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...

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

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!

It’s all go, go, go here at TravelMuse, and over the course of July we continued to get the word out about the company through blogs, consumer magazines, press, TV and radio.

As much as she prefers to be behind a camera rather than in front of one, Donna flew out to Miami and was interviewed by Joel Connable on NBC6 news about our Inspiration Finder and planning tools. We were listed as one of their Cool Travel Websites. Watch the video footage here:

The August edition of Mens Journal hit the shelves in mid-July and featured TravelMuse as one of Three New Travel Services—the added advantage is we can legitimately display the cover shot of the very fit Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte in the office! I’m allowed to say that—right? In fact, why don’t I just share it with you…

Kevin did a couple of radio interviews, first with Travel Hub Radio and then KOMO 1000 News Radio in Seattle. He was also interviewed by Verne Kopytoff of the San Francisco Chronicle, where we were featured as a new site offering creative tools for finding and planning vacations.

Vani Rangachar (Los Angeles Times) in the Dallas Morning News said, “Easily its coolest gadget is the user-friendly “Inspiration Finder” … and I also liked Trip Plan, which allows you to collect disparate info in one place by bookmarking and labeling Web sites.”

A big thanks goes out to the blogging community too for their continued interest. Donna and I attended the BlogHer ‘08 Conference in San Francisco earlier this month, and we had a great time reconnecting with Stacy Morrison of Redbook and meeting a number of other women bloggers!

Christina from coolmompicks said, “TravelMuse’s original content and cool trip planning tools make it an interesting place to spend some time; I may never get to a Family Surf Camp but it sure was fun to read about.”

Nicole Feliciano of Momtrends covered TravelMuse and talked to me about tips for planning a vacation when bringing children aged 0-6 and what my vacation plans were.

We’ll have an exciting new company announcement next week … stay tuned!

As head of engineering at TravelMuse, I have been rather quiet until now, being quite busy with the June launch of our Beta site. As we gear up for our next release (code name: "[Kuala Lumpur|http://www.travelmuse.com/destinations/MY/14/kuala-lumpur]"), I thought I should take this opportunity to give you some insights into the technology we're using to provide you with new travel content on a regular basis as well as handy trip planning tools.

At TravelMuse, we're here for the long haul to serve your needs, and we invested in a modern Enterprise Java platform based on open standards, which allows us to assemble best of breed technologies to deliver great next-generation Web applications. The 21st century brought us the open source revolution, and it happens that nowadays “best of breed” often means community-based software. That's why many of our site’s key technologies are open source projects from the community such as GlassFish Application Server (more details in a Sun stories blog), MySQL Database Server and Alfresco Web CMS (Content Management System).

The latter is worth mentioning as it is a key enabler for our small team to be able to reliably publish destination information and a dozen new articles to the site on a weekly basis. Once the structure of each type of document is defined in the CMS and rendering templates are developed by the engineering team, our editorial team can then independently produce content into the CMS through Web forms, preview it for quality assurance and then deploy to production with minimal engineering involvement (freeing up our time to build new nifty features for you!).

Over the next few months, you will see tremendous investments made in our trip planning functionality to address all aspects of the process and improve its usability. I'm very excited about bringing all those state of the art planning tools online and we look forward to your feedback on how you use TravelMuse and what your favorite features are!

TravelMuse launched its TravelMuse Beta on Monday June 9th—alongside another minor (Apple!) announcement—call us crazy or foolhardy! Anyhow, it’s not every day that you can say you contributed to bringing down the TechCrunch site. We are delighted with all the positive coverage we’ve received to date, and a big thanks to everyone who wrote about us—we appreciate it!

CNET’s Rafe Needleman over at WebWare broke the news at 9 p.m. PDT on Sunday and wrote about the Inspiration Finder, saying “The idea could be a very positive contributor to domestic harmony” and “…it could become a very robust vacation planning tool."

TechCrunch followed with the headline, “TravelMuse May Be the Undecided Traveler’s Dream Come True!” Jason Kincaid went on to say, “At this point TravelMuse seems like a good place to start when you’re beginning to plan a trip … and as a hybrid travel magazine/suggestion site, TravelMuse may well find a place in the crowded travel space."

Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land said, “…the Inspiration Finder … does something unique and interesting in combining the directional power of search with the serendipity of discovery."

