Pattie Maes demos the Sixth Sense | Video on TED.com

Imagine “Minority Report” and then some.

via Pattie Maes demos the Sixth Sense | Video on TED.com.

Very close to the idea that we have in i-Travel.

PhoCusWright – {Travel Daily News}

PhoCusWright – {Travel Daily News}.

PhoCusWright’s 2009 Technology Trends

• Despite Market Woes, Pockets of Investment Still Exist

“During economic downturns, innovation is the single most important condition for transforming the crisis into an opportunity.” (Sami Mahroum, Research Director of Britain’s National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts and a Visiting Reader at the School of Management, Birkbeck College, University of London) [IN].

• The Entire Trip Experience Will Be “Informationized”

In the past, the main focus of the travel value chain has been those components that resulted in a booking. Access to further information was a challenge because of limitations of mobile devices, lack of acceptable technology in hotel rooms, language barriers and no clear business model. This is all about to change.

• Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing and Open Source Spawn a New Flock of Innovators

Open Source has matured to the point that many companies are fully dependent on it. It has become an enabler for startups, allowing them to rapidly accelerate their time to market. At the PhoCusWright’s November 2008 Travel Innovation Summit, demonstrator Home and Abroad explained that they would not have been able to bring their product to market if it had not been for Open Source.

• Suppliers (Finally!) Provide Personalized Shopping/Booking Tools

Today, most OTAs look much the same: Where do you want to go? When? Air only or hotel and/or car? To provide convenience and value to the customer, future learning and shopping screens will adapt to the users’ stated profiles, observed profiles and shopping style. Similarly, the content presented will be the most meaningful to the customer.

• Technologies Will Continue to Converge

Ten years ago, television networks were distinct from the Internet. Video was limited to TV and you went to see a movie at the theater. Now you can make a phone call anywhere to anywhere in the world using your laptop. You can watch movies and TV and browse rich content on your mobile device. You can watch content from the Internet on your TV and wirelessly network your house for all manner of content.

• A Flood of New Mobile Travel and Location-Based Applications Come to Market

Mobile usage in travel applications has languished for years with a poor technology capability and an even worse business model. The mobile platform finally has interactive capability that makes it the fully functioning “3rd screen” alongside the desktop and laptop. With the growth of 3G (broadband wireless) subscriptions and smartphone adoption, apps will embrace location and context in a new way, enhancing the travel experience.

• Advertising Technology Transforms Travel Distribution

Pure play booking fee models will become dinosaurs as blended models involving highly targeted ads, referral fees and fees for service establish peaceful coexistence. The technology convergence discussed in Trend 5 will enable the convergence of business models.

• Still Searching… for Better Search

Last year the trends were “Semantic Technology and the Semantic Web will drive the next wave of Internet technology” and “Search will evolve to become more effective.” These are still true. Lack of adoption of the formal semantic Web does not mean that search is not getting better. There are several instances where semantics are being used to improve search. As they begin to show differentiated business value over normal search, they will gain traction.

• Democratization of Supply Levels the Playing Field

In the beginning when the airlines created travel distribution, the GDSs (they were called CRSs then) controlled the distribution of travel content. This created an oligopoly. But times are changing. The implementation of standards for interconnection, the transparency of the Internet, Web services and mashups, new search tools and SaaS models have all contributed to the development of an open marketplace for travel distribution.

• Business Intelligence and Analytics Move to the Forefront

In tight times, you need to squeeze as much as possible from your existing operations and capabilities. This involves understanding what your competitors are doing, how efficient and effective your own operations are and what your customers are saying.

Transportation is at the bottom of Obama’s additional Issues list

I know that we shouldn’t expect to much for ITS and transport given that there are more pressing issues in the world for President Obama to tackle, but given that effective transport is the back bone to an economy then I expected it to higher up the to do list.

Transportation

As our society becomes more mobile and interconnected, the need for 21st-century transportation networks has never been greater. However, too many of our nation’s railways, highways, bridges, airports, and neighborhood streets are slowly decaying due to lack of investment and strategic long-term planning. President Obama and Vice President Biden believe that America’s long-term competitiveness depends on the stability of our critical infrastructure. They will make strengthening our transportation systems, including our roads and bridges, a top priority

via Additional Issues.

Westminster City Council release car parking booking by text

Westminster City Council have in the past offered navigation services to  services to locate public toilets have recently offered the ability for users to find their nearest car parking by text message.

Users who text CARPARK to 80097 will receive a reply stating where the nearest car park to their location is, accuracy is under a mile and uses cell triangulation to locate the user.

