• by May 18, 2005

Future Tool
Keeping Tabs on Travel
By Gavin O'Malley

For marketers, business travelers are as valuable as they are hard to target, and for that reason the mobile content provider AvantGo this summer will launch a free on-the-go travel guide that's two parts helpful information, one part advertising. The Travel Tab will provide jet-lagged globetrotters with itineraries, weather reports, city guides, and directions along with branded ads.

"In every instance that I'm aware of, this level of targeted marketing generates click- through rates that people until recently thought were impossible," says Neil Versen, senior director of AvantGo at iAnywhere, a subsidiary of Sybase.

Providers such as Expedia, Travelocity, and Continental Airlines will supply the itineraries. AccuWeather will be responsible for weather reports; Wcities will offer travelers local dining, shopping, hotel, bar, and theater listings; and MapPoint will provide directions.

All content from Travel Tab providers will be targeted to users based on their travel itinerary. All information users view will be branded by the company providing the travel itinerary.

"For example, a user with a flight on United Airlines from New York to Orlando would receive a weather forecast for their destination, Orlando, or for the city they will return to, New York," an AvantGo spokeswoman explains. "In this case, the user would receive weather information provided by AccuWeather on a page branded by United Airlines." General Motors' Cadillac brand signed on as the exclusive Travel Tab advertiser for the first year, Versen says. Travel Tab will be available on handhelds running the Palm operating system, the Windows Mobile Pocket PC operating system, and on BlackBerrys.

iTV
Going Full-Screen
By Shankar Gupta

It is an oft-quoted and possibly hyperbolic analogy that blogging did for publishing and journalism what the invention of the moveable type printing press did for literacy that is, make it available for the masses.

Now, the Participatory Culture Foundation, a Worcester, Mass.-based non-profit group is trying to do the same thing to broadcast television that blogging did to the mainstream media, by developing a pair of as-yet-unnamed applications that will allow anyone with a broadband connection to air their own TV show. "We see this as the best and most efficient way to bring independent media to millions of people," says Tiffiniy Cheng, co-director of the foundation.

The freeware, open-source programs that the foundation is looking to release this month are designed to provide would-be online TV stars with a way to publish video and allow viewers who crave independent TV online to watch them in high-quality and a full-screen format. The publisher's tool is built on BlogTorrent, which allows site publishers to transfer large files quickly, with no bandwidth or storage costs. The viewing tool will act like a dedicated RSS reader downloading the files published by the TV sites, and alerting the viewer when they're ready to watch. The effect, Cheng says, will be similar to television, with users subscribing to individual channels and downloading the shows to watch.