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is a very handy (free) website that helps organise your travel plans. You simply forward all your confirmation emails to the site; airline, hotels, car hire etc, and it automatically builds a single itinerary for your entire trip.

I’ve been using it for a few years now and find it invaluable for keeping everything in one place and easy to access. It also adds handy meta-info such as weather at your destination, maps, routes from the airport to your hotel etc. You can then share this info with others, see who’s going to be travelling at the same time, and export the entire thing to your calendar.

The only down side was, when actually on your trip you used to have to access the site to see your plans on your iPhone, which meant finding a wifi hotspot or internet cafe, or paying costly data roaming charges.

Which is why I was happy to find out that they just launched an app for the iPhone that stores all your trip details offline.

TripIt for iPhone gives you…

Easy Access: See all the details of your TripIt itineraries, whether you’re online or offline.

iPhone Integration: Link to airlines, hotels, restaurants and more, right from your itinerary.

Maps and Directions: Get maps and directions straight from your itinerary at the tap of a finger.

Quick Phone Calls: Direct dial phone numbers from your itinerary on your iPhone.

It’s kinda basic (doesn’t include all the meta-info for example) but functional, and the timing couldn’t be better for me as I’m in the middle of a trip to S.E. Asia at the moment.

If you travel a lot (or at all) you really should try Tripit. Feel free to add me (oldskool73) as a contact.

Tripit App for iPhone

oldskool73 Personal, apple, hints & tips, links apple, iphone, tripit

Think it sums up how important today is for the whole world…

Rosa sat so Martin could walk.

Martin walked so Barack could run.

Barack is running so our children can fly.

…stolen from the comments on this post, well worth a read also.

oldskool73 Personal, Uncategorized

*** Update… George at Geomoto contacted me a week after and we worked it out, they’ve put on a new disc and break pads for me at no cost and everythings good so far. Nice one Geomoto, my faith is restored. ***

This may be a bit off topic but just wanted to put his out there to warn others in the North London area thinking of buying a motorbike or scooter to stear well clear of a shop called Geomoto in Finchley. After buying 3 bikes from them and spending untold in servicing over the years I’ve just received such appaling customer service that I’ll never be using them again.

I dropped my bike in for a full service last October asking them to fix everything they could find wrong with it, and it cost a fair few quid. Ever since I got it back there’s been a nasty metal on metal sound from the front wheel that I’d *never ever* heard before, although I forgot all about it as the bikes been sitting unridden from November till last week. Another machanic took a look a few days ago and told me the front pad had been wearing through the disc and they would both need replacing at a cost of several hundred pounds. So I went back to Geomoto today to find out what they were willing to do to put right a problem that was obviously either caused by them in the service, or a result of them not doing a proper service and changint the pads (I have no idea which as I’m no mechanic). Their answer… nothing, I’d have to pay for it all to be fixed?! Well I’m afraid that’s just not good enough, I’m not the type to have an argument in the shop but I hope this post and the money they will be loosing from all my future purchases somwhere else hurts them in some small way.

Customer service is not an option, and if you don’t get it the best thing you can do is vote with your feet and let everyone else know how you feel.

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To hopefully help others find this post through Google I’m just reiterating that I’m talking about the Geomoto bike shop in Finchley, North London, N3 1JL. They also sell Vespa, Piaggio & Motorbikes. PLEASE DON’T SHOP THERE!!!

oldskool73 Personal, Uncategorized

This wikipedia entry tickled my funnybone…

The term “bogon” stems from hacker jargon, where it is defined as the quantum of “bogosity” (i.e the smallest indivisible units of bogus-ness). This then leads on to the theory of Quantum bogodynamics

oldskool73 Personal, Uncategorized

…an Open Source solution for controlling Flash via Wiimote(s).

The site’s been up a few weeks, and you may have seen some of the videos if you are on the Papervision3D list, but I just realised I’d not announced it to the wider community.

Currently there is a very first beta available for download from the site (although it works fine the solution is kinda clunky and Windows only), and a couple of quick tutorials on getting it all up and running. If you have a Wiimote and fancy a play feel free to grab the files and let me know what you think.

Over the next couple of weeks I’m hopefully going to be working alongside Pete Hobson (who already has a much better OSX solution running than me) to rip out all the extra junk & make one slick, cross platform solution. Keep ‘em peeled…

FWiidom.org

oldskool73 Adobe/Flash/Flex, Personal, links