Westminster’s use of the technology is the first time any council has used text messages to share information about its services to such an extent.

The service costs just 25p (plus standard network charge) per text sent to the 80097 number, the return messages are paid for by the council as part of its commitment to providing and promoting quality services.

More information can be found on the council website.

ITS world congress

This week I’m attending the ITS world congress in New York. This congress is turning out to probably be the largest congress to date.

So watch this space for reports from the show on events and presentations as well as a review of some of the upcoming technology displayed at the exhibition.

If you want to catch up with me I’ll be at the following presentations.

Monday

13:30 – 15:00 TS12 moderator

15:30 – 17:00 Speaker SS08

Wednesday

10:30 – 12:00 SS38 Moderator

Thursday

8:30 – 10:00 TS98 Moderator

For more details visit the ITS congress website.

Nele Dedene tells us why she needs i-Travel in her life

Today was again a day during which an i-Travel Personal Travel Assistant (PTA) could have saved me at least an hour of travel time. I got up early this morning to catch the train to the offices in Antwerp. I had to hurry a lot in order to get at the train station in time. I just arrived in time and was still catching my breath (I use my bicycle to go to the train station) when I hear via the intercom that my train will have a delay of at least five minutes. If I had been informed about this delay before hand, I would not have had to hurry so much and could have had a more relaxed trip to the train station. After 7 minutes my train arrives and I get on the train.

The train continues its journey to Antwerp on lower speed then normal. Once we arrive a few stations further, the train is stopped and they announce on the train that there is a defect goods-train on the rail track in front of us, due to which we can not continue our journey for the moment. The train stops and time passes by. After 45 minutes, the train continues its journey at a very low speed. I finally arrive in Antwerp with a delay of 1h and 15 minutes.

The break-down of the goods-train already occurred an hour before I had left home. Since there was only one rail track in each direction at the location of the goods-train, this break-down created large delays. If a service compliant with the i-Travel concept would have been available, my i-Travel PTA could have informed me about these delays and I could have selected an alternative route or another mode to travel to work.

I have two options to travel to Antwerp by train train. Both possible train routes do not have any overlap. One option takes 15 minutes longer than the other option. Therefore, I always select the fastest option. If my PTA would have informed me about the defect goods-train while I was still at home, I would have selected the other route to travel to work. This would have saved me 60min of travel time!

In normal circumstances (no train delays, usual traffic conditions), going to work by car is 15min faster compared to going to work by train. Taking into account the more relaxed journey on the train, I usually opt for the train to travel to work. However, if I had been informed about these large delays beforehand, I would have used my car. This would have saved me 1h and 30 min of travel time!

On the train, a lot of passengers were complaining and saying ‘If I had known about these delays, I would have…’. Therefore, I think that almost all my fellow-sufferers widely would agree with the statement that i-Travel could really be beneficial for the daily commuters/train travellers.

Nele works for Vlaames Overheid who are a full consortium meber for i-Travel

Lastminute Labs offer location aware restaurant booking

Lastminute labs are a small team working with Lastminute.com to develop travel applications.

Users will be able to soon receive nearby tips for food and theaters through their fonefood service which uses google gears as a platform on windows mobile devices.

Each listing shows details such as a description of the restaurant, distance from your current location, Google Map with directions, approximate cost of dining, special offers, phone number & complete address of the restaurant. You can then proceed to booking where you need to fill in details such as date of reservation, type of session whether breakfast, lunch or dinner, party size and finally details about yourself and your mobile number. A detailed confirmation SMS text message is then sent to your cellphone.

The application comes in two flavors: one for Windows Mobile browser IE Mobile with the latest Geolocation enabled Google Gears plug-in and the other one for all types of mobile browsers. The Geolocation API allows web applications to get an approximate region-level estimate of a user’s location based on their IP address as well as a more precise location based on GSM cell-ID of nearby cellular towers or on-board GPS. For other browsers, a user need to manually select and enter their location.

Visit FoneFood at m.lastminute.com, then click the “Find your location” link on the home page if you are using IE Mobile with the latest version of Google Gears for Windows Mobile. Otherwise, you can enter your location manually to get a list of nearby restaurants. To see the list of devices that support the Location feature of Google Gears, click here.

FoneFood is available in 12 European countries and gives users access to over 6,000 restaurants. If you are looking for US restaurant reservations, you may want to look at OpenTable at mobile.opentable.com which provides a mobile web interface to book tables but without any automatic location detection feature.