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Continental Airlines iPhone app includes Point Inside airport maps and more
Continental Airlines has jumped on board the "make an app" bandwagon. But unlike a lot of branded travel apps, this one is amazingly well designed. At the heart of the app are all the things you'd expect from an airline app - flight booking, flight status and links to contact information.
But in designing their app, Continental went way beyond the ordinary - for starters, the app includes airport maps from Point Inside - one of my personal favorites. Inside the app, you can also check in, pull up your mobile boarding pass, view reservations and even enable push notifications of flight status messages.
They didn't even stop there - under the "more" button, users will find a currency converter, a DirectTV program schedule (for in-flight live TV), games, links to Presidents Club locations, a timetable, recent Continental Airlines Tweets and an overview of reservations.
I've seen an awful lot of travel apps, but Continental Airlines really shows people how an app should be - a huge amount of handy tools, and all the features a Continental traveler needs to access their reservations. Well done Continental!
All I can hope for is that United Airlines does something similar soon...
You'll find the free Continental Airlines app in the App Store, or through this iTunes link.
Gallery: Continental Airlines iPhone App
Photo of the day (10.29.10)
This photo, taken by Flickr user Andrey Dorokhov as part of a 365 Project, captures Moscow's Mezhdunarodnaya metro station in a moment of real stillness. Opened in 2006, the Mazhdunarodyaya station really does look like a spaceship from this angle. No surprise then that Dorokhov titled the photo Day 246, Spaceship.
Got a spaceship-esque image in your personal photography library? Post it to Gadling's Flickr pool and we just might feature it as an upcoming Photo of the Day.
Throw a barbeque for your friends - and earn free EZ Grills
Sure, grilling season may be over for those of us in colder climates, but there are still plenty of places where the grilling will be on all winter long. If you are lucky enough to live in one of those places, keep reading - because you can win some free EZ Grills for your photography skills.
EZ Grills are easy to use instant grills - filled with all natural charcoal, these grills can go from your car to cook-out in a matter of minutes. The grills come in two sizes - regular and party. Once lit, the grills can be used for up to an hour and a half.
Now, to win some free EZ Grills, all you need to do is throw a party using the product - make photos of the event, and send them in to EZ Grill. For each EZ Grill in the photo, they'll send you one freebie in return (up to three grills). To make the contest even nicer, when you register, EZ Grill will send you coupons for $2 off each grill purchased in retail stores, or you can buy them online and save 30% off right away. Things can get even better - if you enroll to be a product tester, you may even be sent some free products from the EZ Grill lineup!
Click here to head on over to the promotion page, and fill in the form. Got any great BBQ tips? Leave them here in the comments section!
Daily Pampering: New "Presidential Bungalows" at The Beverly Hills Hotel
Tucked among 12 landscaped acres of banana leaves, palm trees and perfectly manicured gardens, the new Presidential Bungalows will be the largest, most prestigious suites in Los Angeles with more than 5,500 square feet of living space indoors and out. The Presidential Bungalows resemble individual homes set in the most prestigious residential neighborhood of Beverly Hills, with indoor living opening to the outdoors while assuring absolute privacy.
Intrigued? Reservations for the $9,000 to $12,000 per night bungalows can be booked now for arrival beginning on February 15, 2011 for the first new Bungalow. The second Bungalow will be available as of March 2011.
What's makes the new bungalows so "presidential"? Read on...
North Korea sends meth users to firing squad, marijuana still OK
Not that you could get there for this reason anyway, but North Korea is cracking down on narcotics use in a most North Korean way, which means you don't want to get busted trying to score there.Open Radio for North Korea reports:
According to a source in Hamkyungbuk-do, a declaration entitled "The Crackdown on Drug Use" was issued in Hoeryung (Hamkyungbuk-do) by the People's Safety Agency. The declaration was posted on the window of a busy store and states that 'any drug users will face a firing squad should they be caught. The declaration has been issued throughout the nation, the source said.
This is the first time the regime has announced a crackdown on druggies, but the sentence isn't all that unusual. The big problem right now is meth, which is produced in Hamheung, and "even middle school students are openly using meth."
The report adds, "North Koreans have lost hope and are depressed by the reality that they are living. They would rather be happy under the influence of drugs."
Meanwhile, the land that the Kim family built is rather loose in its definition of "drugs." Opium and marijuana, it seems, don't count.
[photo by Stephen_
Eating and biking in Italy: The feast of Emilia-Romagna
If aliens had orbited the Earth during the Roman Republic, they would have spied a technological marvel: an arrow-straight highway, 162 miles long, beginning at the Adriatic coast and slicing through the farmland communities south of the Apennines. More than 2,000 years later the Via Emilia still connects the same neatly spaced cities-including the cultural gems of Parma, Modena and Ferrara.
The modernized Via Emilia (SS9 on motoring maps) feels like Italy's answer to California's Highway 49. Transecting the region called Emilia-Romagna, it's a conduit rich with history, linking the past and present. It's poetic justice that the ancient thoroughfare now hosts the titans of Italy's automotive industry: Maserati, Ducati, Ferrari and Lamborghini all have factories here. But it also happens that everything I love about Italian cuisine, from pancetta to parmesan, originated along this road.
