Huffington Post launches travel site

Influential online blog The Huffington Post launched a new travel section July 21, promising to "cover all aspects of travel, from the glorious to the maddening.” The site's founder, Arianna Huffington, announced the new venture on July 20, saying that some of her happiest, most enriching, and enlightening moments have come through travel.

Some of the benefits the site offers are travel news, tips and advice, reviews of hotels, cruises, spas, airlines, photographs, and blog post about traveling. The visitors of the site have the ability to post reviews and send in their own photographs and tips

Using Flickr photos as a travel guide

Researchers at Yahoo!, which owns Flickr, has developed a way to gather photos and construct travel itineraries, based on the location of the photos and the time between each picture, in five cities — Barcelona, London, Paris, New York, and San Francisco.

Yahoo! figured out which photos were from tourists based on the amount of time the users stayed in a city, and then they mapped out “timed paths” based on the pictures. Some of the photos on Flickr include people in them, but the tool itself is designed to provide itineraries, not those photos, even though they are public.

The tool was presented by researchers at a recent technology conference to demonstrate the possibilities of harnessing Flickr’s technology and valuable user-generated content for new applications. Though not available to the public, researcher Munmun De Choudhury said, “that it’s something that could be constructed by a software developer using Flickr’s free interface.” And the next step, she said, “would be refining the algorithms or gathering more data so that users get recommendations based on their preferences — like a love of art museums — or get itineraries for places farther off the beaten path”.

Being a paying guest of the king

Tourists who want to travel like kings can now do so, thanks to a unique new hotel commissioned by Mohammed VI, King of Morocco, called the Royal Mansour. Sparing no expense, the palace-style hotel will use word-of-mouth to advertise to potential guests.

The prices run from $1,928 a night for a one-bedroom riad (a traditional, three-story, Moroccan-style house), to $5,397 for a two-bedroom, or $38,552 for the almost 20,000-square-foot Riad d'Honneur. The experience begins on the tarmac at the Marrakech airport when an arriving guest is whisked out of the line of weary travelers, led to a quiet room and offered sustenance while passports and baggage tags are collected.

Within minutes one is escorted out of the airport into a discreet shiny black Mercedes. Well, fairly discreet. The bags are in the trunk and passports are returned inside the car. All this is done in reverse upon departure, bringing home the notion of what it really means to be staying, as it were, with a king.

The accommodations of the hotel include; lounges, bars, library, restaurants, spas, and 500 hotel employees. The employees arrive, unseen, from beneath. The hotel has a parallel underground city where the staff drive golf carts and can enter each riad through hidden elevators.

O Canada! Tastes from the land of maple leaf are hitting the US food scene

What do ice hockey, cheap prescription drugs and Michael Cera have in common? If you said "O Canada!," you're correct!

You can't talk about Canadian food without talking poutine. And while fries with cheese curds and gravy might sound more like the ultimate 2:00 AM drunk-and-starving dish, the quintessentially Québécois junk food is getting the royal treatment by the two guys most heralded for their non-vegetarian fare.

With a moniker that pays tribute to the source of many of its dishes, it's no surprise that Animal's Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook are putting their stamp on the carnivore's delight. Braised, coddled and loved for hours until it falls off the bone, an oxtail appears amid a thick, intensely rich gravy and melted white cheddar cheese in the restaurant's gourmet interpretation of the dish.

We're pretty sure even Canadians will approve of this upscale version. If you're not lucky enough to be in the City of Angels while craving poutine, a number of cities across the US, including Chicago, Seattle and New York, are also dishing it up these days.

A collaborative sound map of New Orleans

Open Sound New Orleans is a community media project that invites and enables New Orleanians to document their lives in sound. Their intent is to make more accessible the authentic, unedited sounds and voices of New Orleans.

Sharing the sounds of the city helps celebrate and promote the city’s unique culture. But it also serves each contributor – open to everyone – as a simple way to extend their own experience to others and participate in New Orleans' public culture.

The site also hosts a Facebook page as an additional opportunity for locals to connect. More than a way for residents to celebrate their home, the site gives potential visitors a deeper understanding of the town’s rich music history and a unique way to experience a piece of New Orleans.

American Airlines debuts an iPhone app to provide travel info to customers

American Airlines’ new iPhone application’s intelligent data display provides the most relevant day-of-travel information which implies that the application knows who the customer is and where they are going.

In addition to allowing users to access key booking information, the app will push upcoming flight details to the home screen automatically. The settings include a parking reminder, monitoring the standby list, tracking elite status progress, and viewing of personal flight details. There are also direct and easy accesses to several other tools that help customers manage plans and enjoy each trip on American Airlines.

The new iPhone application will be introduced in phases as the airline continues to develop the capabilities of the tool. It is also planning an iPad-specific version in the coming weeks.

