Farecast predicts airline ticket pricing

Farecast, currently in a closed beta, is a new service which uses historical pricing data from airlines to forecast when airline tickets will be the cheapest. Farecast beta currently only works for Boston and Seattle. However, when it’s launched later this year it will be available nationwide.

John Batelle spoke with Farecast founder Hugh Crean earlier last week, and has a great article on the upcoming service.

You can sign up for the private beta on the homepage, it’ll be out later in the year. The basic premise is neat – Farecast pays attention to the market price of all airline fares out of particular cities (it only does Boston and Seattle for now) at all times (it uses an industry data feed that, unfortunately, does not include Southwest). It then uses this data to help forecast when the right time might be for you to buy your ticket (and get the best price). In short, it’s a rip off detector for flights. Farecast leverages the power of data to put you back in charge, or at least more in charge.

Read John Batelle’s article here.

Source: BoingBoing

Convert your music collection and images into ringtones and graphics for your mobile phone

Mobile17 offers a free service that turns your music and images into custom ringtones and graphics that work with your mobile phone. For example, after you create your free account, you upload your favorite mp3/m4a file to mobile17, and you choose whether to have your new ringtone sent to your phone, or download it from a URL which they will also send to you.

The only catch with their free service is that you might have to wait upwards to an hour or more, depending on how busy the site is. However, they do accept site donations which will get your ringtone to you immediately, at the cost of $1 per ringtone, which is still cheaper than purchasing ringtones from your mobile service provider.

Your cell phone is now your movie ticket

Waiting in long lines to buy movie tickets can be annoying. Even worse, everyone around can listen as you ask for one ticket for “Phat Girlz“.

Well, now a new service called Mobile Box Office or MBO will save you the embarrassment and the wait at the long lines. You simply pruchase your movie tickets on your mobile phone, and MBO will send you a link via a text message. You can now walk past all the lines, and go to the usher that scans the barcode on your Mobile Phone Screen, which MBO has sent to your phone via that link in the text message.

MBO was developed by a company called MobilRelay which teamed up with Emagine Entertainment. For now, Emagine Theatres(in Michigan) are the only theaters that you can purchase movie tickets by using MBO.

Google Calendar is UP!

Google Calendar has launched! That’s right, the very(very!) long awaited Google Calendar service is now available for use. Just login with your google account and you’re set to go.