Apologies to Devo. I couldn’t resist.
As a LinkedIn user, I’ve been taking a casual look at their new applications, ala Facebook. One of them, TripIt, allows you to organize your travel and share with other LinkedIn users. Of course, you don’t need to be a LinkedIn user to use TripIt.
TripIt allows you to make travel arrangements on just about any web site you currently use. Simply forward the e-mail confirmation from the travel web site and TripIt will create an integrated itinerary that you can share with friends and coworkers. TripIt will add weather and other useful travel tips based on your destination.
For my first use, I forwarded the e-mail confirmations from an upcoming trip to teach BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.0 administration: an airline reservation made on Travelocity, a car rental reservation made on Avis, and a hotel reservation made on Priority Club (Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites, etc.). Within a few seconds, I received e-mail confirmation that TripIt had assembled my itinerary.
When accessed from LinkedIn, you can see who in your network is traveling or which contacts are in the destination city during the dates of your business trip. TripIt can also be accessed via mobile phone, but I don’t have a great phone for testing that feature. Yet.
I’m impressed with the functionality although I shudder to think about the Perl scripting or other parsing required to extract data from all the different e-mail formats. Frequent travelers should give TripIt a spin. Get straight. Go forward. Move ahead. It’s not too late.
I have two thoughts here. One is technical, which is “this is cool” as you have observed. 🙂 The other is social. I’m not sure I want to publish when I will be gone from my house.
Can anyone view your itenerary, or only your “friends” in your group? Even if it’s only your friends or contacts, there’s still a risk that one of their accounts could get compromised.
Even on my personal blog, I talk about trips after they are over rather than beforehand. That way the wrong people can’t find out when my house might be vacant.
I agree with your point on publishing when you’ll be gone from the house. On that point, I think that the value of LinkedIn integration is diminished, as “all connections” is just too broad a set of people. On the flip side, I had never heard of the TripIt service until it showed up on LinkedIn.
The stand alone TripIt web site allows you greater control over who can see the information. For example, you can limit the information to your spouse, close friends, or co-workers.