Keeping track of my travel plans usually means copying and pasting parts of confirmation emails from travel sites and airlines into events on Google Calendar. It works fine but it is a touch cumbersome.

I read about tripit.com on techcrunch and so far, it looks like the perfect site for me. The idea behind it is simple, but its execution of the idea is just as good.

When you book a flight, hotel, car hire etc online, you just forward your email from that company to the tripit.com address (you have to register your email address in your tripit account first) and an itinerary is automatically created for you.

The smart thing is that travel items are grouped intelligently so that the flight you hotel you booked in Zurich between two flights in and out of the same city are threated as part of the same trip, so moving items around between itineraries is minimal.Also, you can mix your travel suppliers so you can get the flights you booked on ba.com grouped with the hotel you booked from Expedia.

The list of sites and travel companies supported is already pretty large. Here is the list of sites supported by tripit.

My only gripe so far is that each day of your trip is displayed on the itinerary, even if you have nothing booked against those days. I don’t need that, to be honest.

Other than that, my itineraries have gone thorugh perfectly. It seems the ideal service for me and one I hope will go from strength to strength.

Tripit.com

[tags]itinerary, offline, travel, trip, tripit[/tags]

The pass is worth $299.

Unfortunately, I am unable to attend but my misfortune could work to your benefit as I am giving the pass to someone for free.

You do have to do a couple of things to do in order to qualify, which I will explain in a moment.

All qualified entrants will be entered into a draw and the winner will be drawn at random on September 1st 2007.

So what do you have to do to qualify for the draw to get a free pass to Podcast And New Media Expo 2007?

OK. Firstly, you need to post a link on your blog or website to my site - http://andrewbuonocore.com.

You can choose from one of the following links to use:

<a href=”http://andrewbuonocore.com” title=”Online Marketing Advice From Andrew Buonocore”>andrewbuonocore.com</a>

<a href=”http://andrewbuonocore.com” title=”Make Money Online With Andrew Buonocore”>andrewbuonocore.com</a>

<a href=”http://andrewbuonocore.com” title=”How To Make Money Online? Ask Andrew Buonocore”>andrewbuonocore.com</a>

Second, you need to give the site a Thumbs Up using Stumbleupon and also add me as a friend on Stumbleupon.

When you have done these two, send me an email to FreePass (at) andrewbuonocore.com and let me know the name of the site where you have placed the link and your Stumbleupon username and that is it!

The winner will be sent a form which has to be faxed to the Expo organisers. It has already been agreed that the pass can be transferred. Only the pass is on offer, no travel or accommodation.

Good Luck!

[tags]podcast, portable media expo, free ticket[/tags]

The most comprehensive piece of software for managing travel itineraries is Worldmate, but its licensing is nothing short of thievery. As if the initial price is not bad enough, incredibly, that only gives you use of the software for a year, after which you have to pay another huge fee.

So, when SPB announced Traveler, I thought that Worldmate’s grip on the travel market for Windows Mobile was over, but sadly it is not.

SPB traveler is a good-looking application, as are all SPB applications but in terms of functionality it falls way short.

My main gripes:

• The only form of transport handled is flights.

• No hotel management.
• No flight schedule lookup.
• Crazy time management which is non-configurable.

Essentially you have a calendar input tool with some pretty pictures and weather lookups.

The time management is a real puzzle. I spend most of my time in Zurich, Switzerland but for me, London is home. Now, Windows Mobile does me no favours when it comes to time zones so I work around it by keeping my time zone as London and changing the time every time I fly.

I have no interest in comparing times between London and Zurich. If I make an appointment for 19:00, it is 19:00 regardless of time zone. While I am in London and make an appointment to meet someone in Zurich at 19:00, I don’t want that changing to 20:00 when I change the time zone on my device, so I leave it.

SPB Traveler does the same. If I book a flight from Zurich to London, the departure time is 19:05 and arrival is 19:45 (both local times) and that is how I want it recorded. Traveler inserts a calendar entry for 18:05 to 19:45 because it converts the departure time to the time zone set on my device, as if I want to keep track of the departure time of my Zurich flight using the London time.

