Innovative approach by industry travel leader fuels cost savings for clients.

Milwaukee, WI (PRWEB) September 12, 2011

Adelman Travel Group is transforming the travel industry with an innovative approach to integrating technology and travel. The Milwaukee-based company provides a turn-key approach to travel management, incorporating cutting edge technology for corporate travel, meetings and events so all travelers – including those joining from remote locations, enjoy the same professional experience. Adelman, with more than $300 Million in annual revenue, provides business-to-business travel management solutions on a global scale.

Adelman’s newest innovation is “Global Gateway,” a proprietary solution providing consolidated global data in real-time, allowing corporations to have immediate access to their global travel information. “Corporate travel buyers want to globalize their travel programs to gain transparency and drive down costs while having time-sensitive security procedures in place,” said Steve Cline, Adelman’s Chief Operating Officer. “To do this effectively, customers need immediate access to their global information, a complex process because so much of the information is decentralized. Global Gateway fills this gap by providing data in real-time, unlike most other solutions that deliver such information up to 30 days after month-end.“

Global Gateway is just one of many technology advantages provided by Adelman. One of their goals is to assure companies can leverage technology for optimal results. “Every company and every business traveler understands the benefits of using video conferencing, voice over IP (VoIP), webinars and other similar solutions,” according to Angela Abbate, Adelman’s Vice President of Global Operations. “The challenge is assuring technology is properly configured, tested and deployed so everyone attending a conference or meeting receives maximum benefit. Too often, the ‘experience’ is lost due to technical failures. Our unique technology management capabilities are designed to eliminate these challenges before they become issues. Our VideoTravel TM solution is a perfect example. Companies and business travelers have choices when it comes to travel planning; our goal is to provide all the options required to meet those needs.”

“There are many reasons why technology poses these challenges”, continued Cline. “Once a meeting is moved from your office to a video location, you no longer have control of the environment,” he noted. “That can make it quite challenging for your own IT team to optimize the media and communications for your event. The results can be disastrous when key participants of the meeting are negatively impacted, whether these participants are your employees, business partners or sales prospects.”

Recognizing this need, Adelman added technology management as a core capability. While the company is best known for providing world-class travel solutions, it can now manage the technical needs of your travel transaction with the same level of professionalism. While others in the industry fear technology will erode travel sales, Adelman has embraced technical solutions, consistent with their commitment to be a full service provider for its customers. Global Gateway is just the newest example of why Adelman recently earned the CIO “Top 50” award for technology integration. An example of this is Adelman’s VideoTravel TM program which offers video conference alternatives when considering travel/meeting options.

“Our evolving capabilities demonstrate how Adelman lives up to our promise of transforming travel for our customers,” said Abbate. “We believe adding new technology to our portfolio provides another important option for our clients, and allows us to stand apart from other providers. When combined with our ability to provide cost-effective management of hotel, air and other transportation needs, we’re confident we deliver the best bottom-line value for our customers. Value and choices are what our clients both want and need in this economy.”

For more information about Global Gateway and Adelman’s other technical capabilities, including interview opportunities and a demonstration, please contact Steve Cline, Chief Operating Officer: by phone (414) 410-8351; by e-mail (scline(at)adelmanmail(dot)com).

About Adelman Travel Group

Adelman Travel Group is a unique provider of travel management for corporations with both national and global requirements. It has four regional travel solution centers: Hartford, CT., Milwaukee, WI, Fort Worth, TX and Irvine, CA. Adelman is a shareholder in RADIUS, a global travel company with more than $19 billion in sales located in over 80 countries worldwide. The company offers dedicated affiliate offices in Asia, Canada and Europe and operates full-service, onsite travel centers for corporations throughout the United States and worldwide. Adelman was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Milwaukee, WI.

###

Hal Coxon
Axiom Marketing, Inc.
(847) 919-1005
Email Information

Innovative approach by industry travel leader fuels cost savings for clients.

Milwaukee, WI (PRWEB) September 12, 2011

Adelman Travel Group is transforming the travel industry with an innovative approach to integrating technology and travel. The Milwaukee-based company provides a turn-key approach to travel management, incorporating cutting edge technology for corporate travel, meetings and events so all travelers – including those joining from remote locations, enjoy the same professional experience. Adelman, with more than $300 Million in annual revenue, provides business-to-business travel management solutions on a global scale.

