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Tags: In-Flight WiFi / American Airlines / WiFi / Technology / Airline News / Airlines / → All Tags
Want To Know If Your American Airlines Flight Has WiFi? There's A Widget For That
Ever since AirTran and Virgin America rolled out their fleet-wide WiFi earlier this year, other domestic legacy carriers have stepped up their game and mostly stayed on track for connectivity. A great example is American Airlines, who reached the milestone of having 100 planes connected in August, with a goal of 150 by the year's end.
With over 100 WiFi-hot American birdies up in the sky, your chances of flying on one are better than ever. And just in case you get lucky and score a plane connected with Gogo, American wants to make sure you're ready with your laptop by letting you check in advance to see if you'll have the internet on your flight. Via a new widget, passengers may enter their flight number or departure airport and see, up to 24 hours before the flight, if their plane will be WiFi-equipped. You can even share the widget by embedding it your blog, adding it your iGoogle, and taking advantage of other options.
Tags: Technology / Travel Gear / Phones / Travel Tech / Travel Gadgets / → All Tags
Is Verizon's Droid The Newest Cutting-Edge Travel Gear?
Not since the iPhone launch has a phone generated as much across-the-board hype as Verizon's new Droid handset. The full-keyboard 6oz. handset has seen a flood of glowing reviews from the geek community. Gizmodo: "it’s this simple: if you don’t buy an iPhone, buy a Droid." LA Times: "best Google phone on the market....best phone on Verizon." Boy Genius Report: "perfect storm between awesome hardware, great software, and a great network." Fair enough. But how does the Droid rate as travel gear?
Turns out, pretty well. Very well actually. There are even arguments to be made that a couple of the Droid's most prominent features are both targeted at travelers, whether they're taking road trips or traveling internationally, and are better than what any competitor can offer. Even that phone with the little apple on it.
Tags: Travel Gear / Travel Tech / Shopping Travel / Technology / Lists / Holiday Travel / → All Tags
Get A Jump On Holiday Shopping With The Top 5 Travel Gear Stocking Stuffers
Usually we take a pass on these kinds of cookie-cutter holiday-themed Top 5 lists, if only because they get in the way of our much more nuanced iPhone Top 5 lists. But we felt inspired after seeing this season's billionth travel gear list with a moleskine journal or a foldable alarm clock.
On the very slim chance that you're shopping for a traveler who isn't a hipster but does have a cell phone that doubles as an alarm clock, herein are some reasonably cheap stocking stuffers and one unreasonably expensive one. Because it's already the post-Halloween shopping season. You're already behind, aren't you?
The Top 5 Travel Gear Stocking Stuffers, after the jump.
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: Audio Tours / Chicago Travel / iPods / Technology / → All Tags
How To Make Your Own Tour Of Chicago On Your iPod, For Free
The London Guarantee Building is the tour’s starting point.
In this craptastic economy, you may not have the extra bucks to buy one of those expensive tours where a guide shows you the ins and outs of a city. So we decided to try out a recession-friendly, iPod self-walking "Loop to Loop" tour of Chicago. And it's totally FREE.
Just visit the Chicago Loop Alliance's website and decide whether you want to take a theater, an art or a landmarks tour; we opted for the latter, which takes you throughout the Loop. Download the appropriate tour and add it to your iPod. But for a seamless experience you will have to do some work. The site provides you with a map of all of the landmarks, but it just lists the names of the buildings. We recommend writing down all of addresses so that you know where the heck you’re going. Click on all 23 landmark points on the website to get the addresses.
Tags: Twitter Travel / Twitter / Technology / Lists / → All Tags
The Top Five Twitter Travel Lists Out There Now
Twitter has made it a billion times easier for fans to stalk their favorite celebs, for airlines and brands to track their customers, and now, with the new Twitter Lists feature, it's super simple to follow frequent travelers around the globe. For those of you not yet on Twitter, we advise you not to tune out yet, because one day you will probably have to know about it for one reason or another.
Back to Lists—introduced during these first few days of November, the function is the first big update on Twitter in a long time. It allowed members to gather those they follow into neat and tidy lists based on any identifying characteristic, like mommy bloggers, celebrities, personal friends and—yes—travelers. In the course of these first few days of List generation, we've found ourselves included in over 100 lists and counting, keeping company with some of Twitter's best travel authorities and most frequent flying.
To help you on your List discovery, we've gathered up a few of our favorite travel-centric ones. Lo and behold, our Five Favorite Twitter Travel Lists RIght Now...
