Digital
03 May 2013

  • Square bets recommendations based on payment data beat Foursquare check-ins anytime

    Digital

    Square is using its trove of payment data to build an engine for making local recommendations, a move that could upend the conventional wisdom about luring customers through their mobile devices. The recommendation engine, which is already at work in the commerce startup’s merchant directory, will someday suggest places to visit based on a customer’s [...]

  • How Southwest, largest domestic airline, readies international flights for 2014

    Transport

    Southwest Airlines, the carrier that promotes itself in its current and controversial advertising campaign as “America’s largest domestic airline,” is about to get undomesticated. Last month, Southwest kicked off daily service from Orlando and Tampa to San Juan, its first flights outside the continental U.S. These flights supplement subsidiary AirTran’s existing service from Baltimore/Washington, Atlanta, [...]

02 May 2013

  • Yahoo in talks to buy travel rewards startup Milewise

    Transport

    Yahoo nearing deal to buy travel rewards startup Milewise, according to sources (via Pando Daily) By Erin Griffith On May 2, 2013Yahoo is poised to acquire New York travel startup Milewise, according to people familiar with the deal. The deal is set to close this week, they said. Milewise was founded in 2010 to help consumers [...]

  • TripAdvisor acquires cruise online-booking site CruiseWise

    Digital

    Are cruise transactions in TripAdvisor’s future? Probably not, but TripAdvisor has acquired CruiseWise, an online cruise-booking startup that was founded in 2010. And, TripAdvisor plans on integrating CruiseWise’s tech talent and some of its content into TripAdvisor’s CruiseCritic unit, a leading cruise news and user generated content site. You can expect that a major overhaul [...]

  • Hertz turns to hackers to innovate mobile customer service

    Transport

    Hertz is turning to hackers for apps and ideas. More than 200 developers, many from area car manufacturers, took part in Hertz’s Mobility and Connected Car Hackathon at nestGSV in Redwood City, California, late last month. After the final code had been written, developers presented more than 50 apps in the competition. The winning app, [...]

  • Three companies we admire in travel business information

    Digital

    Lately we have been very aggressive on the legacy companies in the travel business information space, and our recent presentation “Building a Business Information Brand in 2013” outlined how we have gone about building Skift since we launched nine months ago, contrasting with the B2B legacy we called “Backwards. Boxed-In. Boring.” That said, we are [...]

  • Portable GPS units enlist social media to compete with smartphone navigation

    Transport

    Makers of portable global-positioning systems are caught in a squeeze. Once a luxury item, in-dash navigation is showing up in cheaper cars, while smartphone apps like Google Maps and Apple Maps are adding more nav-system-like features such as spoken- turn-by-turn directions. Mitac International, the maker of the Magellan line of GPS devices, is taking the [...]

01 May 2013

  • Taxi-hailing apps are illegal again in NYC, day after launch

    Transport

    New York livery car groups won a bid to block a pilot program that would enable people to hail and pay for rides in one of the city’s 13,000 yellow taxis using location-based smartphone applications. The measure adopted by the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission in December would run for 12 months and [...]

  • Yelp cites Apple partnership as driving force in first quarter revenue growth

    Digital

    Yelp Inc., owner of a website that compiles consumer reviews of local businesses, reported first-quarter revenue that exceeded analysts’ estimates as a push into new markets helped bring in more advertisers. Sales climbed 68 percent to $46.1 million, the San Francisco-based company said today in a statement, topping the $44.5 million average analyst prediction compiled [...]

  • Concur posts wider loss in first quarter

    Digital

    Concur Technologies Inc. (CNQR) Wednesday reported second-quarter net loss attributable to Concur of $7.6 million or $0.14 per share, wider than $4.8 million or $0.09 per share in the same period last year. Adjusted pretax income attributable to Concur was $13.6 million or $0.24 per share, compared to $18.5 million or $0.33 per share in [...]