Travel Technology

Aesthetics for its own sake, for once, wins out here. Solar's $0.99 app replaces the weatherman's charts with an art gallery in your hand.

Vacation is supposedly a time to disconnect from technology, but this break out of the $162 billion online travel industry shows how broadly we depend on internet from pre-trip planning to post-trip photo sharing.

Better mobile apps -- especially on smartphones -- combined with Airbnb's relatively new Instant Book product brings users and landlords much closer to the last-minute booking options mobile travelers needs.

WeTrip hopes its focus on travel activities will set it apart in the inundated social travel market, but it will need to learn lessons from all who've gone before (and already pivoted).

Hipmunk business class is a smart move, although the company will find out that business travel is more than a few features and isn't "easy."

Finally, a way to make social media addiction pay. Every location-based update a user makes to linked social media accounts -- no matter the number of followers they have -- gives them loyalty points equal to what spending $20 does.

Skyhook, a location data provider for apps, can now track users while flying. How about connecting this with Uber to have a car waiting at the airport?

Yapta's push into the corporate market is a no-brainer as it can provide a valuable service for large corporations which don't have such tools of their own.

Flying is already the safest means of transportation and taking away some control from humans during more challenging portions of the route may remove the pilots from their tasks one step too far.

What took so long?