Adelman’s newest innovation is “Global Gateway,” a proprietary solution providing consolidated global data in real-time, allowing corporations to have immediate access to their global travel information. “Corporate travel buyers want to globalize their travel programs to gain transparency and drive down costs while having time-sensitive security procedures in place,” said Steve Cline, Adelman’s Chief Operating Officer. “To do this effectively, customers need immediate access to their global information, a complex process because so much of the information is decentralized. Global Gateway fills this gap by providing data in real-time, unlike most other solutions that deliver such information up to 30 days after month-end.“

Global Gateway is just one of many technology advantages provided by Adelman. One of their goals is to assure companies can leverage technology for optimal results. “Every company and every business traveler understands the benefits of using video conferencing, voice over IP (VoIP), webinars and other similar solutions,” according to Angela Abbate, Adelman’s Vice President of Global Operations. “The challenge is assuring technology is properly configured, tested and deployed so everyone attending a conference or meeting receives maximum benefit. Too often, the ‘experience’ is lost due to technical failures. Our unique technology management capabilities are designed to eliminate these challenges before they become issues. Our VideoTravel TM solution is a perfect example. Companies and business travelers have choices when it comes to travel planning; our goal is to provide all the options required to meet those needs.”

“There are many reasons why technology poses these challenges”, continued Cline. “Once a meeting is moved from your office to a video location, you no longer have control of the environment,” he noted. “That can make it quite challenging for your own IT team to optimize the media and communications for your event. The results can be disastrous when key participants of the meeting are negatively impacted, whether these participants are your employees, business partners or sales prospects.”

Recognizing this need, Adelman added technology management as a core capability. While the company is best known for providing world-class travel solutions, it can now manage the technical needs of your travel transaction with the same level of professionalism. While others in the industry fear technology will erode travel sales, Adelman has embraced technical solutions, consistent with their commitment to be a full service provider for its customers. Global Gateway is just the newest example of why Adelman recently earned the CIO “Top 50” award for technology integration. An example of this is Adelman’s VideoTravel TM program which offers video conference alternatives when considering travel/meeting options.

“Our evolving capabilities demonstrate how Adelman lives up to our promise of transforming travel for our customers,” said Abbate. “We believe adding new technology to our portfolio provides another important option for our clients, and allows us to stand apart from other providers. When combined with our ability to provide cost-effective management of hotel, air and other transportation needs, we’re confident we deliver the best bottom-line value for our customers. Value and choices are what our clients both want and need in this economy.”

For more information about Global Gateway and Adelman’s other technical capabilities, including interview opportunities and a demonstration, please contact Steve Cline, Chief Operating Officer: by phone (414) 410-8351; by e-mail (scline(at)adelmanmail(dot)com).

About Adelman Travel Group

Adelman Travel Group is a unique provider of travel management for corporations with both national and global requirements. It has four regional travel solution centers: Hartford, CT., Milwaukee, WI, Fort Worth, TX and Irvine, CA. Adelman is a shareholder in RADIUS, a global travel company with more than $19 billion in sales located in over 80 countries worldwide. The company offers dedicated affiliate offices in Asia, Canada and Europe and operates full-service, onsite travel centers for corporations throughout the United States and worldwide. Adelman was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Milwaukee, WI.

###

Hal Coxon
Axiom Marketing, Inc.
(847) 919-1005
Email Information

Destination Cuba

U.S. and Puerto Rican airports that offer, or will soon begin, charter service to Cuba:

• Miami International Airport

• Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (flights begin Sept. 17)

• Tampa International Airport

• John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York

• Los Angeles International Airport

• Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, San Juan, Puerto Rico

• International airports in these cities have been approved to begin passenger service between the United States and Cuba but haven’t yet begun to offer flights: Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Oakland, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Fort Myers.

Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Charter companies serving Florida airports

Miami International Airport

• ABC Charters

• Airline Brokers Co.

• C&T Charters

• CTS — Cuba Travel Services

• Gulfstream Charters

• Marazul Charters

• Wilson International Services

• Xael Charters

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport

• Airline Brokers Co. (Service begins Sept. 17)

Tampa International Airport

• ABC Charters

• Xael Charters

• Island Travel & Tours (service not yet scheduled)

Cuba flight patterns at MIA

* January through July 2011

Prepared by Miami-Dade Aviation Department / Marketing Division

Vivian Mannerud has been in the business of arranging air charters to Cuba long enough to have seen it all — from the passengers who wear several hats on their heads to avoid extra baggage fees to the woman who stuffed sausages in her curlers. The grease running down her face was a giveaway.

