Time really flies when you're building software!  Wow!  Well, just because there haven't been any blog posts recently doesn't mean we haven't been hard at work.  Just the opposite, in fact, we have put blood, sweat and tears in to the last few iterations of TripStalker.  We are now scraping several airline sites directly (I'll publish a full list on the website with our redesign - see more below), we look at some consolidators and at the good old fashion GDS.  All this from your computer desktop.  The results are aggregated and presented to you on a continuous basis to help you snag that often allusive low fare for your exact trip. 

We have a laundry list of features to add to TripStalker and are continuously striving to make it the absolute best tool out there to assist you in finding the trips and fares you want.   Some of the more popular feature requests are:

  • Mac Support

    We gained a lot by utilizing the dot net platform for developing this application.  One of the biggest losses has been Mac and Linux users.  As we have tried to take a different approach to searching for travel, this user base who is unafraid of trying new and inventive ideas would have been extremely useful to have with us on this path.  I only hope that a lot of you have to use PC's at work and can use TripStalker there!  Seriously, we have eyed the Mono Project from the beginning as a way run TripStalker on multiple OS's.   It looks like this is finally getting close to becoming a reality. As soon as we finish adding our next batch of sites / data sources into TripStalker we will begin testing it with Mono to enable full cross platform support or TripStalker.
  • Multi-Point Destination

    I can see how this would be a great addition to TripStalker.  The limitation of one-way or round trip is truly annoying.  In an app like ours this presents some unique challenges.  Namely, not all the data sources we use natively support multi-point trips.  However, at a minimum allowing for this and just utilizing the data sources that do is on the short list.   We will also need to work on some serious interface changes in order to allow for the easy entering of all your points.
  • Easy Management of Stalks through our Web-Based Interface

    We hear you and we agree.  The stalk interface on the web site needs some work.  We're on it.  While TripStalker needs to be running on an active desktop computer to be able to do its job, there is no reason you can't manipulate your stalks from a web interface.  Say, for instance, you want to leave TripStalker running on your home computer but then want to manage your stalks from work.  Look for this soon.

As some of you may have noticed this community runs on the community server from telligent systems.  Just releases is Community Server 2007.  We will be bringing the front end website and the community under one wrapper and updating the design slightly as a result.  This will provide tighter integration between the TripStalker website and the TripStalker community  - a point of confusion to our users for some time. 

Thanks as always for your support!  And if the next blog post doesn't come for a little while it is only because we are too busy getting new releases and site updates out the door. 

 

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