My Mom Got It With A Belt From Dad

Mashup, the final frontier of online travel

So where were we? Yes, let's see, disintermediation, social content, comparators, the decline of the air, all things have already been discussed. But what emerges in these early months of 2009? One word: Mashup! Segnatevela, studiatevela and try in every way to make it into your tourism business, otherwise you will be cut off within a couple of years.

For those without their own experts, the Mashup ( see Wikipedia definition ) is a way to mix, mix, aggregate content from sources different, and to make available all together or at least pre-treating them in some way.

I found a nice example of practical Mashup tourist site www.triptouch.com that without creating anything new to present the content from at least a dozen Web sites different, Google Maps for maps, Kayak and Priceline for hotels, Viator for packages and tours, Wikipedia for photos, TopTable for restaurants, Yahoo news, Eventful for events, Wheather Channel for weather, and others. Requesting information on a city, the system shows what is available for that destination on all connected systems, and presents all in one page.

So in a mashup, you take the data from different sources on the same topic come together and presented to users in aggregate form, saving the trouble of find it themselves alone. This is made possible by the fact that now the majority of e-commerce websites that provide information or have an API that allows you to access data in a structured form. And it is the proliferation of these APIs that makes Mashup always easier and more widespread.

Another great site programmableweb.com collects several of the API and Mashup in circulation that are built on them, if not exhaustive and it is a good source that allows you to realize how much stuff there is to exploit freely around the web.

Here the first limit is clear: only really big (Google, Yahoo, Kayak, Hotels.com, Priceline, etc..) Provide structured API able to form a solid basis for initiatives based on Mashup , and especially in the Travel lacks a true standard that allows anyone to provide / request data in a single universal format or otherwise widely distributed.

In this regard, two words on the OTA standard (not intended as an acronym for Online Travel Agent, but as OpenTravelAlliance , the international organization for the establishment of technical standards in the tourism sector): OTA specification are with each new version more and more bloated, difficult to implement, particularly inflexible. This makes them more distant from those who want to use them as a quick way to distribute their tourism product.

a shame, because today more than ever we need a real standard "low-cost, accessible not only through complicated web services (WSDL / SOAP) but especially in the more streamlined procedures REST . Whether this standard was also Open Source, success would be assured.

A second limitation of the existing mashups today, is the difficulty to include in the unstructured aggregates also present in social networks, that those thousands of photos, videos, reviews, travel stories and whatever ' nothing but lie buried and often read within containers such as Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube or are linked through the various diggitare and Twitter.

What then we can hope for new applications within the travel of the Mashup?

1) A standard simple but efficient way to build APIs that allow the distribution of tourism products (hotels, packages, flights, car rental, additional services, etc.).

2) The adoption of this standard in the first place by PMS (the management used by the hotels), by Channel-Management software, and systems of Tour Operators, so you can quickly have a large supply base . Experience shows that those who have the product even greater force to impose its system of access to its dealers.

With these two premises, the market may have a rapid acceleration in terms of distribution and product visibility.

How to integrate the product even more than the user-generated content?

For content "social", that is, for all that is generated by users ( UGC), is the huge and seemingly insurmountable problem of properly associate the content (both it a comment, a photo, video, or other) tourist object which is reportedly in some way and be able to quickly find all content throughout the network that just talk of that object.

Again, do not miss the instruments, the above mentioned social networks that serve as mega-gatherers of data and allow faster searching through the user-generated content. But what is lacking is precisely the universal dictionary to use to ensure that all speak the same language when mentioning a particular hotel or in a specific location.

also effective and innovative tools, such as OpenCalais or Zemanta , which are able to automatically extract names, facts and events from any web page, can help in this quest, but on this front, the road is still long.

What is missing is therefore that classification system for tourist tag that would quickly find anything on the network, and would make reality the idea of \u200b\u200ba tourist Mashup truly effective, a sort of OpenID tourism.

In conclusion, what I imagine is an engine in Mashup able to present you with not only information relating to one institutional or commercial location or a tourist, but also everything around it says the network, with effective tools for digging this sea of \u200b\u200binformation. Maybe it's just a matter of time, maybe someone is already working on this problem and has the resources to develop it ... if there is let me know!

well placed in the drawer I have some ideas about it, happy to share if anyone wants to talk or have ideas to develop a business.

How To Unremove Facebook

Needs (Episode 2.6.2)

Some modules later, Lykos decided that if he remained locked in the office just a minute longer, he would have gone crazy.
He needed a breath of fresh air.
He looked around for someone to sbolognare practices that remained. Damn those
Rebeq team, he thought, thanks to their exit at the French all the rest of the identifications had touched them.
But what the hell they had done in Tübingen the night before?
There were so many people in the police station that looked like a brawl than a gathering of the Alpine ... It was only the carboy and siphon the wine with the roast sausages.