Since 1982, Mannerud, chief executive and founder of Coral Gables-based Airline Brokers Co., has transported Cuban families, as well as politicians, former political prisoners, athletes and humanitarian supplies, to and from the island. This pioneer in the Cuban charter business has seen the governments of Cuba and the United States shut down travel amid political tensions, and recalibrated her business as some U.S. presidents allowed more travel and others pared it down.

Now, the policy is for more expansive travel and Airline Brokers and other charter companies are once again poised for change.

Earlier this year, the United States authorized people-to-people exchanges that make it easier for a wider variety of Americans to visit Cuba, lifted some restrictions on academic trips, and expanded the number of cities that can serve as gateways for Cuba travel from three to 15.

While many have embraced the changes — a record number of travelers from the United States are expected this year — others have criticized the flights because landing fees and payments for other services flow to Cuban government coffers.

Miami International Airport has long been the main gateway for Cuba travel — eight charter companies handled 7,616 departing and arriving flights last year — and it will continue to be.

But now other U.S. cities are getting into the act. Airports in Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers are among those that are now authorized for Cuban charter service.

The first charter flights to Cuba in nearly 50 years left from Tampa International Airport last week and Cuba service will begin from Fort Lauderdale Saturday.

Miami-based Xael Charters timed its inaugural flight from Tampa to Havana last Thursday to coincide with the feast day of Our Lady of Charity of Cobre, Cuba’s patron saint. The airport staged a “Tampa to Havana Reconnected” event at the gate with live music and cake before the departure of the sold-out flight.

“We wanted to expand our business and Tampa historically has had strong ties with Cuba,’’ said Xiomara Almaguer-Levy, Xael’s president and chief executive. “It was here in Tampa, specifically Ybor City, where Cuba’s national hero, Jose Marti, found the unconditional support of thousands of cigar workers’’ that was crucial to the success of Cuba’s fight for independence from Spain.

Xael now offers five weekly flights from Miami to Havana and flies twice a week from Miami to Holguin. It plans departures from Tampa every Thursday.

“The time is right,’’ said Almaguer-Levy.

This year, Cuban-Americans are expected to take a record 400,000 trips to Cuba, according to estimates from the charter companies. The number has been steadily climbing since 2009 when the Obama administration began allowing Cuban-Americans to visit the island at will.

More Americans traveling on educational and people-to-people exchanges, which are designed to foster relationships with ordinary Cubans, are expected to boost the numbers even higher. 

(OTCQB: TRXI), a world-leading provider of travel technology, process automation, consulting and data services, today announced a new multi-year agreement to provide Omega World Travel, the second largest privately owned travel management company in the U.S., with the best-in-class data intelligence solution TRAVELTRAX®, mid-office solution CORREX®, as well as travel technology utilities Profile Manager(SM) and Queue Manager(SM).

“We chose the TRX TRUEPARTNER Complete Program to enable our business growth without increasing costs, to meet the needs of a changing market, and to allow us to place more focus on servicing our clients rather than on time-intensive mid- and back-office activities,” said Gloria Bohan, President and CEO of Omega World Travel. “We have had a long and successful partnership with TRX and the TRAVELTRAX solution, and our expanded partnership in the TRUEPARTNER Complete Program will give us access to a broad array of TRX leading edge travel technology and perfectly position us for success.”

The TRX TRUEPARTNER Complete program provides travel management companies direct access to booking, profile management, mid-office reporting, settlement, expense management, agency fee management, data consolidation, and a host of other travel technology. Program participants also have the option of adding on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), back-office, and settlement services.

Key benefits of the TRX TRUEPARTNER Complete program are:

Simplified cost per transaction model and structureAccess to a broad array of travel technology solutionsClear, predictable technology costs Ability to scale without need for additional capital investments

“We are excited to expand our relationship with Omega and provide them with our TRUEPARTNER Complete Program to drive results and reduce costs,” said Shane Hammond, President and CEO, TRX. “Given our ability to deploy solutions that meet specific client needs at affordable costs, TRX’s solutions are very attractive to travel agencies such as Omega.”

