So here are some mashups of current web-services that I'd like to see this year:
- Evernote and Sensobi Jot. For the uninitiated, Evernote is like an online scrapbook. It's a cloud-based service that allows you to store web-pages, notes, pictures, even recordings, and then tag them with key words. You can then access those pieces of scrap from a smartphone or any web-browser. Think of it as a fairly minimalist filing system for all those mental post-it notes you have. I've become a fan, though the Blackberry experience is still sub-par. SensobiJot is a clever little service that uses your email to capture notes after every business phone call and then organises them. I really do hope this could consign the sticky-note to the dustbin of history. Many of us still cling to our Moleskine notebooks
to capture every thought, but my question is - do you ever read those notes? Can you search them, or share them easily? So here's hoping for EverJot or SensobiNote or something like that in 2011.
- TripIt and GoogleMaps (or Bing maps). TripIt is fast becoming my favourite travel app, and I just upgraded to the Pro version which also keeps track of all my frequent flyer memberships in one clean and simple interface. I use GoogleMaps on my Blackberry all the time to make my way around an unfamiliar city. So if TripIt knows where I landed and how far apart my stops are, why couldn't the data be combined to show my journey plotted on a map? For that matter, GoogleMaps could really go a step further. If it knows (via the GPS in my phone) that I'm in Myanmar, why can't it set the default currency in my foreign exchange app (WorldMate or Oanda) to the Kyat? or when in Frankfurt to the Euro?
- Yelp and GSMworld. Many of us use Yelp to see what other people say about restaurants in our area. Well why can't we do the same thing about cellphone networks? GSMworld's site has the only (that I know of) global listing of cellphone coverage in every country. Why not open it up for the social media approach, so people can comment on how good cellphone coverage is, by carrier, by country. What you might find for instance, is that in the United States, AT&T would be so dismally panned for their coverage, they might go out of business.
- TripAdvisor and SeatGuru. TripAdvisor takes the same approach as Yelp to hotels, but takes it a step further, allowing users to post disgusting photos of filthy hotel bathrooms, or glowing accounts of outstanding service. After a while a pattern emerges - the great hotels get lots of good reviews, and the the not-so-great ones get ranked accordingly. SeatGuru, on the other hand, provides detailed information on the in-flight features of virtually every major airline in the world. TripIt (mentioned earlier) and SeatGuru in fact have done sort of a mash-up. With the TripIt Pro app, you can ask TripIt to recommend you a specific seat on your flight, based on SeatGuru's exhaustive catalogue of the different seat configurations of particular airlines on exact flight legs. But SeatGuru lacks any opinions about those airlines. Why not mash them up and allow TripAdvisor to let users rank airlines (including photos of raunchy airplane bathrooms)?
What's your idea of a tech mashup that could help world travellers?
Your tech world traveller...

Traveling broadens the spectrum of human being and give him exposure to the real face of world. Seeing is Believing.
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