Bicycle Diaries: Audiobook

Bicycle Diaries chronicles David’s observations and insights — what he is seeing, whom he is meeting, what he is thinking about — as he pedals through and engages with some of the world’s major cities. In places like Buenos Aires, Istanbul, San Francisco, and London, the focus is more on the musicians and artists he encounters.

A twist on the traditional travel diary, the audio book version of Bicycle Diaries is available as individual chapters in a podcast-style download exclusively via the site. In addition to music and narration by DB, it also features location sounds, creating an atmosphere more akin to a radio show than a simple reading of the book.

Foodspotting makes finding and sharing food recommendations easier

Instead of reading and writing reviews of restaurants, you can share photos of specific foods you recommend and see what’s good wherever you go.

Finding recommendations is as easy as looking in a bakery window and seeing what looks good. You can discover foods around you, find whatever you’re craving and see what’s good at a particular restaurant. Sharing a recommendation is as easy as taking a picture of your food, saying what it was and where you found it. You can earn virtual tips and real rewards for sharing things others love.

Foodspotting is not about the place, the price, the surroundings, the crowd or the nutritional value- it’s about good food and where to find it. The site was built to work in any city, small town or country from the start. It encourages exploration- trying new things vs. following the crowd. Whether you take photos of every meal or are a self- proclaimed expert in a certain dish, Footspotting wants to reward what you’re doing and make it useful to a broader community.

'No connectivity required' airline and hotel guide iPhone app launched

London-based Collinson Latitude, has launched what is being described as “the first ever complete airline and hotel guide application that works offline.”

Available from the iTunes store, TravelPlan costs £5.99 for a year’s subscription, and includes a monthly downloadable data update.

The company says iPhone users can now tap into travel plans at home or abroad, without the need for live downloads that can incur significant data roaming charges.

The ‘TravelPlan’ app can be used onboard when in ‘flight mode’ and provides access to 99 percent of all worldwide flight schedules, with information on more than 750,000 trips from over 750 full service and low cost airlines around the world .

This is in addition to searchable details for over 15,000 hotels and more than 100 international airports and car rental outlets.

As well as schedules, TravelPlan comes complete with a trip planner, so users can build their travel itinerary and share it with friends and colleagues via email. It also provides contact details so users can get in touch with service providers at the touch of a button, stated the company.

Letting consumers shop for hotel freebies along with hotel booking

Online travel company priceline.com has launched a free new service on its website that lets future hotel guests “mine” priceline.com’s global database of published-price hotels for all kinds of valuable hotel freebies.

The new service provides freebie prospectors with two ways to uncover the hotel extras. With Freebie Filter, you are able to choose a specific type of freebie and the service will retrieve all of the hotels in priceline.com’s global hotels database that are offering that particular freebie. Customers can search for the extras, such as free breakfast, free nights or spa credits. The hotel listings include an availability calendar that show the travel dates when specific freebies are most likely to be available.

City Filters allows you to find hotels that are offering any type of freebie, by typing in a designated city name. The freebies service will retrieve the hotels in that city and list the freebies along with the latest room rate.

“Hotels of virtually all star levels are using a wide variety of freebies to add value and differentiate themselves for potential guests,” said Tim Gordon, priceline.com SVP, Hotels. “For many travellers, freebies are as important as nightly rates in making a booking decision. This new service allows priceline.com to satisfy those customers and further strengthen our image as the pre-eminent brand for travellers seeking maximum value for their dollar.”

Be careful of roaming fees with travel apps

The iPhone has opened the door to a world of opportunity for consumers’ personal lives. More and more developers are jumping on board daily to create useful apps for travellers.

However, “To the shame of many short-sighted iPhone app developers, many budget travel apps have an enormous flaw. This fatal issue could turn a 99-cent app intended to save you cash into a nightmarish drain on your cell phone bill. The problem: Many travel apps require a data connection to work,” highlighted an article from WalletPop.

One needs to be wary of the cases where apps don’t tell users how much data they are using as they use it. No matter whether you use an iPhone, a BlackBerry, or whatever, the amount you spend in data could far surpass the amount you thought you were going to save by using the app. Many data-reliant applications will gloss over this programming failure by simply neglecting to mention it, and if that happens, comb the user reviews for a customer who will deliver the truth about how it works.”

There are workarounds. You could activate a Wi-Fi network, but in most places outside of America, free Wi-Fi signals are hard to find. They're also site-specific, which defeats the purpose of being able to roam anywhere you want and have information at your fingertips.