As part of the TRUEPARTNER program, Omega will leverage the following technology solutions:

TRAVELTRAX helps over 6,000 corporations gain a better understanding of corporate travel data and more effectively manage their global T&E costs. TRAVELTRAX provides users with clear and concise insight into global travel programs for corporations using multiple travel agencies, corporate cards, and/or expense reporting platforms through seamlessly aggregating, consolidating, and normalizing data from over 100 unique sources.CORREX is the world’s leading reservation processing platform enabling efficient, automated quality control, file finishing, and ticketing of travel reservations. CORREX processes more than 100 million traveler reservations from over 40 countries around the globe each year and leverages in excess of 50,000 rules and queries designed to improve efficiency and reservation quality.Queue Manager is a hosted workflow management utility for multi-location and/or multi-account travel operation teams designed to facilitate the management of transactional tasks, track agent productivity, and identify process error trends. Profile Manager is a hosted application that enables travel managers to set a standard traveler profile template, store traveler profiles, and synchronize changes across all major global distribution systems and independent ERPs.

About Omega World Travel

Omega World Travel is the second largest, privately owned travel management company in the country. Headquartered in Fairfax, VA, Omega services corporate, government and leisure clients throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Omega also owns Travtech, a technology development company specializing in travel software applications.

About TRX

TRX is a world-leading travel technology and data services provider offering more than 20 software-as-a-service utilities for online booking, reservation processing, data intelligence, and process automation. We deliver our technology applications in an on-demand environment to travel agencies, corporations, travel suppliers, government agencies, credit card associations, credit card issuing banks, and third-party administrators. We provide patented savings maximization solutions via our travel analytics consulting practice, extending spend management services to travel buyers all over the world. We complement all of these offerings with a global workforce focused on travel process automation and re-engineering. For more information about TRX or to contact a TRX sales office, phone 404.929.6100 or visit the Company’s website at www.trx.com.

Those of you wary of the Final Fantasy series due to the boring, linear despair that was XIII may be wondering how Square Enix plans to make it up to you in XIII-2 The answer: time travel. Yes, Square Enix has responded to fan’s complaints about the last incarnation of the series and introduced more freedom to the mission structure of the Final Fantasy universe with a time travel system called the Historia Crux.

Players will be able to travel backwards and forwards in time with the Historia Crux, which will function as the initial point of world navigation. To reach new space and time locations, you’ll have to find hidden “Artefacts” and reunite them with the corresponding portals. Once unlocked, you can return to any of these time-space locations from the Historia Crux which game director Motomu Toriyama likened to clicking links on a website.

Along with the novel time traveling, Final Fantasy XIII-2 plans on offering the strong mini game presence that fans are accustomed to. You won’t have to wait until half the story is over for sidequests as was the case in Gran Pulse, the Historia Crux will allow you to play sidequests right at the start of the game.

The freedom to come and go means the story detours and branches off into multiple routes. If you like your structure rigid, you can choose to follow the main story. Those looking for challenge can look forward to a wealth of secrets and even different endings to the game. The multiple overlapping time-space layers mean actions in the rear-end of time will affect locations in the future.

Those of you looking for E3 clarification of Noel, he’s got a back story similar to DBZ’s Trunks, or the Terminator series. Noel is from the future where he’s the last man alive and has traveled back in time stop the catastrophe that destroys the human race. XIII-2′s timeline is connected to the Fall of Cocoon, which happens at the tail end of the last game. The AF you see in the screenshots means After the Fall. If you liked the characters from the last incarnation, good news, they’ll be sure to make their appearances as you traverse through time-space of the this game.

Time travel and an area with unlocked portals to different periods—this all must sound familiar to you SNES RPG players. Could this be a rip of the 1995, Akira Toriyama drawn classic Chrono Trigger?

“We really have received a lot of feedback about the game, but among the voices there are those who say it reminds them of the classic RPG, CHRONO TRIGGER,” said game director Motomu Toriyama. “For FINAL FANTASY XIII-2, we are aiming to make time travel a major thematic direction, and be able to express this on high-end game machines.”

Preliminary research on Fusarium, a group of fungi that includes devastating pathogens of plants and animals, shows how these microbes travel through the air. Researchers now believe that with improvements on this preliminary research, there will be a better understanding about crop security, disease spread, and climate change.

Engineers and biologists are steering their efforts towards a new aerobiological modeling technique, one they think may assist farmers in the future by providing an early warning system for high-risk plant pathogens. It will also provide the basis for more effective management strategies to address the spread of infectious diseases affecting plants, domestic animals, and humans.

