PE.com - Tourism Blog

Technology feels kind of like Sesame Street: Sharing is Caring

Hey folks, I'm at the DEMO 08 conference in Palm Desert today and the name of the event is pretty self-explanatory -- tech companies launching new products or ideas present six minute "demos" after taking the stage to techno music (the wall in the media room is vibrating a bit, really) and pitch their ideas to a crowd of investors, business-types and we of the media.

Among the 77 companies here, two are travel related and may be interesting to those who are all too familiar with Facebook and the like, or already reccommend their travels to others on sites like Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz.

Buzka Popnet is from a couple of Austrailians who thought friends and family searching online for possible vacation ideas, bookmarking sites as they go along, may want to share all those Web sites with their travel mates at one time, rather than copying and pasting links in e-mails. Travelers can create folders (i.e. Seattle vacation) and collect the Web sites they don't want to forget in it. They can also attach comments to sites and send them on to friends or family. You can also see what your friends and family bookmark.
From what I could tell, its essentially an organizational tool for folks who may think regular old browser bookmarking is too plain.
Personally, all I wanted to do while planning a trip to Ireland with my friend Jessi last year was to be able to send her the exact frozen site from airlines and train fares so we could figure out costs and schedules while we both planned the trip on our own times. The folks at Buzka claim that will be a feature in a month or so. I hope so.

Citiport is from Taiwan and is looking for locals - no matter where you're from. Their site depends on the locals who sign on and reccomend hotels, restaurants, attractions to the travelers (also, locals can be travelers, so its one symbiotic social networking site). If folks appreciate your reccomendations, you could get promoted to "tour guide" status so your reccomendations hold more sway, kindof like an e-bay seller with a slew of good reviews. I'm not entirely sure if there's any reward to being a tour guide though. Like Buzca's Popnet, it's free to sign up.