"Life doesn't always fit into 140 characters or less": Twitter

Acknowledging that life doesn’t always fit into 140 characters or less, real-time information network Twitter has chosen to introduce a new, re-engineered version of its site.

Now on Twitter.com, one can see the familiar timeline, yet underneath each Tweet is a handful of information, deeper context and even embedded media.

Some highlights include a new design, updated media, related content, and mini profiles. The site has a cleaner timeline and a rich details pane that instantly adds more impact to individual Tweets while still maintaining the simplicity of the timeline. Also, one no longer has to click “more” to view additional Tweets.

Now, it’s easy to see embedded photos and videos directly on Twitter, thanks to partnerships with DailyBooth, deviantART, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube.

When you click a Tweet, the details pane shows additional information related to the author or subject. Depending on the Tweet’s content, you may see: replies, other Tweets by that user, a map of where a geotagged Tweet was sent from, and more.

Click a username to see a mini profile without navigating from the page, which provides quick access to account information, including bio and recent Tweets.

ParadiseHunter comes up with "52 Weeks Paid Competition" online job competition

ParadiseHunter.com, a website that connects people who are looking to buy, sell, and rent vacation homes and properties around the world, is looking for a host for an upcoming television series.

The online job competition - dubbed “52 Weeks Paid Vacation” - is inviting anyone in the world to apply, no experience required.

The series will showcase a different destination every episode, where the host will learn about the life, culture and sights of each country. Along the way, they’ll meet locals and expatriates, as they explore the world in search of their paradise.

In addition to an annual salary of $60,000 in the final show of the season, the host will reflect back on their journey and choose “their own piece of paradise”, worth up to $150,000.
Applications will be accepted at www.ParadiseHunter.com until November 5, 2010. Anyone 18 years and older is invited to send in a 60-second video clip showing why they are the ideal Paradise Hunter.

Dennis Kambeitz, CEO and founder of Paradise Hunter, said, “The number one thing we’re looking for is a passion to travel and explore other cultures.”

The YouTube Vacationer

YouTube and Norwegian Cruise announced a new partnership at the beginning of September to create YouTube Vacationer, a video channel devoted exclusively to trip planning, how-to's and advice.

The site boasts videos from Lonely Planet, National Geographic and the Travel Channel, on topics from how to not look like a tourist to how to play beach volleyball to the best Dublin neighborhoods. The videos certainly make light of themselves, but beneath the humorous exterior lies some actual good advice. The "how to get a passport" video features a slice of pepperoni and mushroom pizza as the main character.

The site features destinations in the Caribbean, U.S. and Canada, Europe and what they call "Exotic," a mix of off-the-beaten-path destinations and activities like belly dancing.

The site features Norwegian Cruises "Freestyle Cruising" approach, allowing users to create their own video montages based on their ideal cruises--not to mention find their next cruise through their preferences in videos.

7 Wonders In 7 Days

7wondersIn7days.com was conceived on April 5, 2009 after Chi-chi Ekweozor was moved by an episode of The Secret Millionaire, Channel 4’s undercover entrepreneur TV show. Whilst browsing through a local Manchester entertainment magazine called The Scene (published by Concept Publishing) after the program ended, she spotted a challenge at the end of an article about the New 7 Wonders of the World.

The challenge stated:
“You’d either be very crazy or very rich to attempt to see all 7 new wonders in one two week trip…”

Somehow Chi-chi misread the end of the statement and decided to take on the challenge of seeing all 7 new wonders in a one week trip. And 7wondersin7days.com was born.
Inspired in part by Paul Smith’s Twitchhiker project in which he travelled half way across the globe relying on the goodwill of Twitterers, Chi-chi aims to travel to see the 7 new wonders of the world in 7 days from 10th October 2010 (10/10/10), raising £777,000 for 7 charities.

The plan is to use this trip to raise the profile of a foundation for education dedicated to the memory of her amazing grandmother which she is starting with her parents.

In helping the 7 charities she is fundraising for through 7 wonders in 7 days, Chi-chi hopes to finally do something significant to make a difference to the lives of the billions of people around the world living in abject poverty.

The 7 charities involved and some smart companies are helping her make the trip a reality, not just for herself but for 7 lucky people who will each win a 3 day holiday to one of the 7 new wonders of the world by supporting the cause.