Using initial studies on the efficient movement and subsequent atmospheric dispersal of these microbes, Shane Ross, an assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics, and David Schmale III, associate professor of plant pathology, physiology and weed science, both at Virginia Tech, have received close to half a million dollars from the National Science Foundation to use autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to collect new samples of Fusarium in the lower atmosphere. They believe their work, combining the study of biology with engineering dynamics, will allow the prediction of atmospheric transport barriers that might govern the motion of Fusariumbetween habitats.

In preliminary work leading to their new study, also funded by the National Science Foundation, but through a different project led by Schmale and Ross, more than 100 airborne samples of Fusarium were obtained using UAVs. “The resulting information has led to strong evidence that specific atmospheric structures play a role in determining atmospheric concentrations of Fusarium,” Ross said. This work was published on line Sept. 9, 2011 in the American Institute of Physics’ journal Chaos.

In engineering terms, the atmospheric structures are called Lagrangian coherent structures, named after the 18th Century Italian-French mathematician Joseph Lagrange. He introduced a point of view into the study of fluids, like the atmosphere, which the research will employ.

Ross and Schmale will be able to compute, track, and predict atmospheric transport barriers governing the motion of microorganisms such as Fusarium between habitats, using engineering methods including the Lagrangian methods.

“By comparison with results of microbiological analysis, we expect to reveal how dynamical structures partition and mix airborne populations of microorganisms, and relatedly, how mixtures of microorganisms might encode their recent history of large-scale atmospheric mixing,” they said.

For microbes to move through the atmosphere to a new habitat, they must pass through a series of ‘layers’- the laminar boundary layer, the surface boundary layer, and the planetary boundary layer. The surface boundary layer often contains strong vertical gradients in wind speed, temperature, and humidity, accounting for the turbulence. “The small-scale motion can be characterized as random,” Ross added.

If the microbes make it above this surface boundary layer, and enter the second layer of the atmosphere, defined as being at a height of about 50 meters to about three kilometers above the ground, they can be transported over long distances. In this second layer, known as planetary boundary layer, “there are a lot of uncertainties in the trajectory computations,” Ross explained.

With Ross and Schmale’s research they hope to reduce some of these uncertainties. Schmale has already published his findings about reliable methods for collecting and studying populations of Fusarium in the lower atmosphere. (see: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rob.20232/abstract and http://www.springerlink.com/content/d203130563348570/

Using UAVs, Schmale has collected data that shows the lower atmosphere is “teeming with Fusarium.” Schmale has DNA sequence data for hundreds of strains of Fusarium collected from the atmosphere, and they have preliminary data validating the important role that atmospheric transport barriers play in the transport of the microorganisms.

Ross said their work should allow them to make more predictable assessments of the transport of the microbes.

“In the future our work may be able to assist farmers by providing an early warning systems for high risk plant pathogens,” Ross said. “It might also pave the way for more effective management strategies for the spread of infectious diseases affecting plants, domestic animals, and humans.”

It had been a good year — no, a great year. My daughter, our second child, had been born in February. The Travel section had just hauled in a record number of awards that spring, and the Sunday Register that plopped on driveways was fat with ads. The work on the old bungalow my wife and I had bought two years before was starting to pay off.

I was happy, successful, cozy and content when I heard my daughter cry that Tuesday morning 10 years ago. I stumbled through the predawn Gray to pull her out of the crib and bring her to whom she really wanted — Mom. Once up, I’m not good at going back to sleep. So I went to the next room and fired up my computer to check the overnight baseball scores. The dial-up modem clicked to the AOL home page just as the second plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City.

I walked back into the bedroom and told my wife. We turned the TV on and watched with the sound down so we wouldn’t wake our 7-year-old son at the end of the hall. The Pentagon was hit, the Twin Towers collapsed and Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania. It seemed like the world had changed in a morning.

But it didn’t stop.

Like most Americans, I went to work that day. Sundays would still come, and until someone said otherwise, there would be a Register Travel section in the Sunday paper. What it would say, I didn’t know yet.

A quirk of timing helped. The Travel section for the next Sunday was already done — a preprint that was later inserted into the Sunday paper. We had a cover story on Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Breezy D.C. was one of the other stories. We put an editor’s note in the front news section explaining the section had been finished before the attacks. Still, it felt odd on Sunday to pull this sunny artifact of the past from amid a paper filled with carnage and plans for war.