I don’t.

I have no option to keep times as local times, as entered. It makes it useless for me.

SPB applications have started to fall short of what I would call full functionality. Pocket Plus is a great application, same with Diary and Backup, but recent additions like Insight (the RSS reader) and Traveler do not cover their ground well enough for me.

I hope Traveler improves, because Worldmate does not deserve to survive without competition. Its pricing structure simply cannot be defended.

[tags]spb traveler, review[/tags]

I asked about the criteria for getting the correct ads to display on low-traffic sites. Specifically, sites that have just been set up.

AuctionAds support explained that the default ads (What’s Hot On eBay) are displayed if your site has not had a visitor (to whom the AuctionAds ad has been displayed) within the last ten minutes.

The AuctionAds site mentions that this happens on low-traffic sites but this is the first time I have had the timing parameters confirmed, so it’s very useful information.

To avoid this problem, I created a simple page that auto-refreshes every eight minutes (which AuctionAds said was OK) so my sites satisfy the sub-ten minute criteria in their early days.

[tags]auctionads, auction ads, keyword[/tags]

Do you never buy from Amazon.com without clicking on your own affiliate link on a page you have set up with all your affiliate links on it?

If you do then great but if not - come on!

Why book a flight or pay for a hotel elsewhere when Expedia will pay you a slice?

Why traipse around the shops running up to Christmas when Amazon will top up your affiliate account with some cash for everything you buy for your friends and family?

It just takes a small time investment and then all you have to do is remember that every time you want to buy something, do it online and do it through your affiliate account.

Sign up for an account at Amazon.com and Commission Junction and make sure you add relationships with the sites you buy from the most. If your favourite site does not have an affiliate scheme then just change your buying habits.

You will need a website for Commission Junction to accept you, you can get a website that automatically populates with quality content every day from Automated Blogs.

To make things slightly easier, set up a basic HTML page with all your affiliate links on. Mine is at http://buono.net/affiliates.

 You are not going to get rich by sending your own purchases through your own affiliate links, but you will make some money. Amazon even give you the option of receiving your commission as Amazon coupons.

Come Christmas time, you will store up a fair amount of value at Amazon which you can use throughout the year.

[tags]affiliate, affiliates, affiliate marketing[/tags]

[tags]google calendar, gcal, time zone, timezone[/tags]

I use a Windows Mobile 5 device to keep my important dates always at hand. That is synced to Outlook using ActiveSync and then Outlook sncs with Google Calendar using SyncMyCal (which I still have to reinstall almost every time I want to use!).

I have the process working nicely but Google Calendar insists on making some unwelcome changes in some places.

Because I am in Zurich during the week, I am an hour ahead of home in London. I keep the Timezone on my laptop and PDA as being London but move the time an hour ahead each time I come to Switzerland. I do this to stop Windows Mobile changing the times of my appointments when I change time zones.

I might make an appointment to meet someone at 19:00 in Zurich but if I do that with London as the time zone, the PDA will move the appointment to 20:00 if I change the time zone.

Google Calendar itself actually keeps the times as I need them, but when I view my calendar as a widget on the Google Homepage, Google seems to detect I am in Zurich and change the time zones to Zurich time.

It seems that anything that uses the Google Calendar API does the same.

This means that an appointment for 19:00 appears OK in Outlook, Google Calendar and my PDA but is displayed an hour later on the Google Homepage and in Google Mail (using a Greasemonkey extension).

It is not ideal!

[tags]Google Calendar, GCal, gmail, time zone, timezone[/tags]

Nothing yet, not even a reply.

They claim a 99.9% uptime on their site. Right now, that is a fat, useless joke.

I have to get some sleep now, I wonder what the chances are that I will have any sites running when I wake up, or that I will even have had a reply to my support ticket (which was submitted as critical).
Come on, Hostgator. Get yourselves in gear.
[tags]hostgator, useless, hosting, unreliable[/tags]