Make hotel reservations on your iPhone with HotelPal

by Scott Carmichael on

The Gadling hotel month may be slowly coming to an end, but we are always on the lookout for new and interesting applications to help make traveling a little easier. HotelPal is such an application.

Imagine pulling up your current GPS location on your iPhone, and getting a list of all hotels in your area. The application can list the distance to you, current rates, photos and even availability.

Once you find a good looking hotel, you can go ahead and make a reservation, all from the comfort of your device.

You’ll be able to download HotelPal in the App store later this week. Best of all, the app will be free of charge! If you leave your email address on their site, they’ll drop you a note when the application is ready to download.

The developers behind HotelPal have made quite a name for themselves with their other applications – FlightTrack and FlightTrack Pro. FlightTrack is currently the number one travel application in the App store, so HotelPal has quite a reputation to live up to.

Headed to Africa? Emailing home just got easier

by Sean McLachlan on

Cyberjunkies face a serious problem when going to Africa–most countries have slow and unreliable Internet service. I’ve been encountering this problem myself as I try to set up my upcoming trip to The Gambia. Luckily for some countries, a new high-speed fiber optic cable will provide quick access to the rest of the world.

The BBC reports that the first undersea cable serving East Africa has just come online. Now South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Mozambique have a dedicated connection to Europe and Asia. Email can then be routed through one of the nodes there to continue on to places like North America. The cable is owned by African company Seacom and was supposed to go online in June but was delayed because of pirates off the Somali coast.

The faster connection is good news not only for homesick tourists, but also African businesspeople and students, like the Tanzanian schoolkids pictured here, and will help lower the “information debt” of several developing countries.

Anyone willing to fund a certain Gadling blogger to check out the connections for himself? I’ll be happy to report back on my findings.

Pay to sleep on a stranger’s couch with AirBnB

by Katie Hammel on

I recently came across the website AirBnb.com, which promises to connect “adventurous travelers” with “nice folks” willing to let strangers stay in their apartment, spare room, or even on their couch – for a fee. Basically, if VRBO (Vacation Rentals by Owner) and CouchSurfing had a love child, this would be it.

At first I thought it was just a way to get money out of people who (somehow) still haven’t heard of CouchSurfing. Some of the offerings are downright laughable – why would people pay $70 to sleep on a couch when they can get their very own room at a major hotel chain for $10-$20 more? And if someone really wanted to stay with locals and make new friends, wouldn’t they just CouchSurf?

Despite some of the clearly deluded potential hosts offering to allow you to squat in their apartment for a ridiculous fee, I still wouldn’t write the site off completely. A few of the options listed are actually pretty great, like an entire apartment to yourself in Chicago, tastefully decorated and ideally located, for just $80 a night. There are even established B&Bs and pensions using AirBnB as another outlet for advertising their available rooms. Luckily the site does allow you to set search parameters like “private room” and “entire place” so you can easily find what you want. You can also look at reviews from previous guests and see plenty of photos of the place before you book. You’ll take on more risk than if you book with a traditional hotel, but you could score a great deal.

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MapMyRide.com for when you need a bike map

by Annie Scott on

In a strange city and trying to keep it green (or looking for a great way to get around and see the sights)? MapMyRide.com has bike maps. Like, Mapquest-style.

Biking is a great (and cheap!) way to see almost any city — and also to get out of the city. If you visit MapMyRide’s “Search for Rides” tab, you can find all kinds of adventures to take on your bike, maybe even some in your own town you didn’t know about. Central Park to Bear Mountain Round trip, anyone?

Additionally, they’re currently running a competition in which you can win $1000s and great prizes, including a trip to France, and all you have to do is ride your bike!

Don’t forget you can rent bicycles for free in NYC through September 30th, 2009. Now get out there and enjoy the summer!

The most accurate world map available as a free download

by Sean McLachlan on

Finally, our tax dollars going to something cool.

The folks at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, along with NASA and the Japanese government, have come together to make the world’s most accurate topo map. And it’s available for free!

The ASTER project, which stands for Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (say that ten times fast) is a minutely detailed look at the Earth using an instrument aboard Terra, a satellite that’s part of the Earth Observing System, EOS for short. It examines the differences in elevation, heat, and reflectivity on the Earth’s surface in order to study everything from forest cover to ice floes. This helps scientists understand and predict changes in the hugely complex system that is our little ball of clay.

One byproduct is the topo map, along with an amazing gallery of images of our world from above. These can be seen on their website.

You can download the maps for free from NASA’s EOS Digital Archive, where you’ll see a list of several ASTER products. Some cost, but some are free, such as the elevation model shown here.