All agents were busy.
No, not all, Lykos noted with satisfaction.
Well, Arsinoe was not just an agent, being only a trainee, but it was free, he sat at his desk for newbies to learn.
They had left alone, since it was preparing for the examination of criminal procedure, that the good guys ...
How did studying with all the mess that was around was a mystery.
Well, never mind, so now would have to stop, the werewolf chuckled.

"Oi! Arsinoe! - Lykos said, making them a sign with his hand - Will you give me the change here? "
" I'm studying! "Protested the girl, moving away from the face of a lock of brown hair.
Lykos gave her an appealing look a puppy. "Please! I absolutely must go to the bathroom ... Please! "
She snorted and rolled his eyes, closing the book with a snapping motion.
"Okay, what should I do?" Asked Arsinoe approaching the desk of the colleague.
"Just do the right questions and complete the form. No big deal ... "Lykos minimized.
The girl sat resolutely in front of the terminal and cracking his fingers. "Do not take a life, okay?"
"Promise," said the werewolf as he walked briskly toward the door.
A
Lykos did not like to use the bathroom normal.
From early childhood, had always done his needs outside in the woods behind his house in Greece.
had to mark his territory at the bottom, and then he liked to take his time.
slipped out of the DCS and put the stairs to the basement.
Ignoring the door of the morgue (gosh, this place really puts the shivers), sneaks into the back warehouse and came out in the forest.
finally out!

Lykos was feeling much better now that it was open, with trees all around him.
raised his face and sniffed the air.
smelled green, grass and leaves with tones of brown , Moss and ancient wood, a smell fantastic.
With a brief howl of joy, the werewolf launched into a short ride through the trees, savoring his moment of fleeting freedom.
After a brief search, found a tree that seemed to fit and, above all, sympathetic.
In a bathroom tile and ceramic, closed by a thin wooden door that document was not so satisfactory, he thought happily watered while the undergrowth.
The environment was too impersonal and claustrophobic, Judge.
At school and police academy, he had always had to adapt to normal use of the baths, in spite of himself.
had to maintain a semblance of normality to the world, especially when had not yet entered into force the Protocol of Tara.
Damn, these were times before Tara shit: his had to do crazy things to make it go to a regular school.
hope their first child, that he was the first graduate in the family, poor things.
Obviously we had done: he had barely finished high school, which had cost him a considerable effort.
Sitting for all those hours at a desk, especially when the sun was out, had been a real torture, which he had reluctantly agreed not to disappoint his old.
was out of high school a year late and with the votes certainly not brilliant, then he enlisted in the police.

Following the flow of his thoughts, Lykos changed tree.
not only needed it against a tree, it was necessary to define the territory and served at least three trees.
was a complicated business, which required some self-control.

Entering the DCS had the fortune of his life there knew a werewolf in the full value of its forces, a werewolf who was born and raised as such and who knew exactly what to do with the hyper-developed senses and inhuman strength. There
allowed him to be the hunter was in fact perfect.
was worth all the trouble to study and prepare physically for the selections.
Maybe it was not an alpha in the group and maybe never would be the state, but appreciated by his superiors, they were the true alpha, worthy of the command.

A sound of leaves rustling behind him stopped him halfway there.
With a curse on his lips, closed Lykos pants and turned toward the intruder screaming, a sound like that certainly was not caused by a pet or wind, which had not existed, it was one of the hottest days year.
the ears of another noise would be imperceptible, but not to his.
Whoever it was good, he thought with a smile, letting his hands are transformed by acquiring claws, and his hazel eyes are tinged with yellow.
From a clump of trees came out of a race trafelatissima Arsinoe, looking very agitated.
"Not sclera with me, good luck. - Protested the girl looked irritated - Is there an emergency call to arms. "
Lykos swore again, end of freedom:

But at least you leave, he thought with a bit of sense of fault: whenever there was a bit 'motion meant that something had happened to someone abominable.
"What the hell happened?" He asked, walking toward the lead, closely followed by the girl.
"They blew up a conference at the Romulus and Remus." Said Arsinoe, rather bitter.
"What?" Said Lykos, furious, and ran towards the base moving with agility and security in the trees, regardless of whether the inexperienced trainee was able to keep up with him or not:
"Bastards!" He snarled.
not that was fine, he would have preferred to remain in office for weeks rather than know that the most active association for the rights of werewolves had just exploded.