Delta is joining American Airlines and Southwest Airlines as the third major brand to deny travel startups access to users’ frequent flyer accounts for the purpose of tracking airlines miles and rewards. Startups affected include TripIt (reportedly*), MileWise and AwardWallet (confirmed) and others. Here’s the situation in a nutshell: the airlines think your rewards data is theirs. Users think… → Read More
It feels like only days have passed since TechCrunch Disrupt NYC went down, but as every season turns (turns, turns…) another Disrupt is on the horizon. Our San Francisco event will commence on September 8, and every time preparation begins for the massive conference I can’t help but take a look back at the incredible success stories to come out of Disrupt.
In fact, a whole mess of them can… → Read More
Travel and expense management company Concur, which earlier this year acquired TripIt and GlobalExchange, has invested $5 million in Yapta, a provider of airfare and hotel rate tracking services. The investment brings the total of capital raised by Yapta to $13.8 million. → Read More
Aside from Dopplr’s quiet disappearance after its acquisition by Nokia and Tripit’s exit to Concer, web-based travel planning is still, arguably, one of the holy grails of the web. flextrip, a new startup operating out of Europe and the US and founded by long time entrepreneurs Leith Stevens, Alex Kremer and Andrew Glover, aims to facilitate travel planning by offering real-time offers for tours… → Read More
Concur, a publicly-listed provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions, this morning announced it has agreed to acquire TripIt, which helps travelers easily organize and share travel plans.
Concur is initially paying approximately $82 million in upfront cash, stock and unvested restricted stock units – additional consideration over time could bring the total value to $120… → Read More
TripIt, the site that creates customized travel itineraries from travel confirmation emails, is upgrading its premium version today to be even more useful. Now TripIt Pro will track any pro member’s flight itinerary so they are notified of a price drop that could trigger a potential airline refund.
TripIt Pro members will now be alerted by email and text message when they may be eligible for an… → Read More
Just when you thoughtTripIt couldn’t get any easier to use, the startup has defied the impossible. The nifty site that creates customized travel itineraries from travel confirmation emails, is launching an auto-import feature for Gmail and Google Apps that will automatically read and import your travel emails to create and update itineraries on TripIt.
The feature essentially replaces needing to… → Read More
We’re big fans of TripIt, a nifty site that creates customized travel itineraries from travel confirmation emails. Today, the service is becoming even more useful by integrating Yapta.com, an airfare and hotel tracking service, into its platform.
Yapta lets you track fares from most of the major domestic and international airlines, allowing users to select flights to track, and then be alerted… → Read More
Dopplr has launched an iPhone app they are billing as a “social atlas”. Curiously, and possibly wisely, you don’t even need an account at Dopplr to use the app, meaning it will get exposed to a lot more potential users. However, a let down from the get-go is that you can’t add upcoming trips from within the app right now, which is kinda the point with Dopplr, as it’s users will attest – although… → Read More
TripIt is one of those great services that actually manages to make life easier — just submit your travel confirmation Emails, and the site generates a comprehensive itinerary. It’s made Michael’s list of products he can’t live without for two years running, and is quickly gaining fans among frequent travelers. That’s all well and good, but until now the service hasn’t really had much of a… → Read More
At Launch Silicon Valley this past week, I saw a demo of Gliider, a Firefox plug-in and tool that allows you to drag and drop travel information you collect from around the web. The video explains the concept behind Gliider, which is still in private beta, fairly well. While the travel 2.0 space is nearly saturated with a plethora of competitive products, Gliider’s tool is incredibly useful and… → Read More
Appropros Mobile has released a Pro version of its popular FlightTrack iPhone application that can automatically pull in your flight itineraries through TripIt’s recently released API.
The original FlightTrack application, which costs $4.99 and is currently ranked third among the iPhone App Store’s top paid travel applications, asks for you to enter an airline, a flight number, and a date. It… → Read More
TripIt, the helpful travel site that lets you generate an itinerary by simply forwarding the service your Email confirmations from hotels and airlines, has opened up an API for outside developers. The API will give third party applications access to TripIt’s itinerary sysytem, which now accepts data from 350 travel sites. Developers can find all the details for joining the program here.
A… → Read More
Airline group Air France-KLM, formed after the merger of Société Air France and the Royal Dutch Airlines and currently the largest airline company in the world in terms of operating revenues, has recently launched a social network for travelers called Bluenity to connect its +75 million customers when traveling (presumably so that they can meet up with strangers).
An airline moving into social… → Read More
At the beginning of each year I traditionally publish a list of my favorite startups and products. This is the fourth year I’ve done this – previous lists: 2006, 2007, 2008. You guys get to pick the winners of the Crunchies – this list is all mine.
This is a list of the products I tend to use daily. Some are for work (Wordpress, Delicious, Zoho, etc.), some are for fun (MySpace Music, Hulu, etc)… → Read More
TripIt, the online travel assistant that debuted at Techcrunch40 and is one of the sites Michael can’t live without, has received $5.1M in Series B funding. The main contributions for this round come from Sabre Holdings, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and European Founders Fund. This addition brings the site’s total funding to $6.1M. TripIt’s main goal is to simplify travel. → Read More
TripIt, the service that creates master travel itineraries out of your confirmation emails, has become even more traveler-friendly with a new mobile site. Users can access the site at m.tripit.com with their handheld devices. We’ve been told it works best with Blackberrys, iPhones, and Treos (the shot on the right is obviously how it looks on an iPhone). The new site will support… → Read More
Travel organization service Tripit, a TechCrunch 40 finalist that was recently named by Michael as one of the companies he couldn’t live with out, is getting more social with new location-based social ”Closeness” alerts. “Who’s Close To Me?” automatically notifies users if their travel plans overlap with fellow travelers while on the road, and “Who’s Coming to my City?”… → Read More
This will be the third annual post on “Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without.” The first post, for 2006, is here. The 2007 post, written a year ago, is here. This is a list of the products I tend to use daily. Some are for work (WordPress, Delicious, Google Docs, etc.), some are for fun (Amazon Music, Amie Street, etc), and some are useful for both (Digg, Skype, YouTube… → Read More
Online travel organization startup (and TechCrunch 40 finalist) TripIt will today release some new features that aim to further simplify booking travel online. TripIt is a travel organizer that helps do-it-yourself travelers manage their travel plans. Travelers manage their travel itinerary with TripIt by forwarding their purchase confirmation emails to the service. TripIt automatically creates… → Read More
Today’ Web 2.0 Summit ended with a Launch Pad session where six startups each got six minutes to pitch their companies to the crowd and a panel of venture capitalists. Here’s a thumbnail sketch of each with my initial impressions (For a more thorough take on these startups from a real venture capitalist, read Christine Herron’s post): CleverSet—Best of Show went to CleverSet, a… → Read More
Tripit, one of the companies that launched at TechCrunch40 is an extremely useful application for frequent travelers. It’s dead simple to use and it keeps you organized – all you have to do is forward confirmation emails to them when you purchase airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, etc. Tripit pulls the relevant information out of the emails and builds an organized… → Read More
Session three as follows, including our live notes. Story Blender Story Blender is an online collaborative video production platform where people can work together to “blend” their content into a new multimedia show. StoryBlend’s online editing tool lets users create videos by “blending” images, sound, text, and video clips. When users have created new video blends… → Read More
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