Company Blog

News Round Up for September ‘08

tmadmin — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:43:23 GMT

TravelMuse kicked off September with our appearance at DEMOfall 08 on Sept. 8, where we launched Social Trip Planning. Thanks to all the press and bloggers who covered us, we were excited to meet you and share our story so far.

Edward N. Albro from PC World said, “It looks valuable as a way to come up with initial travel ideas and plans” and included TravelMuse in the “12 Promising New Web Sites and Services” out of all DEMOfall 08 and TechCrunch50.

Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat listed TravelMuse in his top ten company picks of DEMOfall 08 and also wrote specifically about how TravelMuse plans to simplify travel planning.

Business Week’s Carmine Gallo took a look at the DEMO presentations from a slightly different angle and wrote about how to deliver a presentation under pressure, highlighting TravelMuse’s presentation and comparing it to advice from Moore—the need to create a new place in my brain to hold the information you’re about to deliver.

Troy Wolverton of San Jose Mercury News listed TravelMuse in his Top 5 picks from DEMOfall 08 and referenced the pain he feels when planning his own vacation with his wife … and how TravelMuse aims to solve that problem by providing a work space where multiple people can swap travel ideas and research.

Michael J. Miller from PC Magazine listed TravelMuse in his “My favorite DEMOfall 08 Products” saying, “I very much like the look and features of TravelMuse. I like the idea of gathering and collecting information on the trip from any Website in one place, and letting multiple people work together to plan a trip.”

Rolf Potts of Vagabonding said, “TravelMuse makes a nice way to bookmark and store your research, and it’s definitely a must-have for groups planning to travel together” , adding ”you’d be hard pressed to find a travel site that looks as slick and is as easy to use as TravelMuse”.

PLing of TripHow said, “TravelMuse is the best thing on the market right now.”

Thrillest said, “Organizing a killer trip with friends can be a serious pain--open up the planning to everyone and prepare for a parliamentary stalemate, but leave one person in charge and risk visiting MimeFest, again. Make group trip planning frighteningly easy, with TravelMuse.”

To read more, visit our press page.

Now while most of our attention was on DEMO, our Interns, Hannah and Marissa, managed to score free passes at TechCrunch50, by volunteering—here’s what they had to say:

“Our volunteer duties included everything from building a bunker of backpacks on Sunday, to manning the registration tables—in between we managed to listen to company presentations and check out the booths in the Pit. Our favorite companies included Swype, which we had a lot of fun trying out, and GoodGuide – we’re glad to know what’s in our shampoo! Marissa also learned a lot from the lunchtime panel about Venture Capital firms and loved hearing Mark Cuban’s keynote discussion.

We managed to do a little TravelMuse guerrilla marketing on the side, before heading to the after-party, where we ate our weight in canapés and watched TechCrunch attendees network up a storm. Hannah returned to TechCrunch on Wednesday to see Joss Whedon and loved handing him his name badge as he checked into the conference."

DEMO Delivers!

tmadmin — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:39:09 GMT

It was a whirlwind two days for TravelMuse at Fall DEMO'08 in San Diego on Sept. 8 and 9!

The experience was amazing and even surpassed the high expectations we had going in. Let’s be clear about this. DEMO is the real deal. I recommend it for any start-up.

The DEMO team is an A+ outfit. They make sure that everything goes smoothly, and as one demonstrator said, they make you feel like the only company at DEMO. The organization is meticulous from pre-event planning to the ongoing relationship management with DEMO alumni.

TravelMuse got great coverage by the press in attendance, and the show definitely stirred the interest of the investor and partner community as well.

I’d like to thank the TravelMuse team and the families of the team for enduring some very long days and nights over the past few months. You rose to the occasion time and again, and the results speak for themselves! Gracias!

Here are a few pictures from the show. We were honored to be a part of it!

Taking the stage....

Fiona does her best roadie impersonation...

Eric goes vertical on the monitors...

Announcing TravelMuse Social Trip Planning: Get Going With a Little Help From Your Friends

tmadmin — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:38:25 GMT

Did you know that 20 percent of travelers report spending more than 10 hours to plan a trip? (source: TIA.org)

Think about the last time you planned a big vacation. How was the planning experience for you, and how long did it take?

Since we started thinking about what we’d like TravelMuse to be, we consistently came back to the amount of pain involved in planning trips and how we wanted to enable people to easily research, plan and book a trip, regardless of how complex the itinerary is.

