Presenting a clear comparison of multiple local and long-distance transport options by price and duration is no mean feat. But Waymate has even greater ambitions, allowing trip booking from within its service. Read more »
Berlin-based GoEuro has just closed a $4 million seed round with impressive backers. Like its neighbour Waymate, the firm wants to make it simpler and clearer to book a multimodal journey. That’s no easy task. Read more »
The company will end the year with a total of 17 international cities after starting 2012 with zero outside the US. The HotelTonight app is also now translated, for the first time, into a handful of new languages: French, German, Italian and Spanish. Read more »
Routehappy is attempting to do something that no other flight search aggregator does: assign an experience score to every single flight and every aircraft and airline in one place. Even if you’re an airline in Burma without a website. Read more »
I took two big trips in October — one fun one to Europe, and one Hurricane Sandy-induced road trip. Here are the digital tools I found most useful on the road — and the ones that were more of a hindrance. Read more »
Triposo, a maker of smart downloadable travel guides, has updated its app to version 2.0, which allows users to bookmark places on their iPad and then retrieve them on their iPhone or Android device. They can also create a journal of their travels while offline. Read more »
Hotel Tonight says it plans to acquire fellow San Francisco startup PrimaTable. While PrimaTable’s area of expertise is the high-end restaurant business, Hotel Tonight says it plans to put the company’s engineers to work improving its own platform that helps hotels advertise their last-minute room availability. Read more »
Apple has become one of dozens of companies being sued by Ameranth over wireless synching software — in Apple’s case, it’s over Passbook. Ameranth is not just your average patent troll, however: it has taken investment from Microsoft and Motorola. Read more »
Routehappy’s flight experience search engine and user rankings aim to combine data about flights, planes and airports and vast user knowledge to try to make flying commercial as painless as possible. Read more »
With so many different photo and social networks out there, our digital memories are usually all over the place and out of sync on a variety of different services. Irrive gathers these things into a single product that makes it easy to share single events across the web. Read more »
CouchSurfing, a former non-profit that helps travelers find a place to stay, has raised a $15 million Series B round, led by General Catalyst Partners. The money comes a year after it raised $7.6 million and incorporated with a B Corp certification. Read more »
Hopper’s multiyear mission to use big data tools to bring structure to the web’s travel-related information continues with a fresh infusion of cash. CEO Frederic Lalonde talked about how his company is taking advantage of acquisition-happy Google’s interest in travel information. Read more »
Google’s move to buy travel publisher Frommer’s highlights how local and travel are coming together. Increasingly, the best travel services are focused on treating you like a local. And local services are becoming great resources for people looking to spend time in an unfamiliar city. Read more »
Social travel recommendation app Trover has slowly undergone a makeover the past month or so. CEO Jason Karas talked with us about how Trover’s users were the ones who turned the travel app into an aspirational, entertainment-oriented app that is only somewhat related to real-life travel. Read more »
FlightTrack Free is not replacing the popular, paid FlightTrack or FlightTrack Pro apps. It’s a separate, scaled-down version of FlightTrack with a redesigned interface. Mobiata, FlightTrack’s creator, plans eventually to add in-app purchase options. Read more »
Though the U.S. travel industry brings in $2 billion a year and employs 100 million people, Rafat Ali says there’s no one website where industry execs and business travelers can go for information. So he’s launching Skift, a website focused on travel news, data and services. Read more at paidContent »
Apple’s iPhone charger isn’t always practical for travel. The iKeep Charger is excellent for not just charging the iPhone, but other devices like wireless headphones or a mobile hotspot. After using it, I really think it is a must-have device on the go. Read more »
Fotopedia users in China account for the largest chunk of its iPad audience by far. So naturally the travel app photo magazine for iOS is launching an app featuring the country itself. It arrives Thursday to coincide with the launch of the new iPad in China. Read more »
On Thursday the team behind Jetpac plans to announce it has raised a $2.4 million Series A round of funding for its iPad app that lets you use your friends’ travel photos to search for vacation destination or just fuel your own wanderlust. Read more »