I’ve not yet seen one that considers the multiple dimensions that TravelMuse looks at, including budget, travelers’ ages, maximum hours in flying time, and preferred vacation activities,” wrote Diane Clarkson of Jupiter Research. “Definitely worth checking out."

"Already I love the travel magazine feel of the website versus the webby social networking feel of most other new travel sites and the fact that a lot of its editorial content (written by 50 freelancers) is fresh,” commented Jen Leo at the LA Times.

Although most of you probably have a pretty good idea of where you like to go on vacation, you may occasionally run out of ideas … fortunately, if you're in that boat, a new website can help” said Ed Perkins of Smarter Travel “I'd say that TravelMuse is off to a decent start … it's an innovative approach to travel planning."

Elisabeth Osmeloski at Search Engine Watch concluded “Is this the new face of online travel planning? Maybe too soon to tell, but I like the way it's looking! Keep making it easier for travelers to engage online and this mature industry will find a way to keep growing."

We had articles as far afield as Italy and France with great posts from Geekissimo, FredCavazza and Blogit—how’s your French or Italian?

Mashable had my favorite article of the week where Paul Glazowski got straight to the point “It’s a Beta, and I have to say I like it.” … “You can take TravelMuse just for its reviews, its trip planner, or its ‘Book Travel’ annex. Any single segment seems able to stand on its own. Taken all together, it is even more impressive."

For the full news roundup, visit the TravelMuse Press and Media page. Thanks for your support and stay tuned—we’ve got lots more great stuff to tell you about soon. But for now … we’re catching our breath, drinking a beer (or scotch) and enjoying some social time at a team BBQ over at Eric’s place!

It’s nearly June, and the beach is calling. But before you pack up your sunscreen, cooler and floaties, take a look at this week’s issue on Beach Getaways. TravelMuse staff and writers came up with a round-up of favorite beaches to add to your family-friendly beach list. Some may even be in your own backyard!

This week, we’ve also listed the recent fee changes for a number of airlines. As time goes on, more airlines are bound to add their two cents (or more like $20), so check out our tips to minimize airline fees.

Read more about and link to our additional coverage in my Editor's Take, or just check out the TravelMuse home page.

Enjoy!

With the ongoing credit crisis, rising inflation and a weakening dollar, taking that much-deserved vacation might seem tough to do this year. But fear not! For discerning travelers, there are still some great deals to be had and plenty of ways to stretch your dollar. Here are the top 10 tips for getting the most out of your vacation buck in 2008.

1. Seek out off-peak periods. The best deals tend to fall right after Labor Day. Yes, the kids will miss some school, but you’ll save a ton of dough.

2. If you plan to travel internationally, seek out places where the dollar is still comparatively strong. Argentina, South Africa, Thailand, and Costa Rica are a few of the places where the greenback still has a lot of power. 

3. Buy a vacation package. Combining hotel and air reservations often yields a lower price than a la carte purchases.

4. Travel with another family. Sharing the cost of gas, food and rental car is a great way to keep expenses in check.

5. Rent a house and cook your meals. Dining out every day can quickly add up to what you paid for your flight or more! If you rent a home or condo, you can prepare many of your own meals—and you get a ton of other benefits like more space and more privacy, often at a fraction of the cost of a luxury hotel. Sites like Rooster.com are great places to find vacation rentals.

6. Go abroad at Thanksgiving. When everyone else is jockeying to get to Aunt Rose’s place in Milwaukee, you can avoid the madness and find some great deals overseas.

7. When exchanging currency, use a bank instead of your hotel. Hotels charge some of the highest processing fees of any institution.

8. On road trips, make sure your tires are properly inflated and get a tune up before you go. You’ll get better gas mileage with tires that are properly inflated and you reduce the risk of emergency repairs if you have your car serviced in advance.

9. Consider voluntourism or a service trip. These trips are very affordable since a good portion of your cost is covered in exchange for the service you provide. The Sierra Club has been running service trips for decades—leading groups of people into some of the world’s most beautiful places, while giving back to the planet at the same time.

10. Book now. If you know you’re going to travel this summer or fall, you should lock in rates as soon as possible. With fuel costs expected to rise throughout the summer, air fare and hotel rates are likely to increase as well.

And always keep an eye out for deals. TravelMuse works to uncover great vacation bargains each week. You can read about them in our Travel News section. By registering at TravelMuse.com, you will automatically receive our weekly newsletter.