Today, we’re excited and proud to announce Social Trip Planning within the TravelMuse Planner. Planning is really at the heart of what we do, so we are just thrilled to share it with you. Read full release

With Social Trip Planning you can plan trips with friends and family, and reuse the travel research of people you trust. Let’s face it, who would you rather get advice from—your best friend whom you’ve known all your life, or “crazy4cabo” whose comments you read on advice sites.

Here’s a list of just some of the many new things that this release enables you to now do on TravelMuse.com:

Create a day-by-day schedule of your planned activities,, restaurants you’re eating at and places you’re staying from our repository of more than 100,000 points of interest and 90,000 hotels spanning hundreds of destinations globally. Or you can add any page you find on the Web.
Invite people you’re traveling with to collaborate on the plans. Everyone can add research and modify the schedule, and everyone gets notified immediately of changes to the itinerary.
Network with people whose travel advice you trust. View your friends’ trip plans and repurpose their research.
Keep apprised of the trips your friends are planning (if they choose to let you see them) and give them the benefit of your experiences.
Combine research you find on the Web with reference information and travel articles on TravelMuse, and easily drag and drop these items into a scheduler. You can even move entire days around when the need arises!

The net result: You can now plan trips the way you’ve always wanted to, with great content and easy-to-use tools, plus with a little help from your friends.

So stop e-mailing links back and forth and abandon the manila folder—try the new TravelMuse Planner for yourself today!

Finally, we have to extend our deepest thanks to the entire TravelMuse team and their understanding families who pulled out all the stops to make this release possible.

Happy planning!

Kevin and Eric

TravelMuse One of 72 New Technologies to Launch at DEMOfall 08

tmadmin — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:25:46 GMT

DEMO just announced the list of companies participating in this year’s DEMOfall 08, expected to have the largest attendance ever. Travelmuse is looking forward to participating alongside these other companies in San Diego and telling press, bloggers and analysts all about our new release.

Kevin, Eric and I are bound for San Diego tomorrow on Southwest Airlines. Stop by and see us at booth #24 if you’re also heading to DEMO, or follow us on our blog here and on Twitter @[TravelMuse|http://twitter.com/TravelMuse].

In the meantime, here’s more from DEMO’s press release earlier today and the list of companies participating at DEMOfall 08:

Leading Technology Conference Continues to Highlight the Best in Entrepreneurship from Around the World

The DEMO conferences, known for launching some the world’s biggest technology products, will kickoff this Sunday with 72 new products poised to launch onstage in just 72 hours. Beginning its nineteenth year of supporting innovation, DEMOfall 08 will highlight products from more than 11 countries and 19 states. Known as the conference that launched products from Google, Apple, Palm, Intel, Yahoo!, and TiVo, the fall conference will host one of its largest attendances of journalists, investors and business professionals in its history. DEMOfall 08 is being held from Sept. 7 - 9 at the Sheraton San Diego. To learn more about the event and register to attend visit http://www.demo.com.

“Every DEMO we strive to identify the companies that will defy all the odds and have significant impact in the technology markets. Ours is a year-long process that culminates in seventy-two hours of products that are more than disruptive; they change the rules of the game as we know it,” said Chris Shipley, product analyst and executive producer of the DEMO conferences. “I am very excited to unveil the class of DEMOfall 08. They are innovative, they are important, they are fun, and they represent the future products and solutions we all will be using soon.”

The DEMO conferences are held twice a year requiring the DEMO team to hold in-depth interviews with more than 1,000 companies ready to launch new products at the event. This rigorous process ensures that DEMOfall 08 attendees will, for the first time, see new products from around the globe including Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Taiwan. Some of the products launching at DEMOfall 08 include:

products that help you manage, deliver, and socialize your mobile phone and content.
tools that enable you to personalize, navigate and deliver multi-media, rich-media presentations and television content over the Web.
a solution that brings RFID right to the consumer.
an application that promises to keep spam out of your inbox for good.
a tool that takes the mystery out of eating healthy wherever you are.
services that take personal finance management to a new level.
a solution that makes everyone a game developer.
tools to make you fall in love with your photos again.
products focused on reducing our impact on the planet from energy consumption to traffic congestion.

Videos of each live onstage demonstration will be available on http://www.demo.com beginning Monday afternoon Sept. 8.