"Food in Emilia-Romagna is not a joke," our guide declares as we sit down to our first dinner, in Parma. She's dead serious. This is where tortellini was created, modeled after the navel of Venus; where the width of a tagliatelli pasta ribbon was decreed to be exactly 1/1,270th the height of Bologna's Asinelli Tower; where pork rumps are aged in dungeons. And this was where a 19th-century silk merchant named Pellegrino Artusi, abandoning the family trade, created the concept of "Italian cooking."
Food in Emilia-Romagna is a religion-and to visit is to worship.
The modernized Via Emilia (SS9 on motoring maps) feels like Italy's answer to California's Highway 49. Transecting the region called Emilia-Romagna, it's a conduit rich with history, linking the past and present. It's poetic justice that the ancient thoroughfare now hosts the titans of Italy's automotive industry: Maserati, Ducati, Ferrari and Lamborghini all have factories here. But it also happens that everything I love about Italian cuisine, from pancetta to parmesan, originated along this road."Food in Emilia-Romagna is not a joke," our guide declares as we sit down to our first dinner, in Parma. She's dead serious. This is where tortellini was created, modeled after the navel of Venus; where the width of a tagliatelli pasta ribbon was decreed to be exactly 1/1,270th the height of Bologna's Asinelli Tower; where pork rumps are aged in dungeons. And this was where a 19th-century silk merchant named Pellegrino Artusi, abandoning the family trade, created the concept of "Italian cooking."
Food in Emilia-Romagna is a religion-and to visit is to worship.
[Flickr photo credit: Charles Haynes]
Al Qaeda Yemen connection suspected in cargo plane bomb scares
The simultaneous bomb scares in Newark, Philadelphia and London are now being linked to al Qaeda activity, according to the latest reporting from CNN. On its live blog covering the suspicious item discoveries, CNN reports, "U.S. officials believe that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was behind the plot that caused a security scare at English and American airports on Friday."In Washington, a diplomat from Yemen has said the government there is opening a full investigation into the alleged bomb, adapted from a toner ink cartridge, that was discovered in the United Kingdom at East Midlands Airport.
Look for tighter security all around at airports in the United States, some of which, according to CNN, will be "visible and passengers should expect a mix of security techniques."
[photo by redjar via Flickr]
Hotels, restaurants and consumers: what to look for on review websites
Have you ever gotten mad after a hotel stay and, in the heat of the moment, dashed off a nasty review on TripAdvisor or Yelp? I was talking to some friends about this recently, and it seems the natural human reaction is to give feedback after a negative experience and to stay relatively silent when all has gone well. Almost all of us have been there.
After all, there's nothing quite like the feeling that your hard-earned cash has been sunk into an unsatisfying experience to get the blood boiling. When you get bad service or have a room that just doesn't measure up – especially if you've spent hundreds (or even thousands) of bucks on your hotel stay, meal or flight – you need an outlet for your disappointment or anger. You may feel like you're doing a service to the next traveler who's thinking about following in your footsteps.
Great Chicago neighborhoods: Three ethnic odysseys
That trek across town, I am fast realizing, has been an oversight. Today I am dedicating to exploring three Chicago neighborhoods where ethnicity is blazoned on neon signs; whether they're advertising sausage in Polish Avondale, tacos in Little Village or curry along Devon Avenue.
At the moment I am poking around St. Hyacinth Basilica, which has served the Polish community centered around Belmont and Milwaukee Avenues for more than a century. I slip in a side door kept open for the faithful. The architecture is an ordered pile of domes and half domes, of small but brilliant stained glass windows set off by beige marble. Though 2,000 people attend Mass here on the weekends, this afternoon only a few singular souls sit in the wooden pews. One woman prays her rosary aloud in a breathy mush of Polish. Four old-fashioned confessionals, which look like wardrobes, are tucked away in corners: two for Polish, one for English, and one for Father Stanislaw, whose name is on the last one and who presumably speaks both. I briefly ponder the convenience of confessing to a priest who can't understand you.
[Flickr photo credit: ncarling]
At the moment I am poking around St. Hyacinth Basilica, which has served the Polish community centered around Belmont and Milwaukee Avenues for more than a century. I slip in a side door kept open for the faithful. The architecture is an ordered pile of domes and half domes, of small but brilliant stained glass windows set off by beige marble. Though 2,000 people attend Mass here on the weekends, this afternoon only a few singular souls sit in the wooden pews. One woman prays her rosary aloud in a breathy mush of Polish. Four old-fashioned confessionals, which look like wardrobes, are tucked away in corners: two for Polish, one for English, and one for Father Stanislaw, whose name is on the last one and who presumably speaks both. I briefly ponder the convenience of confessing to a priest who can't understand you.
[Flickr photo credit: ncarling]
Hotel death undiscovered for two weeks: do not disturb
Be careful when you hang that "Do Not Disturb" sign from your hotel room doorknob. It may take people forever to find you. This is exactly what happened to Kieran Toman at the Hyde Park Towers Hotel just north of London. On July 9, 2010, he left that instruction on his door. Unfortunately, the 39-year-old starved to death after doing so. His body, described by The Daily Mail as being in "an 'emaciated' state," wasn't found until July 23, 2010. The staff was instructed not to enter without his permission, but the awful smell caused a maid to check out the cause.
Toman had booked a five-month stay at the spot, once home to Jimi Hendrix, but after those first two weeks, the remainder of his reservation was moot.
[Via Business Insider, photo by R.B. Boyer via Flickr]
