Wow, That's a Cool Google Map

We just added in the ability to search our map for landmarks. The cool thing about landmarks is that they're usually pretty big, and recognizable by satellite. Let's take this example:

If you go to www.iloho.com/landmarks and search for "eiffel tower", here's what you'll get...

You can also search by city or country.

GlobalMotion launches travel site

GlobalMotion Inc. on Tuesday launched GlobalMotion.com, a wiki-based platform for people to talk about interesting places.

Palo Alto-based GlobalMotion, which is privately held, said the site allows users to post and edit information, pictures, Web links and other content.

The company, which was founded in 2006, said it encourages users to post about historic landmarks, recreation areas to commercial buildings or even great parking spots.

On the site so far are such eclectic entries as the world's southernmost city, carpool parking in Palo Alto, and a statue of Yoda in San Francisco.

Airline Reviews Search Improvements Released Today

On the last post, we talked about how we released the airline reviews upgrade. Now we've fully enabled the search so that you can search any combination of the following and it will bring you results: Destination Airport, Arrival Airport, and/or Airline.

Ok, this may seem obvious, but we were in a bit of a rush. We've also increased the number of flights to search to over 55,000. Soon we hope to have the most comprehensive database of flight data available on the net.

Airline Reviews is Up for an Upgrade

Over the past couple of weeks, we've set our interns on a quest to retrieve data for about 38,000 international flights. We're working on a structure to get really in depth data on all flights and allow our users to compare this information.

We've got a lot of work to do on this section, but we decided to release it anyway and let people try it and help us improve it. You can see it on our site now. It's a work in progress, but here's an image of what it should look like

Bookmark to iloho Button Available

Promote your site by adding an iloho bookmarking button to your articles.
Step 1: Copy and Paste the following code to wherever you'd like the button to go. (Most people add the button to the bottom of their story).

<script type="text/javascript">
iloho_url = "YOUR.LINKURL.HERE"; /* REPLACE WITH YOUR LINK URL. Default is the url of the current page */
iloho_title = "TITLE"; /* REPLACE WITH THE TITLE OF YOUR ARTICLE. Default is the html-title of the current page */
iloho_icon = "big"; /* OPTIONS: BIG | SMALL | TEXT . default is the big one */
</script>
<script src="http://www.iloho.com/tools/iloho_it.js" type="text/javascript"></script>


Step 2: Define the page that you would like the link on iloho.com to point to.
For example, if you've written a story, and that story is located at http://www.mysite.com/my-story, the code will look like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
iloho_url = "http://www.mysite.com/my-story";
</script>

Step 3 (optional): Give a default title to display on iloho.com.
For example, if you're story's title is "My Story", add this to your code:

<script type="text/javascript">
iloho_url = "http://www.mysite.com/my-story";
iloho_title = "My Story";
</script>

Step 4 (optional): Choose the type of button you'd like to display on your site.
iloho offers three different styles of button links:

Style 1 (default): [image]
<script type="text/javascript">
iloho_url = "http://www.mysite.com/my-story";
iloho_title = "My Story";
iloho_icon = "big";
</script>

Style 2: [image]
<script type="text/javascript">
iloho_url = "http://www.mysite.com/my-story";
iloho_title = "My Story";
iloho_icon = "small";
</script>
Style 3: [image]

<script type="text/javascript">
iloho_url = "http://www.mysite.com/my-story";
iloho_title = "My Story";
iloho_icon = "text";
</script>

iloho Travel Contest - Only 2 Weeks Left

These next two weeks, we'll be winding down the iloho contest, it ends on the 31st of this month. We still have a ton of unclaimed prizes. Here's the lowdown on what can be grabbed right now with practically no effort whatsoever:

1. A round trip ticket between Tokyo or Osaka and Hong Kong. That means you can fly either way. If you live in one of those cities, all you have to do is post an itinerary with Japan as the theme.
   What's an itinerary and how do I post it?
   First off, you register for iloho with a valid email address. Once you've registered and logged in, you navigate to the itineraries section and click "Create Itinerary". Now you just enter in a description of a trip (real or imagined). Enter some cities in Japan and write about your experience there OR just make up some trip that you would like to take.
2. At least 5000 miles on your airline of choice. That's like a quarter of a ticket anywhere domestically, and to win that you can just post a popular travel advice article.
   Does this mean I have to spend 5 hours writing a good article? Absolutely not, all you need to do is find a good article on the net and post the link to the article on iloho. The extent of the writing skills that you'll need are creating a decent title and a short description for a grand total of several minutes. If the article is voted to popular, which at this point means 15 votes for it, you'll win! No questions asked.
3. Cash, yes Moolah, Dough, or my personal favorite, Lootcakes...Up to $1000. If you have more than 15 friends, you're in contention. The cash goes out to the group with the most members in their group.
   Where do I sign up and what exactly do I do? Just register with iloho with your email address, create a group, shoot an email to your friends, telling them to join your group (they can register free accounts too). Right now, 21 people gets you the grand prize, but even you can win $500 too. I bet you could have a hell of a party...
4. A 1gig USB Key and iPod Speakers, why not if we're just giving them away? We're giving away 100, but we only have 64 people that have actually won anything.
   At this point if you post a link to an article you will win. I think that's all I need to say.
5. Come on everyone can use a T-shirt and a travel pillow... We have a thousand, but again, only 64 articles have been posted, so plenty to give away.

I must stress the following points:

1. No, we won't sell, giveaway, or spam your email address. We do have a newsletter, but you can opt out.
2. You don't have to pay for shipping, we've got it covered.
3. How do you get your prizes when you win?
   If you win, we'll notify you by email directing you to a secure server at iloho.com. If you have any questions about the security of this event, please feel free to email me at info@iloho.com. We'll never give out your address information or use it for any other purpose.
   

We Released Landmarks ahead of Schedule

Ok, that never happens from what I hear. I don't know how the dev team pulled it off, but we actually released a new feature ahead of schedule.

Check it out at www.iloho.com/landmarks

One of Our Favorite Posts - This Island is For Sale

We'd love to buy this and make it the official iloho island.
http://www.iloho.com/posts/244-Blue-Lagoon-Island-FOR-SALE-on-EBay