The next week would be the first after 9/11 where we could say something. Should we be an antidote to all the death and anger? Maybe feature a story on a nearby place to get away from the bleak reality. No. We had to step into this new reality with our readers.

We ripped up our schedule and went with a cover package headlined Travel in Turmoil. A picture took up the top half of the Travel front page that showed a bomb-sniffing dog checking out passengers at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The story had more questions than answers:

Where to go? When to go? Should I go at all? How can I be safe? Car or boat or train instead of planes? Should I book a tour or cruise for next year or wait?

No one knew if the terrorist attacks were just the first wave of many. A plane crash and a fatal train derailment in the following weeks seemed at first like evidence of terrorist attacks, instead of just the terrible coincidences they were. Readers called wondering if they should cancel a cruise to Mexico or a drive to the Grand Canyon.

I tried to keep confident, encouraging readers to travel. I told them not to give in to fear, though I had the fear myself. The reality that there would be only a handful of attacks over the next decade would have seemed delusional at the time. Nobody knew what was next.

It’s like trying to gaze into a crystal ball while it’s rolling, said Laurie Armstrong, spokeswoman for the San Francisco Convention Fluffy, that he carried on flights to make them less scary. The agents squished and turned Fluffy and ran a metal detecting wand all around the motley fake pup. We were all frisked, even the lady in the wheelchair.

Meanwhile, dozens of strong, young men made their way onto our flight.

Why this group? I asked the agent after we were all done. The hijackers of 9/11 had flown one-way. My son and I had one-way tickets because of the train trip. The businessman had bought a one-way ticket because it was cheaper than the change fees on his restricted ticket. The lady? Her family was moving her from a nursing home to live with her son in Orange County.

It was the first of a series of federal after-the-fact security attempts we’d all become familiar with. Shoe bomber? Everybody, take off your shoes. Plan to mix bombs in bottles on a flight? Everyone must limit toiletries to tiny tubes in a clear bag. Underwear bomber? Everyone goes through enhanced inspections or high-powered body scans.

Air travel, already a grind and an irritation, became unbearable. Then the unbearable became the bearable, the bearable the routine. I resented that First Class passengers got to skip to the head of the line, but when I got an occasional Business Class bump-up, I would do it too.

By the end of the decade, a movie like Up in the Air could include a humorous segment on speeding through the security process with slip-on shoes, zip-and-go bags and picking the right stereotype to get behind in line.

My own travels, and the section, moved forward. Regional drives. Flights to Portland and Seattle. On to Hawaii, then back to Europe and Asia. Within 18 months, advertising was back to where it was before. Travel was never the same. But it wasn’t over either. We’d just make believe that abnormal was the new normal.

(NaturalNews) As the ten-year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks quickly approaches, a recent USA Today piece reflects on the drastic, and likely permanent, changes that have taken place in US airport security. What was once a relatively simple and painless walk through the metal detector has mutated into a nightmarish circus of screaming TSA agents, invasive pat-downs, naked body scans, strip searches, and other unconstitutional violations of personal and civil liberties — and conditions will most likely never return to what they once were before 9/11.

Many NaturalNews readers will remember pre-9/11 flying conditions when friends and relatives could freely walk to departure gates to see off their loved ones. Or when spending a few minutes in a short security line, with no convoluted restrictions on liquids or wearing shoes, was all it took to board a flight. These were the days when Americans were treated more like innocent travelers than guilty terrorists, and when airport security was not run by the heavy hand of a bloated federal government.

But everything changed, of course, after the 9/11 tragedy took place. Americans willingly sacrificed their freedom in the name of security and protection against terrorists. And as well-intentioned as many people likely were in bowing down to the federal overlords that were all-too-quick to unlawfully search them and seize their property, this capitulation to tyranny has made air travel feel more like lining up for roll call at a Nazi concentration camp than simply embarking on a peaceful and more rapid form of transportation than bus or car.

Air travel has not become safer by ‘enhanced’ TSA security protocols, despite propaganda

Some people might argue that because there have been no US major attacks since 9/11, the TSA’s enhanced security protocols have obviously been a success. The US government and mainstream media have repeated this mantra for years, and have even singled out a few supposed cases where terrorists were stopped as supporting evidence. This notion, however, is a logical fallacy, and here is why.

