Voyage Of The Odd Essay

Wired News is carrying an interesting article about Tracking Air Fares and systems to predict ticket prices. It’s a fairly interesting read and highlights the key things to do in order to get cheap flights, but it doesn’t offer much more then the common knowledge that is already circulated around many travel resources and blogs.

Personally, I’ve been using Kayak to search for tickets as they have some very handy features that make repeated searching easy, and in the search results offer a chart of pricing history which you can use to help pin point when the cheapest times to travel are.

The two most important things to keep in mind when looking for cheap flights are simply be flexible about when you travel, and when you see a cheap flight, book it right away as it won’t stick around for long.

Even using Kayak’s email alert system to get emails about cheap flights I find a lot of the tickets I get told about have raised to a higher price by the time I get to them, so if you are planning on traveling, just looking for tickets isn’t enough, you need to be ready to grab the bargain when you find it.

It’s been some time since I’ve really played with any new software, and as this week I’ve been trying to streamline some of my usage of the Internet, when I remembered I was going to look at the latest version of Flock it seemed like it could be the answer to many of my current work flow problems.

I have looked at flock in the past, but it was very early versions and while I liked the idea, it just didn’t deliver anywhere near what I was hoping for. But from the moment I’ve installed the latest version (Flock 1.1) it instantly impressed me how it now comes across as a rich and professional piece of software.

For me, one of the main attractions is the ability to write blog posts off line; Something which will make life much simpler and cheaper when I travel around South East Asia from the end of the year, I’m still researching getting a connection via mobile, and the news the Thailand is rolling out HSDPA makes me feel warm and fuzzy, but that’s all extra expense that I don’t really need. (But I would like it all the same)

The various social networking feeds look like they could be very useful when on the road as I start to cull my list of blogs and try to streamline the way I look at online information. As much as when I travel I will keep connected, I still want to ensure I’m not wasting time poking around sites to find information, and Flock looks like it could be a very useful tool for bringing that information to me.

Since this is the first time I’ve posted with Flock, this post might come out a little funky.

Tags: Blog, Software, Technology, Travel, Flock

I love gadgets and as such part of the appeal of driving around the world as oppose to backpacking is not only can I carry all the gadgets I want, but the vehicle it’s self is essentially one big toy with loads of scope for tinkering.

Without really looking into the practicality of any of these, here are the first five gadgets that leap to my mind: (more…)

I really got hooked on the idea of been able to get online and work from anywhere I wanted which lead down the route of doing some research on satellite phone technology, and using it for data access. (more…)