* Infotriever loads travel events into your personal information manager
A couple of weeks ago I booked my travel for my forthcoming Network World Technology Tour, Strategy & Management for Messaging & Spam, taking place at the end of the month (see below for more details).
I used the in-house travel service of IDG, Network World’s parent company, which has, for some time, e-mailed itineraries after booking through the Sabre Virtually There network. In the e-mail sent to travelers is a link to your online itinerary and this time IDG Travel has added something new to the Web page: “Add to calendar.”
This is so cool! You click on the link and download an application called Infotriever (published by its namesake). Once installed the software then loads the events (in other words, your itinerary) into your personal information manager. The loading can be done by a Web site link or a link in HTML formatted e-mail.
Better still, once the events are added the Infotriever application can, if you allow it, update the event details if they change. Infotriever can also provide an updating service for contacts.
Infotriever describes itself as “a Java-based, hosted client-server application” and supports Microsoft Outlook 97/98/2000/2003; Microsoft Outlook Express all versions; Lotus Notes 4.6/5.0/6.0; ACT! 2000; Palm Desktop via HotSync v3.1 and higher; and Netscape Messenger 4.5 and higher.
According to Infotriever, event data and updates can be acquired from databases, applications, Web sites and e-mail and routed to the end user on a PC or, through an open API, to custom devices such as PDAs and pagers.
For travelers this is awesome – no more copying and pasting from e-mail to calendar entry – something that is a huge pain when you’re doing a multi-flight trip like our Technology Tour.
I do have a couple of issues though. I’d like to see more useful data provided by Infotriever to make the service more immediately useful – how about weather data similar to the feature provided by Trondent’s Infuzer? And how about adding the ability for users to include their own data via the service, again in a similar way to Infuzer?
Note that Windows XP SP2 breaks the Web-based installation of both Infotriever and Infuzer. Furthermore, Outlook 2003’s security enhancements messed up Infuzer’s interaction with Outlook that, to the best of my knowledge, Trondent has yet to fix.
Whishes and goofs aside, every travel site and service in the universe that has a Web presence should be using this service – see Infotriever’s Partners page for travel services that use Infotriever. See you on the road.
***
Network World Technology Tour: VoIP
Sept. 14-29, at a city near you
For corporate executives, VoIP raises expectations and fears that impact every corner of the enterprise. Data. Budgets. Users. Technology.Convergence. And so in support of IT executives who must meet every challenge, Network World presents a crucial new Technology Tour event.
Claim one of the limited number of complimentary seats at this high-demand event and you’ll learn how to plan, configure, troubleshoot, and leverage your VoIP infrastructure in ways that please CEOs, CTOs, CFOs and everyone who reports to them.
For more information and to register:
