Share your travel deals with friends with Yapta’s Frugal Travel Flaunts

by Katie Hammel on

Yapta, a website that tracks prices and helps you figure out when to book your airfare, has launched a new Facebook application called Frugal Travel Flaunts. When you find a deal on a flight and add it to “my trips”, you can choose to publish it on your Facebook page, alerting all your friends to your great find.

The idea behind the app is pretty solid. How many times have you found out about the amazing low-cost flight a friend found, but too late? Hearing that my friend spent just $300 on a round trip ticket from Chicago to London after she gets back from the trip doesn’t help me take advantage of the same deal. And likewise, I feel bad when friends ask why I didn’t share the news of my cheap fare purchase with them. The Frugal Travel Flaunts application allows you to use social media to alert your friends to good deals and helps you score your own with a few easy clicks.

Yapta will also help you get a credit if a flight you’ve already purchased drops in price. The site will alert you to the fare decrease with a link that sends you to the page on their site with credit info. You can also “flaunt” that on your Facebook page, though I see that as a less useful tool. Sharing news on killer deals is one thing, boasting about refunds is another – there’s a fine line between a flaunt and a taunt.

Undiscovered New York: All things TV in NYC

by Jeremy Kressmann on

The television screen is a strangely natural way to view New York City. In fact, even if you’ve never visited New York, your perception of the city most likely stems from NYC TV icons like Bill Cosby, the cast of Friends or Jerry Seinfeld. In fact, television and New York tend to go hand in hand. Ever since NBC started broadcasting its signal here in the 1940’s the city has been dominated by all things related to the small screen.

Television’s presence in New York is fairly obvious. Anyone who’s ever wanted to check out a taping of The Daily Show or the Colbert Report, David Letterman or Saturday Night Live, knows where to find the tapings. But for every Jon Stewart appearance or Tony Soprano reference, there’s a world of strange TV history that lies waiting to be discovered. This is a city, after all, that has been in love with TV from the very beginning, with a history that dates back over 60 years.

Ever wanted your own private screening of a vintage TV classic from the 1940’s? Curious to discover some of the most famous facades and settings in New York City TV history? Don’t touch that dial, this week Undiscovered New York is covering all things TV. Click below to read more.
Famous Settings
When you picture the filming of a television show, it often brings to mind a giant studio lot decked with lights. Yet many of New York’s most famous TV moments and vignettes are played out right before our eyes as we walk the city’s many side streets and avenues. Ever wanted to check out the real life homes and businesses from your favorite TV shows?

Make your first stop in New York’s West Village, where 10 Leroy Street is the site of the Cosby family’s famous facade. And who knew Bill Cosby was neighbors with Monica, Joey and Ross? The building used as the apartment building for Friends is just around the corner at the corner of Bedford and Grove. Hungry for more TV locations? Why not stop by Monk’s Diner, site of so many meals on Seinfeld? It’s located at 112th Street and Broadway.

Making TV History
Ever since NBC began the first continuous TV broadcast in 1944, New York has been hooked on the small screen. Yet for all the show’s we’ve come to know and love in recent years, there’s more than 60 years of TV history waiting to be explored. A good place to start is Manhattan’s Paley Center for Media, formerly The Museum of Television and Radio, on 52nd Street. The museum is dedicated to exploring the “cultural, creative and social significance of television.” The way they accomplish this goal is quite a feat – in addition to ongoing exhibitions on some of TV’s greatest moments, visitors are free to explore more than 120,000 archived TV shows, commercials and radio programs at their leisure using individual consoles. It’s an interesting way to explore the evolution and and history of this influential medium.

TV Today
Although many of our fondest TV memories are behind us, it would be incorrect to assume television is dead. In fact, New York is also a great place to investigate the future of the medium. A good place to start would be the annual New York Television Festival, held each fall. The event was designed to showcase the work of those “creating for the small screen” and as a venue to discuss such topics as the future of advertising, sitcoms and broadcast journalism.

Gadlinks for Friday 7.24.09

by Brenda Yun on


Happy Friday, Gadling! There are all kinds of great travel reads (and a contest!) out there on the world wide web today. Here are a few…

‘Til Monday, have a great weekend!

More Gadlinks HERE.

What makes a good travel companion?

by Mike Barish on

While traveling alone can be rewarding and adventurous, the majority of your travels will include a partner or two. Be it a significant other, friend or family member, you will typically find yourself on a trip with some company. If I’ve learned anything from my travels it’s that your choice of partner can make or break a trip. Not all friends make for good travel companions. You have to choose wisely before inviting someone on a trip with you. So, what makes a good travel companion?

I asked my friends and Twitter followers for their thoughts on the matter and mixed their suggestions in with my own to compile a list of traits that every successful travel pairing should possess. Find someone who fits these criteria and you can be fairly confident that you won’t be ready to kill each other before you even pack your bags.

  1. Be together but alone – At some point on any trip, people will want to do different things. This will either cause a fight because one of you is insecure or create an opportunity for you to split up, enjoy some alone time and keep everyone happy.
  2. Flexibility – Travel can create stressful situations. Plans will change on the fly or new ideas will be discovered. A good travel buddy can roll with the changes and see them as exciting opportunities.
  3. Hygiene – Hey, you’re going to be with this person (potentially in cramped quarters) for days, week or even months. Either you both have to be slobs or you both have to keep clean. Smell together, shower alone.
  4. Spontaneity – The ferry to a remote island that you just learned about departs in five minutes and you leave town tomorrow. This is your only chance. These are the opportunities that require split-second decisions and can create amazing memories.
  5. Extroverts have more fun – Befriending people at hostels, bars or on tours is a great way to change up the travel dynamic. But your friend needs to share your willingness to invite people into your plans. Gadling editor Grant Martin did it with great success.
  6. Shut up – Whether you’re standing at the edge of a cliff admiring the view or on a train after a long day, there are times when you just want some peace and quiet. The company is nice, but knowing when to be silent makes it better.
  7. Similar schedules – If you like to party all night, it gets annoying when your friend always passes out at 9:00pm. And if you want to sleep in, it’s no fun being nudged awake at 5:00am to go on a tour that doesn’t even interest you. There’s no right or wrong schedule for traveling, but you should be able to compromise.
  8. Share responsibilities – If one person is doing all the planning, keeping things on schedule, booking all the flights, buses and hostels while the other person plans to just show up, there’s a good chance resentment will pop up the first time you miss a train. Split up the leg work and share the experience from beginning to end.
  9. Respect – You and your friend can disagree about a lot of things – foods, activities, destinations – but don’t criticize each other. If your friend wants to eat grasshoppers while in Mexico and that grosses you out, let her enjoy the experience without having to hear you gagging in the background.
  10. Cultural sensitivity – If you’ve ever traveled with someone who got into an argument over a language barrier, belittled someone or, in exasperation, yelled out something to the effect of “That’s what’s wrong with these people,” you know how mortifying it can be to apologize for your friend’s behavior. Best to travel with people who can handle cultural differences as well as you can.

Of course, these aren’t the only things that you want to keep in mind when choosing a travel companion, but they’re the biggest concerns. You’ll surely also want a friend who won’t mind if you stop to take lots of pictures or will share their photos with you if you’re not a shutterbug. And it never hurts if you don’t mind sharing a jacket or iPod when someone didn’t pack properly. Compromise and common courtesy go a long way towards keeping the peace.

Picking the right travel partner will ensure that you not only enjoy your trip, but that you will have shared experiences that will strengthen your friendship when the trip is over. I am fortunate enough to have a group of friends that gets along as well on the road as we do at home. We have stories from around the world that will bond us for years to come. If you’re hurting for a good travel buddy, you could always look online. Or not.

Have more suggestions or a story about how you picked the right/wrong travel companion? Please share in the comments. We’d love to hear from you.

Who are the friendliest people in the world? Iranians

by Jamie Rhein on

Who have you found to be the friendliest people in the world? According to Will Hide, the answer is Iranians. He and his female friend Annette toured Iran for 10 days where they met up with experiences I’d call delicious. Delicious food, delicious scenery, delicious things to see, and the type of hospitality where people invite you to tea all the live-long day.

As Hide says, everywhere they went people offered them tea and often tossed almonds and dried fruit into the hospitality quotient. In this engaging article in The Times, Hide gives a rundown of their trip. The sidebar on the last page gives useful information for anyone looking for an Iran experience.

As a note, he and Annette had a tour guide. I think that would be the way to go if I were to take such a trip. Every time I’ve hired a personal tour guide, even if it was just for a day, my understanding of a place and the pleasure I’ve had traveling is multiplied.

Keep reading for Hind’s trip highlights.

[The photo by Hamed Saber is of a party attended by friends. If you click on the enlarged photo, you can see who all the people are.]

Some highlights of Hide’s 10-day trip:

  • Tehran where they visited the palace grounds of the former Shah.
  • The journey across the Zagros Mountains to Shiraz where he and Annette saw the tombs of the classical poets Sa’di and Hafez.and were allowed to go in the Mausoleum of Shah-e Cheragh if Annette put on a chador and they didn’t go into the main shrine.
  • The ruins of Persepolis, the city destroyed by Alexander the Great in 330 B.C.
  • Esfahan-known for its beautiful architecture
  • The holy city of Qom,
  • Village of Imamzadeh Bazm where they stayed at Mr Abbas’s B&B and ate “aubergines mixed with yoghurt and mint; mushroom and barley soup; pickles; lettuce dipped in vinegar; and, for breakfast, tea and fruit followed by cheese with chopped walnuts.”

Check out some of these other wacky laws, place names and signs from around the world!