Great app for travel enthusiasts!

Last week my boss shared an interesting app with me - Trip Case. If you are a travel enthusiast like me, you'd love it. In March 2009, I blogged about a similar app, Pocket Express, but Trip Case beats it downright. I've not come across a better travel app to date.

There are some inimitable features that make this app very useful. Push technology for flight status, dynamic flight information, alternate schedules and itinerary logs helps one to stay organized in travel. It also helps track car rental and hotel information, something which I haven't used at all. You can share your travel plans with friends or someone who'd be waiting at the airport to pick you up :). This will help when you have last minute delays as friends waiting at the airport will get push notifications about your flight status or can view the info online.

I tried it out last weekend and it was great. Once I entered my flight number and origin airport, all other fields such as arrival time, terminals, gates, weather etc were populated. It also displayed the carousel number for baggage claim. I loved this app and it is very useful for me. Strongly recommend.

"PERSONAS" - How does the internet see you?

MIT is at it yet again! Heights of innovation!!

Last week I came across MIT's PERSONAS, an innovative tool that creates a data portrait of one's 'aggregated online identity'. Once you enter your first and last names, PERSONAS algorithms scurry through the internet and characterize you based on your presence on the internet. It shows you how the Internet sees you.

I liked the explanation on PERSONAS' MIT homepage. The computer is corroborated to be far from an infallible assistant. PERSONAS' algorithms merely check for a name's presence on the internet and attempts to characterize him to a predetermined set of categories. However, it is absolutely fascinating to be able to see your digital imprint on the internet.

Here is a snapshot of my PERSONAS. Click the image to enlarge.