CasaHop, the first start-up out of former Huffington Post CTO Paul Berry’s incubator SoHo Tech Labs, has raised $1.2 million, led by First Round Capital, with participation from Betaworks, Lerer Ventures and a number of individual investors. The site helps users exchange homes. Read more »
Nailing the mobile experience is essential for online travel services. Orbitz’s new free app aims to make it much easier for leisure travelers to do trip research and book hotel, airfare and rental cars all within one app without going to a mobile website. Read more »
Dread waiting around with nothing to do during a layover or waiting for a delayed flight? Meet the company that’s planning to outfit North American airports with tens of thousands of iPads to use — for free. The first cities will be New York, Minneapolis and Toronto. Read more »
The last-minute hotel booking app has secured a $23 million Series C funding round from U.S. Venture Partners. Hotel Tonight plans to use the money to bring its iOS and Android app to more cities outside the U.S., and add more last-minute destinations at home. Read more »
Planning a trip to Wales anytime soon? If so, put the town of Monmouth on your itinerary and be sure to bring your phone. On May 19, Monmouth officially becomes the world’s first Wikipedia Town and you’ll need your handset with you for the full tour. Read more »
Our nation’s rail system is about to take a big step forward: by placing less emphasis on paper tickets and introducing the iPhone as an important tool for conductors. This will streamline boarding for Amtrak, but it will also make life easier for smartphone-toting rail commuters. Read more »
Inkling, which started out as an iPad textbook publisher and recently launched an interactive e-book publishing platform called Habitat, is moving further into the consumer realm with a new series of Frommer’s interactive digital travel guides. Read more at paidContent »
Index Ventures co-founder Neil Rimer has helped steer his company to success with investments in Skype, Betfair and many more. He explains why he’s obsessed with education and marketplaces — and why he wishes he’d invested in Kickstarter. Read more »
Travel booking startup Hipmunk is rolling out updated versions of its mobile apps, which will automatically take into account events that are already on your calendar when trying to book travel. It works through integration with calendars such as Microsoft’s Outlook, Google Calendar and Apple’s iCal. Read more »
Discoverful is a three-month-old travel picture-sharing site that allows users to snap images and share their experiences around the world with their friends. Like Trover, the app is pretty and designed to highlight places instead of people, but it’s founder explains there’s more — data. Read more »
A year ago Airbnb clone Wimdu was getting ready to launch. Now CEO Arne Bleckwenn is presiding over hockey stick growth and international expansion, just as the peer-to-peer travel sector starts to heat up. Read more »
Swedish startup Tripbirds wants to bring its stylish approach to bear on the social travel market. But with so many services around, and so few obvious winners, is there even a market worth competing for? Read more »
– NBCUniversal: Krishan Bhatia has been promoted to EVP, digital strategy & operations for the Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integra… Read more at paidContent »
– ESPN: The sports network is seeing a reorg: John Kosner has been promoted to EVP, digital and print media, from SVP and GM of the divisio… Read more at paidContent »
Dorling Kindersley, the division of Penguin that publishes children, travel and reference titles, made a strong case for how it is moving to… Read more at paidContent »
Mark Gilbreath of LiquidSpace predicts that the driving force of the sharing economy will become time, and the companies that can do business in real-time will occupy a more strategic, and profitable, place in the ecosystem. Read more »
Although devices that shoot high-definition video are cheaper and more ubiquitous than ever, amateur videos themselves have not gotten any better to watch. That’s where a new iPhone app called Magisto comes in: It turns any simple iPhone video into a fully edited movie in minutes. Read more »
Lonely Planet’s new San Francisco-based mobile startup has gone live with its flagship mobile travel guide app Wenzani, which paidContent fi… Read more at paidContent »
More mobile movements from Facebook today: it has bought the check-in social media service Gowalla, according to a report in CNN. Read more at paidContent »
Fathom, the travel site launched by two former Daily Candy editors earlier this year, is expanding its commerce side with a shop of travel-t… Read more at paidContent »
Richard Branson is no stranger to investing in mobile media: among his more notable moves have been establishing *Virgin Mobile* years ago,… Read more at paidContent »
