash up that could fix the air conditioner in our car.
Related Stories:
· WeatherBonk [Official Site]
Tags: Google / Prejudice / → All Tags
The Prejudice Map Via Google
Google is always good for an off the cuff look at current social commentary.
Some ingenious web surfer put together the The Prejudice Map via Google by typing things like German's are known for into Google and aggregating the results onto a global map.
According to Google:
· Americans are known for anti-Muslim politics
· Brazilians are known for bikinis
· Kenyans for fast running
· Ethiopians for big eyes
· The French for spoiling their dogs
· And the Turkish for wielding weapons.
