Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant

So I’ve done plenty of travel site stories in the past and I find myself yet again doing a travel site story. There are just so many great travel sites out there we just can’t get enough, right?

Anyway, did you know you can get money back from some airlines if prices drop after you’ve bought airline tickets? Well surprise, you actually can!

A handful of airlines offer policies to either give you a refund or issue vouchers if the fare drops after your ticket purchase.

Yapta.com promises to track your itineraries and contact you if your purchased airline ticket drops in price.

Yapta stands for “Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant.” Mmmm…I don’t know if I believe that, but it’s worth exploring the site to find out.

Already bought tickets? Just enter your confirmation code and Yapta will keep tabs on your itineraries and will alert you through email when airline prices drop. You can then contact the carrier and ask for a partial refund on a purchased ticket or a type of travel voucher.

If you haven’t already purchased tickets, you can use the site to track certain flights and alert you when to purchase the best flights.

But here’s one important thing to remember. Yapta users should book with the airline, since carriers generally won’t credit a fare difference if the ticket was purchased on a travel search engine like Expedia or Orbitz.

Here are some additional travel sites that will help you find the best rates on the Web.

Farecompare.com- Just tell it where you live and it’ll show the cheapest roundtrip airfare to cities all over the world.

Farecast.com is an airfare prediction website. The site shows if fares are rising or dropping over seven days.

Affordable Photo Pritners

Summer is prime time for taking digital pictures. And I’ve got your gadget guide to at-home photo printers. These days you can get a great quality multifunction printer pretty inexpensive. This way you’ll actually get those pictures you’re taking printed. These devices will give you high quality prints without using an online service.

First on the list of photo printers-meet the HP Photosmart D7360 . The cost $150. Just pop your memory card in to begin. With the 3.4 inch LCD color touch screen it couldn’t be easier to flip through and print your favorite photos.
Features include editing, cropping, and the ability to add effects.
The HP Photosmart D7360 will give you quality prints and works great as a regular printer. But its photo effects are limited when not plugged in to a computer.

Next in the line up, the $150 dollar Epson Stylus Photo RX580. This is a great printer for the multi-tasker.
It’s an all in one machine which scans, copies, and prints pictues. Just plug in your camera or slide in your memory card.
The printer also lets you create custom greeting cards and CD or DVD covers. The Epson Stylus Photo RX580 prints great photos and pretty good text and graphics. But it’s limited strictly to printing, scanning, and copying.

Finally if you’re looking for just a compact photo printer then the $99 Canon CP740 is for you.
The printer is small and portable so you can print photos in the kitchen, living room or even a friend’s house!
Just plug your camera in using the built-in USB cable or slide in your memory card.
This compact Canon photo printer gives you great prints, but you only get the 4 X 6 option and the ink cartridge runs low pretty quickly.

Now these are just three of the hundreds of printers on the market. By no means are they the absolute best, but each of these printers does offer something a little different and they each come in well under $200.

Seven Wonders of the ‘Burgh

About 100 million votes were cast in the first-ever *global* election to choose the new Seven Wonders of the World.
The list includes:

The Great Wall of China, the largest man-made monument ever built.

Rome’s Colosseum, built to celebrate the glory of the Roman Empire.

India’s Taj Mahal, regarded as the most perfect jewel of Muslim art in India.

Peru’s Machu-Picchu, an ancient settlement deep in the Amazon Jungle that was erected in the 15th century.

Brazil’s statue of Christ Redeemer, which looks over Rio de Janiero.

Jordan’s Petra, an ancient city carved out of rock and famous for its water tunnels.

Finally, Mexico’s Chichen Itza pyramid. The temple was built according to the solar calendar, so that shadows cast during the fall and spring equinox are said to look like a snake crawling down the steps.

On a local level, for the past month we’ve asked you what you thought the 7 Wonders of Pittsburgh were. Well, we’ve narrowed down your list of emails to 17 possible Pittsburgh Wonders. Now it’s up to you.

A poll has been posted on our Viewer’s Choice page for you to vote for your favorite wonder.

You can vote as often as you want and for as many different wonders that you want. So what are you waiting for? Get voting!!!!!

eBay’s New Classified Ad Site

The Internet auction site eBay has transformed the way we shop and buy online. Now it’s hoping to change the way we view classified ads.

Its new site is intended to rival the popular Craigslist.

Kijiji.com is a community-based classified website that is free to post ads on and free to shop on. It’s currently available in more than 300 cities in 20 markets around the world. The word “kijiji” means “village” in Swahili.

On the site you can buy and sell new or used goods, look for a car, job, apartment, house, computer, new dog… basically just about anything can be posted for sale.

EBay’s Kijiji site first launched in several other countries back in February 2005.

Eventually, eBay could plug in both PayPal and Skype to create a powerhouse classified ad site.

Since the site is so new, there aren’t a whole lot of ads listed, but I’m sure that will change soon. If you’re interested in selling something there’s no reason not to test out eBay’s Kijiji site. It is free!