DEMOfall 08 Demonstrators

Accordia Group, LLC; New Rochelle, NY; http://www.accordia-group.com

Adapx, Inc.; Seattle, WA; http://www.adapx.com

Alerts.com, Inc.; Bellvue, WA; http://www.alerts.com

Arsenal Interactive, Inc.; Mountain View, CA; http://www.heycosmo.com

Asyncast Corp; Campbell, CA; http://www.rocketron.com

Awind Inc.; Junghe, Taiwan; http://www.awindinc.com

beeTV; Milano, Italy; http://www.bee.tv

Best Buy; Minneapolis, MN; http://www.giftag.com

BizEquity Corp.; Spring House, PA; http://www.bizequity.com

Blue Lava Technologies, Inc.; Honolulu, HI; http://www.bluelavatech.com

Cerego; Tokyo, Japan; http://www.usa.iknow.co.jp

Cinergix, Pty Ltd.; Melbourne, Australia; http://www.creately.com

Clintworld; Boenningstedt, Germany; http://www.clintworld.de

CoreTrace Corp.; Austin, TX; http://www.coretrace.com

crowdSPRING, LLC; Chicago, IL; http://www.crowdspring.com

DesignIn, Inc.; Marblehead, MA; http://www.mydesignin.com

Dial Directions, Inc.; Alameda, CA; http://www.dialdirections.com

DOCCENTER; Omaha, NE; http://www.doccenterinc.com

Enterprise Informatics, Inc.; San Diego, CA;

http://www.enterpriseinfomatics.com

Familybuilder; New York, NY; http://www.familybuilder.com

ffwd.com, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; http://www.ffwd.com

Fortressware, Inc.; Mountain View, CA; http://www.fortressw.com

Fusion-io; Salt Lake City, UT; http://www.fusionio.com

G.ho.st; Ramallah & Modin, Palestine and Israel; http://g.ho.st

Green Sherpa; Santa Barbara, CA; http://www.greensherpa.com

Infovell, Inc.; Menlo Park, CA; http://www.infovell.com

Intelius, Inc.; Bellevue, WA; http://www.zumende.com

Invision TV, LLC; Bethesda, MD; http://www.invision.tv

iWidgets, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; http://www.iwidgets.com

Kadoo Inc.; Washington, DC; http://www.kadoo.com

Koollage, Inc.; San Jose, CA; http://www.koollage.com

Mapflow, Ltd.; Cork, Ireland; http://www.eirlift.com

Maverick Mobile Solutions, Pvt. Ltd.; Maharashtra, India;

http://www.maverickmobile.in

MeDeploy; Hamden, CT; http://www.medeploy.com

Message Sling; Worcester, MA; http://www.messagesling.com

MeWorks, Inc.; Taipei, Taiwan; http://www.meworks.net

Microstaq, Inc.; Austin, TX; http://www.microstaq.com

MixMatchMusic, Ltd.; Burlingame, CA; http://www.mixmatchmusic.com

Momindum; Paris, France; http://www.momindum.com

OpenACircle.com; Dallas, TX; http://www.openacircle.com

Paidinterviews, LLC; McLean, VA; http://www.paidinterviews.com

Paragent, LLC; Muncie, IN; http://www.paragent.com

Photrade, LLC; Cincinnati, OH; http://www.photrade.com

PlanDone, Inc.; Petaluma, CA; http://www.plandone.com

Plastic Logic, Ltd.; Mountain View, CA; http://www.plasticlogic.com

Qtask, Inc.; Burbank, CA; http://www.Qtask.com

Quantivo Corp.; San Mateo, CA; http://www.quantivo.com

Radiant Logic, Inc.; Novato, CA; http://www.radiantlogic.com

RealNetworks, Inc.; Seattle, WA; http://www.real.com

Rebus Technology, Inc.; Cupertino, CA; http://www.rebustechnology.net

RemoTV, Inc.; New Haven, CT; http://www.remotv.com

Rudder, Inc.; Houston, TX; http://www.rudder.com

Semanti Corp.; Alberta, Canada; http://www.semantifind.com

Sim Ops Studios, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; http://www.wildpockets.com

SitScape, Inc.; Vienna, VA; http://www.sitscape.com

SkyData Systems, Inc.; San Mateo, CA; http://www.skydata.com

SpinSpotter; Seattle, WA; http://www.spinspotter.com

Telnic, Ltd.; London, England; http://www.telnic.org

TetraBase, LLC; Boothwyn, PA; http://www.tetrabase.com

The Echo Nest Corp.; Somerville, MA; http://echonest.com

tikitag, an Alcatel-Lucent Venture; Antwerp, Belgium;

http://www.tikitag.com

Toolgether; San Mateo, CA; http://www.toolgether.com

TravelMuse, Inc.; Los Altos, CA; http://www.travelmuse.com

Trinity Convergence, Inc.; Durham, NC; http://www.trinityconvergence.com

TurnTo Networks, Inc.; New York, NY; http://www.turnto.com

UbiEst S.p.A.; Treviso, Italy; http://www.ubiest.com

UGA Digital, Inc.; Taipei, Taiwan; http://www.ugadigital.com

Unity Solutions, LLC; Clearwater, FL; http://www.unitysolutions.com

Usable Security Systems, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; http://www.usable.com