Tags: iPhone Travel Apps / Virgin Altantic / Fear of Flying / iPhones / Technology / → All Tags
Conquer Your Fear Of Flying With Virgin Atlantic's New iPhone App
Afraid of flying? Well, you're reading the wrong blog then—ha! But seriously for a moment, if you do have any hesitations about flyin,g or just need answers questions in your head during takeoff like "is that how the engine is supposed to sound," then have we got a new iPhone travel app for you.
The "Flying Without Fear" app comes from the lovely people at Virgin Atlantic's British program to end fear of flying, which recently got Whoopi Goldberg up in the air. Usually you'd have to pay about $350 per person for the courses and in-person instruction to have Virgin Atlantic pilots and crew help you work through your fears, but this new app is only $4.99 in the iTunes store and it even has breathing routines to relax.
Tags: Amtrak / Trains / Train Travel / Acela / On-Track WiFi / Technology / → All Tags
Amtrak Competes With In-Flight WiFi By Adding Internet To Acela In 2010
Alright so how broke Amtrak is and how badly they need more passengers and cash is old and negative news. So how about some good news for train travel? Just a few days ago, it was announced that Amtrak is planning for WiFi on its Acela trains by 2010. This is what their passengers badly need, and hopefully the Northeast's few Acela routes are just the beginning.
2010 may be just around the corner, but frequent Amtrak passengers have been vainly attempting to connect to a network onboard for months now. For instance, when we chugga-chugged our way for fifteen hours (each way) between NY and the Midwest in March. Oh yes, we found an open network or two that moved with our train, but couldn't successfully connect. What's that about?
Tags: iPhone Travel Apps / Travel Gadgets / Lists / iPhone / Technology / iPhone Apps / iPhone Applications / → All Tags
This Fall's Five Best Totally Free iPhone Travel Apps
Too many travel companies create iPhone apps just so they can say they have iPhone apps. In response we've been known to point out how stupid that is, though we've been nowhere near as brutal as our sister site HotelChattter. There's just something about travel companies wasting money on fads - and then passing those costs on to us - that makes us all very stabby.
But that's not to say we're against iPhone travel apps as a rule. And just to prove it, we've rounded up five of our favorite free travel-related iPhone apps from September and October. These apps will help you book hotels the way people actually book hotels, help you locate restaurants the way people actually locate restaurants, and help you maximize your time at Disneyland. Because it's the Happiest Place On Earth.
Tags: Green Travel / Southwest Airlines / Airline News / Airlines / Technology / → All Tags
Southwest Adds A 'Green Plane' To Their Fleet As An Eco Test Lab
During yesterday's big news day down at Southwest Airlines' headquarters in Dallas, much more was revealed beyond the ten new routes for 2010, including the reveal of Southwest's new "Green Plane."
Aside from the snazzy new recycling logo added to the usual Southwest heart on the plane, the 737-700 is outfitted with a range of eco-products being tested out by Southwest, since the Green Plane serves as more than just a machine flying passengers place to place, but also as a test lab. It will still be flying it's regular route as flight WN222 between Chicago-Midway and Boston-Logan, so Midwest and Beantown travelers should keep an eye out, although it'll still rotate throughout the system.
Tags: Boarding Passes / Technology / American / Alaska / SAS Airlines / Continental / Delta / → All Tags
SAS Airlines' New Paperless Boarding Passes Will Help You Shop Duty-Free
SAS Airlines has joined the growing list of airlines allowing customers to check in with paperless 2D bar codes stored on their mobile. Passengers can have the boarding passes delivered either by SMS or via the SAS mobile site. The service will be available on domestic flights within Scandinavia and Finland, Intra Scandinavian flights, flights to Europe and Asia, and even some flights back from Europe:
SAS Scandinavian Airlines is now offering its passengers the convenience of mobile boarding passes. This means SAS customers can now travel using only their mobile phone and with an ID card/passport... The mobile boarding pass contains a 2D bar code that can be read electronically at the airport. The 2D bar code can be used to get baggage tags from the SAS Self Service kiosks, at security screening, duty-free shopping, entering SAS lounges and when boarding.
Tags: Technology / Airlines / Air Canada / BlackBerry / iPhone Travel Apps / → All Tags
Air Canada Wins Race For First North American Airline BlackBerry App
Having been the first North American airline with an iPhone travel application, Air Canada has now become the first one with a Blackberry app. The software allows travelers to get flight status updates, confirm their reservation, and even generate a 2-D boarding pass that locks in their seats and sets them up to board the plane. That last feature is the kind of thing that separates airline travel apps from the ever growing list of hotel travel apps. Generating a preexisting boarding pass earlier is better.
We've long been confused by airlines that leave Blackberry users behind while rushing into the iPhone market. Do people with Blackberries not travel a lot? Are companies afraid that Blackberry users aren't as tied to their phones? Have they heard of the word "crackberry?" Air Canada definitely has, per their press release:
