yapta to Track Hotel Prices

I haven't used yapta.com too much in the past, but I'm about to start now. yapta (Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant) offers a service that allows tracking flight prices and get alerted whenever the price drops to an acceptable (to you) price.

Most of my flights are paid for by my customers and the others are on points, so I didn't find much use for the service. But today they've announced the same service for hotels, and this is interesting and relevant to my upcoming vacation. Here's the email I received:

Hi Guy -- Yapta.com, the website known for airfare price tracking, tomorrow will announce the launch of a hotel price tracking service that for the first time, will enable travelers to monitor prices on more than 110,000 hotels around the world. Unlike "opaque" accommodation booking services (i.e. Hotwire.com) which do not allow travelers to see the specific hotel property they're bidding on, Yapta allows travelers to designate the hotel they're most interested in and then automatically be alerted when the rate drops. I've pasted a copy of the press release that will be issued tomorrow. If you’re interested in speaking with Yapta’s CEO about how this will benefit consumers, just let me know.

Cheers,
Rob Nachbar
(phone number redacted)

This was accompanied by a lengthy press release of the kind we all know and love. So there - use and enjoy.

Planet Earth in HD

I broke my promise and bought yet another HD-DVD. But this one is well worth it.

If you need to prove to anyone that HD is not a fad, but actually a new way to look at the televised world, look no further than Planet Earth.

This BBC series (narrated, as usual, by David Attenborough, with his usual enthusiastic voice, and music by the London Philharmonic Orchestra) shows you the earth in ways you haven’t seen before. Shot entirely in hi-def, it combines shots from space, exhilhrating "how did they shoot this?" flybys, time-motion sequences, amazing flora and fauna and some of the last shots you’ll see of species that are going extinct.

I got the HD-DVD set (4 DVDs) from Amazon for $29 (the set cost over $120 when it came out 2 years ago), but you can also get it in Blu-Ray (if that’s your thing) or DVD (just make sure you have an upconverting DVD player, or else you won’t enjoy the dazzling HD splendor). BTW, if you have an Xbox 360, you can now get the HD-DVD player for $29 – so you can get both for less than $60.

I only watched the first 2 episodes so far (there are 11 in all, and some bonus material). My favorite sequences are the colorful birds of paradise; a white shark leaping after a seal – slowed down 40 times; and one of the last snow leopards in the world (the real deal, not the Apple OS ) hunting on a near vertical slope in the Himalayas.

Sadly, this might be the only way we’d be able to show our grandkids what the world looked like.