WebDiet, Inc.; Henderson, NV; http://www.webdiet.com

Xumii, Inc.; San Mateo, CA; http://www.xumii.com

Zazengo, Inc.; Santa Cruz, CA; http://www.zazengo.com

Preparing for DEMO

tmadmin — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:42:07 GMT

In just under two weeks, Team TravelMuse (Kevin, Eric and I) will head to San Diego to take part in our version of the Olympics—[DEMOfall '08|http://www.demo.com/DF8PTR], a launchpad for emerging technology. Although we haven’t been working on this for four years, it’s certainly taken a huge amount of planning and practice to get ready for this prestigious event.

At DEMO we will launch our latest product, the most complex release our product and engineering teams have tackled so far. With no challenge too small, they have worked diligently towards the deadline of Sept. 7. As we approach the final lock-down stage, Bugzilla has certainly been getting quite a workout! We’re really excited to show off our new product and let you try it out for yourself.

Kevin and Eric (TravelMuse Co-Founders) are our demonstrators at DEMO. We joke with our PR team about how many times we can get the word DEMO into a sentence. We’re going to give you a demo of our demo for DEMO. Anyway, Kevin and Eric are doing well with learning their scripts and can be seen listening to iPods (are they getting in the Michael Phelps zone?), clutching cue cards and muttering away to themselves. Coach Nathan has them on a regular practice schedule, and Eric, every now and again, gives me impromptu recitals.

I think we have compared this experience to a mix of memorizing your lines for a school play, to practicing the tricky sections of your piano recital, to being in a competitive race. Basically, you have to know your game plan and practice, practice, practice.

Meanwhile, I’ve been taking care of the logistics with the DEMO team, writing product marketing copy and finalizing press kits and give-aways.

Later this week Kevin and Eric will have a live audience with our company—definitely the toughest crowd yet! Everyone has been working hard to produce their piece of the puzzle and is counting on them to show it off at its best—which I’m confident they will.

Team TravelMuse DEMO schedule:

Saturday, Sept. 6: Arrive in San Diego and rehearse in the evening.

Sunday, Sept. 7: Demonstrators’ meeting and set up booth #24.

Monday, Sept. 8: Watch other demos and give demos at booth #24.

Tuesday, Sept. 9: Team TravelMuse presents at 8:52 a.m. and gives demos at booth #24.

If you’re attending DEMO, we’ll see you there, otherwise you can follow us on Twitter @[TravelMuse|http://twitter.com/TravelMuse], and we’ll post more to the TravelMuse Company Blog soon.

TravelMuse Chosen for DEMOfall 08

tmadmin — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:37:47 GMT

We’ve been bursting to tell everyone that we’ve been chosen to present our latest technological innovation! On September 7th, Kevin, Eric and I will head down to San Diego to showcase the great work of the TravelMuse team, along with 70 other companies.

In the meantime, we’re fine tuning the six-minute script and working through all the logistics from AV forms to hotel reservations. Thank goodness the DEMO handbook is so well put together! We’re working with DEMO coach Nathan Gold—he’s great and is keeping us on track. Left to our own devices, I know we’d be blowing off meetings with each other.

DEMOfall 08 is the launchpad for emerging technology. During two exciting days of rapid-fire, six-minute presentations, DEMO attendees will be the first to see the most innovative, market-defining products unveiled for the very first time.

With more than 20,000 technologies reviewed and 1,500 companies selected to launch on the DEMO stage over the past 18 years, DEMO has an incredible track record of success.

From the first launch of Palm, Java, TiVo , E*TRADE in the mid/late ‘90s to Salesforce.com, VMware, Six Apart, OddPost, IronPort, GrandCentral and Glam Media in more recent years, DEMO delivers real products ready for market.

The results have been astounding. Past participants such as WebEx, VMware, iRobot, Linden Labs, Six Apart, and Roku have single-handedly defined or redefined their industries. Companies who have launched products at DEMO over the past four years have gone on to raise over $2.5 billion. Plus, more than 40 of these companies have been acquired by tech giants, such as Adobe, Cisco, Google, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Symantec, Viacom, Yahoo, and more.

We invite you to join us at DEMOfall 08 to see and hear about our incredible breakthrough—before anyone else does. Take advantage of the $600 registration discount and register today for only $2,395 at www.demo.com/DF8PTR.

Stay tuned as we update you on our progress here at TravelMuse and get ready for our six minutes of fame!