Category Archives: travel

Google Maps takes to the skies with JetBlue

Posted on June 5, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

JetBlue is now using Google Maps to show you where you are when flying across the country. Just hope you don’t find yourself staring at JFK on the Google Maps screen while stranded on the tarmac. It’s a unique brand … Continue reading →

Posted in google, gps, maps, travel | 1 Comment

Grab and go, on the honor system

Posted on May 17, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

I’ve spent a lot of time in airports lately. With the lack of food on planes, I’m often looking to grab a sandwich or a soda. Inevitably, I end up behind 8 people who want their triple decaf mocha ventis … Continue reading →

Posted in customer service, travel | 2 Comments

Making better ads

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Every week, I get an email from United Airlines telling me about their e-fares for the coming weekend. Almost every week, I ignore this email because the information isn’t relevant to me. This week’s email includes fares from Burbank to … Continue reading →

Posted in advertising, email, personalization, travel | 4 Comments

Virgin America planes at SFO

Posted on April 20, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

As I was taking off from SFO yesterday, I noticed the Virgin logo on three smaller airplanes. On closer inspection, the Airbuses had Virgin America‘s livery. I was tempted to snap a picture, but resisted out of fear of being … Continue reading →

Posted in airlines, travel | 2 Comments

Wake up call in California

Posted on April 18, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

I was reminded this morning about how adamant California hotels are about wake up calls. I woke up about 15 minutes before my scheduled 7:30 wake up call. I started getting ready for the day. Apparently they called twice while … Continue reading →

Posted in travel | 5 Comments

Google SMS – a way out of voice recognition hell

Posted on March 27, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Google is offering flight status information via SMS. Just send your flight number (e.g. UA 484) to GOOGLE (466453) and you get a return message with flight departure and arrival times, gate information and the airline’s phone number. (With most … Continue reading →

Posted in airlines, google, mobile, travel, wireless, wireless data | 3 Comments

A virtual tour of Whistler

Posted on March 7, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

I’ve uploaded and geotagged pictures from my ski trip to Whistler. You can see a map with the satellite view. (Judging by the lack of snow, it must have been summer when the satellite image was taken.) Geotagging will change … Continue reading →

Posted in flickr, geotagging, gps, local search, maps, mashups, mobile search, travel, web 2.0, yahoo | Comments Off

Watching American football in Dublin

Posted on February 6, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

I arrived in Dublin on Super Bowl Sunday ahead of meetings with my team at AOL Dublin. Wanting to see how the Irish watch the Super Bowl, I set out to find a pub showing the game. I asked the … Continue reading →

Posted in travel | 3 Comments

Fare Guard – a (bad) option on low airfares

Posted on January 22, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Farecast is one of my favorite sites for checking out airfares. It’s a data junkie’s dream – Farecast does for airfares what Zillow does for real estate data. You can slice and dice airfare data in a number of different … Continue reading →

Posted in airlines, personal finance, travel | 3 Comments

World Explorer: A new way to look at the world

Posted on January 19, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

The folks at Yahoo! Research have used flickr’s APIs to create a new way to look at the world. The TagMaps take tags from flickr and plot them on Yahoo! maps. The current implementation is slow and the display of … Continue reading →