Austin City Limits

Austin City Limits displays a great example of how easy and sharable trip planning can be. The website is designed as a calendar for the visitors to easily interact with. They have the ability to choose the day, time, and concert of their desire.

In addition to that they can share it within popular social media websites including Facebook and Twitter. ACL may not be the first multi-day festival to offer concert-goers the chance to customize their music itinerary online beforehand but their version is simple and enjoyable to use.

Zero Waste

A unique Australian restaurant is giving new meaning to the timeless adage “waste not, want not.” At Yukako Ichikawa's restaurant Wafu in Sydney, Australia, failure to polish off your meal - either by consuming it or taking home the leftovers via "acceptable" waste-free means (do’s and don'ts are posted on the restaurant's website) - is not an option.

Hoping to bring the Japanese concept of mottainai to her restaurant, Ichikawa directs customers to her no-waste policy at the door, and only after clientele agree to abide by her rules are they invited to dine. And if they don't make every last scrap disappear, they're asked to never return. While the zero-waste policy may seem a bit extreme, Wafu has been able to significantly decrease the amount of food it throws out. Plus, showing a more gratuitous side, the restaurant gives diners who clean their plates a 30% discount on their bill.

Airline Passenger Satisfaction Improves

Overall, air travelers' level of contentment with carriers is on the rise, according to the University of Michigan's latest American Customer Satisfaction Index for the airline industry. The findings are similar to the J.D. Power and Associates 2010 North America Airline Satisfaction Study released last week.

Not surprisingly, the survey also showed that air travelers are frustrated with paying extra for amenities that used to be free, like checked bags. Fees were the No. 1 complaint when passengers were asked what they disliked most about flying. What are air travelers willing to pay for? Alcoholic drinks, access to the Internet and extra legroom, according to the survey. Less than 1 percent said they'd pay for a pillow or blanket.

Tweets from the Streets

In an effort to increase visitor traffic, Canadian Tourism is using storefronts in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, along with Twitter, to generate interest. The installments, placed in high-traffic locations like the Grove in LA, Michigan Avenue in Chicago and Times Square in New York, feature enticing images of Canada’s various attractions. Consumers are encouraged to follow Canadian Tourism via Twitter for a chance to win $5,000 in travel vouchers.

Soccer Fans Dance the South African Diski

As soccer fans from around the globe celebrate the World Cup, South Africa is giving people a taste of its culture while promoting tourism with a fun, user-generated video contest that engages people through the universal language of dance. As part of the promotion, South Africa Tourism engaged YouTube sensation Matt Harding (Where the Hell is Matt?) to demonstrate the Diski dance in a viral video shot in different locations throughout the country. http://learntodiski.com

New and Unusual Activities To Enjoy When Traveling

As consumers continue to seek out unique, yet budget-friendly vacation experiences, there are certain activities that have gained popularity.

Vintage Train Journeys are becoming more popular as travelers are beginning to enjoy the long treks on the train with the accommodations of sleeping cars, dining cars, and observation cars, in order to take in the beautiful scenery.

River Cruising has also grown in popularity as more people learn about its availability. One can board a boat and cruise down the Rhine or the Volga. Or one can coast down the Mekong River if they want to go tropical.

More than ever, there are exclusive underground supper clubs worldwide, in which members can indulge in dinners by the very top chefs. Meanwhile, younger French chefs are finding new freedom in culinary self-expression, which could revamp aspects of French cuisine.

When traveling to unique destinations, people are coming home with more exotic and sentimental keepsakes, rather than cheap and commercialized trinkets. This change adds greater value to their travel experience and creates more lasting and personal memories.

Twitter Launches Promoted Trends with Toy Story 3

Disney-Pixar’s new animated film, Toy Story 3, is the first topic to receive the Promoted Trend treatment as Twitter launches a new paid program for promotional partners. According to Computerworld, Promoted Trends are highlighted on user pages as a supplementary addition below the top ten current trends. Twitter has confirmed that topics can only become promoted if they are already being actively discussed in the Twitter community. By clicking the yellow promoted link, users of the site will be taken to the latest tweets about the film, headed by a Promoted Tweet published by the advertiser at the top results.

With Promoted Trends, users will see time-, context- and event-sensitive trends promoted by Twitter’s advertising partners. These Promoted Trends initially appear at the bottom of the Trending Topics list on Twitter, and are clearly marked “Promoted.” As conversations about the topic increase, Promoted Trends may move up the list. As Twitter explained, “Promoted Trends are a new advertising concept; they are an extension of our Promoted Tweets platform.”

Twitter will base the future of the advertising model on the success of Toy Story 3, its first promoted trending topic. Analysts are praising Twitter for developing a business model that will not have an impact on the all-important user experience by making Promoted Trends minimally invasive. As Business Analyst Eza Gottheil clearly explained, “People will tolerate advertising as long as it lets them do what they want to.”