Top Sites for Easing Travel Woes
August 6th, 2007 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 12 Comments
Online resources that make trips easier for tech-savvy travelers abound, but they vary in quality and even in reliability of their information. Here, I’ll collect three of my absolute favorite, dependable sites for easing the hassle of traveling.
Do you have a hit-or-miss approach to getting the kind of seat you want on a plane, and finding it equipped with the connectivity and entertainment options you want? If so, you can take much more control of your fate by using SeatGuru.com. On each page for any plane SeatGuru.com lists, you’ll find an In-Flight Amenities list, which can tell you what kinds of audio, video, Internet and power options your seat will offer. You’ll find complete instructions for using the site at the bottom of the home page.
If you frequently run into travel problems like arriving at the airport too early for a flight that’s been delayed, you may not be using the best technology or online sites to optimize your plans. My very favorite online tool for this kind of task is FlightAware.com.
FlightAware.com is independent of the major carriers, and it essentially aggregates all the data in the air traffic control system so that you can just put the flight number of a plane in and pull up a graphical map showing precisely where any jet is. This is the most dependable way I know of to time your trips so you encounter the least hassle. You can also use FlightAware to check on current airport activity. All you need to do so is the airport code, which you can get by clicking on a link at the bottom left of FlightAware’s home page.
Most online-savvy travelers are aware that once they get to a destination city, they can look for Wi-Fi hotspots at places like Starbucks, but the recent trend has been for far more types of locations to offer free Wi-Fi. There are even now several entire cities offering free Wi-Fi outside. My favorite, easy-to-use tool for tracking down a convenient spot for free Wi-Fi is Wi-FiHotspotlist.com.
At Wi-FiHotspotlist.com, you can enter your address and city in, then click “Find a Hotspot.” A search I just did for downtown San Francisco lists everything from McDonald’s outlets offering Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi-enabled lobbies of posh hotels. You can also click the Browse by Region button to find all hotspots in any city.
Taking a few minutes to familiarize yourself with these sites for travelers can save you time and hassle on your next trip.
Do you have any tips for road warriors?
12 Comments Post your own comment
Jessica says: August 6th, 2007 4:47pm
I have to tell you, Seat Guru is an AMAZINGLY good website.
mossman says: August 6th, 2007 9:02pm
Tripadvisor is always my first site to look at when choosing hotel. Very useful and excellent reviews.
RickMahn.com » Blog Archive » links for 2007-08-07 says: August 7th, 2007 5:24am
[...] Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive Top Sites for Easing Travel Woes « Nice roundup of travel related sites that help “ease travel woes” as Samuel Dean at WWD puts it. (tags: travel web-services) [...]
GigaOM Cupertino bound, REST & More « says: August 7th, 2007 6:23am
[...] if you are one of the lucky ones who can afford to take a break from work, WebWorkerDaily has a great piece on some of the best travel sites to make the process painless. Share This | Sphere | Print [...]
Shane says: August 7th, 2007 4:51pm
UNTHIRSTY!!!
Finding happy hours while traveling is huge. When I worked for a company, and had a nice fat daily food stipend, I didn’t care, but now that I work for myself, and my travel expenses come out of my profit… I like to save money. Usually I’m in a trendy part of town, meaning there’s lots of access to close by restaurants. Knowing where to save a few bucks while I have a drink or three is pretty helpful.
BNT’s Best of the Week 08/11/07 says: August 11th, 2007 9:04am
[...] Web Worker Daily offers their top sites for easing travel woes. [...]
Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive Click-and-Drag to Save Travel Dollars and Avoid Hassle « says: August 23rd, 2007 4:01pm
[...] to Save Travel Dollars and Avoid Hassle In a recent post, I rounded up several useful sites for eliminating hassles during business trips. Especially if [...]
FlightStats says: August 24th, 2007 10:32am
FlightAware is good, but I have to admit FlightStats.com is way better. Granted, totally biased, we got the same info (a little better actually) and we continue to crank out additional widgets you can use - like our Flightstats Mobile, so you can get all this info on the go too!
tp says: September 8th, 2007 2:09am
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I found an outstanding travel related website.
You must visit this website for travel classifieds, Bargains, Blogs and enormous holiday deals.
Click here>> http://www.travelobargain.com
Over a Dozen Web Resources for Tech Travelers « Web Worker Daily says: October 5th, 2007 4:00pm
[...] Your Airplane Seat’s Amenities. I’ve written about SeatGuru before, so I won’t blather on, but it’s the very best way to make sure your airplane seat has [...]
Web Worker Daily » Archive Taking the Sting Out of Flying–the Web Way « says: April 10th, 2008 4:01pm
[...] If you’re a road warrior in addition to being a web worker, it’s good to collect the sites and services that can make your travels more [...]
Web Worker Daily » Archive 5 Essentials for the Mobile Web Worker « says: May 2nd, 2008 4:01pm
[...] Hassle-Removing Sites. A few online sites do a fantastic job of making life easier for the traveling web worker. Check out some good ones here. [...]