Just because there have been no major terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11, it does not mean that TSA and its enhanced security procedures have had anything to do with it. After all, TSA has had to “upgrade” its security protocols several times since its post-9/11 inception because of potential terrorists like Richard Reid, also known as the “shoe bomber,” and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the media-dubbed “underwear bomber,” both of which had breached security.

A recent report issued by the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations also found that since November 2001, there have been more than 25,000 airport security breaches, despite a present TSA. These, of course, include the case where a man successfully flew from New York to Los Angeles without identification or a ticket (http://www.naturalnews.com/032918_T…), and another in which an armed undercover agent made it through the TSA security line multiple times without being detected (http://www.naturalnews.com/031529_T…).

This same government report found that the US Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) TSA failed to detect terrorists at least 23 times throughout the past decade, and that these terrorists had slipped through the security screeners and boarded passenger airplanes just as easily as the 9/11 terrorists had done through the old security protocols (http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2…).

In truth, Americans are no safer than they were prior to 9/11 — but now they have to deal with a whole slew of invasive, convoluted, and humiliating security procedures that, according to a USA Today / Gallup Poll conducted in 2010, have deterred at least 27 percent of formerly-regular air travelers from flying at all.

“Don’t get misled into believing we’re safer than before 9/11,” said Michael Boyd, an aviation consultant for USA Today. “We are simply being screened by a bigger bureaucracy, and the back doors of our airports — where the security failures really were on 9/11 — are still wide open.”

TSA now setting up shop at stadiums, bus and train stations, malls, other public places

Air travel for Americans will most likely never return to pre-9/11 conditions, as there almost always seems to appear a new terrorist boogeyman every time Americans begin to raise a fresh uproar about TSA abuses. And it appears as though TSA will continue to expand its operations into every aspect of American life and transport, including establishing a presence at sporting events, bus and train stations, shopping malls, and various other public placed deemed a potential security threat.

Back in December, NaturalNews warned readers that DHS was planning to implement its new “VIPER” (a chilling acronym for the new DHS “Visual Intermodal Protection and Response” program) teams all over the US. At that time, it had already begun testing the program, which is gravely similar to the NAZI checkpoints established throughout Germany during World War II, at a Tampa, Fla. Greyhound bus station (http://www.naturalnews.com/030596_T…).

In other words, conditions are only going to get worse in the so-called “land of the free,” as innocent citizens are repeatedly and increasingly treated like terrorists everywhere they go. And if Americans ever hope to stop this tyrannical madness, they will have to step up now and begin resisting this tide of fascism that is quickly transforming the US into the largest and most advanced police state the world has ever known.

First the good news. If you can get west of Harrisburg on 322, past Duncannon, you’re in good shape.

Now the bad news. There’s little chance you will get through Clarks Ferry and Route 147 on Route 22/322.

 So, Penn State fans, you’re on the spot come Saturday. Do you make the trek to Happy Valley for the nationally televised 3:30 p.m. kickoff ?

According to Penn State President Graham Spanier, the game will go on.

“It is sold out, and it will also be on national TV,” Spanier wrote in an email to The Patriot-News. “We are urging folks to allow extra time for travel and parking. The 3:30 p.m. kickoff time should help those needing extended travel time.”

There will be major problems on all roads leading to State College on Saturday morning, the most significant of which is on Route 22/322 near Clarks Ferry and Route 147 in Halifax. Flooding has affected the bridges and roads over, around and on the Susquehanna River, and with the river itself due to crest from late Friday night to early Saturday morning, the options are limited for travelers.

Even Interstate 80 has flooding problems, leaving very few options, according to PennDOT spokesman Steve Chizmar.

 ”There is no good alternate route that we can suggest at this point because we’re not sure what the situation is going to look like on Saturday,” he said. “Granted, there are some secondary roads and all Penn State fans have their favorite shortcuts, but the reality is a lot of those shortcuts are under water.

Chizmar added that inspectors will need to be sent out to a number of bridges to check for damage. The problem is the crews can’t get to those bridges and roads until the water recedes.

Flooding problems could affect Route 11/15 and two back roads, routes 104 and 45.

“Traffic is going to be heavy,” Chizmar said. “Even under perfect conditions you’re going to have heavy traffic flow on our interstates and the turnpike, but couple that with the sheer magnitude of road closures and people trying to get to major routes, traffic is just going to be very, very difficult.”

Chizmar, himself a Penn State fan, cautioned that the best option might be watching the game from home and avoiding the roads.

“Fans and motorists really have to ask themselves, ‘is this worth the risk?’ And when I say risk, I’m speaking all reality. We’ve got to see what the water conditions are like on Saturday, but we could still have a number of roads under water.”

In the days of yore, travel guides were written by intrepid travelers who spent months scribbling in diaries and field journals, or by teams of adventurous souls exhaustively scrap booking their travel experiences into the Lonely Planets of the world. Over the last decade, however, the Web has produced an untold number of personal travel blogs, digital photo albums, community-built travel guides like Tripadvisor and Wikitravel, and cool travel resources like Gogobot.

Today, Jon Tirsen and Douwe Osinga, two ex-Googlers, are officially unveiling their new mobile travel guide Triposo, which doesn’t want to just throw out the old model, it wants to do what Google did for the world’s information: Aggregate that sucka and make it easily searchable. Simply put, Triposo is based on the simple idea that travel guides can be designed in the same way that Google based its aggregation and search on some kick ass algorithms. And a little bit of indexing and semantic icing to boot.

To that end, travel guides like Triposo are possible today, because the content is there. Sites like Wikipedia, Wikitravel, and Openstreetmap have swaths of travel-related content, and Triposo wants to be the site that ranks that content so well you’ll never have to use another preachy, paper-based travel book. The environment will thank you.

Thus, the Triposo algorithm takes travel information from seven of the biggest open source aggregators (and several closed resources as well) and serves its users with content that’s relevant for them. Without any human interference, Triposo COO Richard Osinga tells me, the startup produces travel guides, with information on sightseeing, nightlife and restaurants, all ordered by Triposo’s algorithm — and complete with an easy-to-use (and offline-enabled) map. That very offline functionality in and of itself makes Triposo’s free mobile apps worth downloading.

Along with its web app, Triposo also offers 30 free destination guides for iOS using the same approach. The startup plans to release an iOS world guide, in which users can download a complete travel guide for any destination in the world, next month. Android users, on the other hand, can already find a world travel guide and guides for select cities here.

Triposo has been polishing its travel content algorithms for over a year now, and launched a swath of city guides for iOS and Android to test the algorithmic waters and user response. So far, people are using the guides on average of 20 minutes per session — so far, so good. But the end goal for Triposo is really to hone its all-in-one world travel guides, so that users can pick a destination anywhere across the globe and easily find the best cities and destinations to visit.

But how does Triposo choose these recommended destinations? “One of the things we also use intensively for our ranking algorithms are photographs”, said Co-founder Douwe Osinga. “We have a collection of a few million travel photos geotagged — with time stamps. How many pictures are taken at a place, at what time, on what day: That all helps us decide how important a location is”.

Of course, an algorithm-based company is only as good as its, well, algorithm. At the end of the day, travelers may prefer to receive personalized recommendations on destinations from their friends, or people they trust. (Or self-curated as one commenter pointed out.) And from this perspective, Triposo’s human-less recommendation platform may not suit everyone; but at the same time, it’s nice to have a free mobile app that works the same for everyone regardless. It may miss the mark for some, but the iPad app looks great, and so far, the algorithm hasn’t let me down. Amsterdam, here I come.

Along with platform unveiling, Triposo also told TechCrunch that it has raised $525,000 in seed financing from angel investors, including Chris Sacca, Taher Haveliwala, Google Wave Co-founder and Google Maps Lead Engineer Lars Rasmussen, and InterWest Partners.

The founders said that they will use this new infusion of capital to continue optimizing its algorithm, working towards the goal of becoming the best possible web and mobile destination to answer: Where should I go next? The question, however, for Triposo, is what their revenue model will be when the money runs out. Premium features? Paid apps? More to come.

For more on the interactive travel guides startup, check them out here. Let us know what you think. Travel content algorithms: Yay or nay?

Triposo makes free, interactive travel guides for mobile devices. Using an algorithm based approach Triposo focusses on presenting the most relevant options for a traveler at any given moment in any destination. Currently, Triposo has 20 iOS guides and 50 Android guides in the market. To make their guides Triposo uses open content from different sources, including Wikitravel, Wikipedia, World66 and Openstreetmap.