The concept of a car that drives itself without our input is a scary prospect to some. Anyone who has been in a collision that they feel they couldn’t have avoided knows that even split-second human reactions are often not enough to prevent an accident. While there will be those who are extremely trusting of the technology, others may not even consider it as an option when they do come out. Some note that computers are not as smart as humans when it comes to real-life input. The set of commands necessary to teach are robot how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a standard kitchen is so long that…

In a deal that totals $1.8 billion in cash and stocks, Priceline has agreed to buy fellow comparison site KAYAK. This puts the shares of the publicly traded company at $40, up from where it closed today at $31. KAYAK consolidates the pricing from several different online booking services including Priceline. It appears that KAYAK will stay operational but it’s doubtful that it will continue to offer comparison shopping the way it does today. “Paul English and I started KAYAK eight years ago to create the best place to plan and book travel,” said Steve Hafner, KAYAK Chief Executive Officer and Cofounder….

If you are in London enjoying the Olympics and having the time of your life, you still need to remain organized especially if the area is unfamiliar to you, therefore you can spend more time having fun with less worry of how to get from A to B using these 4 free helpful apps to getting around London. …

As populations grow and continue to migrate into cities, transportation has become an issue within congested cities. Less than half of the inhabitants of New York City, for example, even own a car. It just doesn’t make sense to own one when the distances traveled is short while traffic and parking are impossible. The folks at MIT Media Lab demonstrated this half-scale vehicle to TheNextWeb at the Media Evolution’s The Conference. As you’ll see, this solves two of the three major problems with intra-city travel – ownership (they can be shared) and parking (they fold). Traffic is still a challenge,…

Just over a month ago, American Airlines said it was installing Wi-Fi to its entire domestic fleet. Now, they’re going to allow streaming video to be played on Wi-Fi-enabled personal devices such as smartphones and tablets. While many airlines offer television channels and a selection of movies to be played on screens on the cabin ceiling or on the back of chairs, this new service will offer a wider variety of movies that travelers will be able to play on their own devices. No word yet on the cost, but it will likely be in line and in addition to the $8-$13 they charge currently for Wi-Fi. “By expanding…

I sense a theme coming on: people create robots, robots destroy robots, and robots destroy humans? Well I’m a believer after what I just watched. In the above video, there is a four-legged robot called BigDog that is capable of walking in a freakish but effective fashion, which is entertaining to say the least. However, it’s all about to get a bit more awesome. There is a new bot on the block, and it has one goal in mind — speed! It is named Atlas. It looks more like a cheetah than a four-legged freak of nature, like the BigDog mentioned above. And it is going to be fast, according to Boston Dynamics, the…

Straight outta the Enterprise’s engineering lab comes the newly-launched Google Goggles for mobile platforms, which can translate text from photographs in English, Italian, French, German and Spanish. No word on Klingon, yet. But seriously, this is for real – just snap a photo of the desired text and Goggles will translate it into your language… or another one, if you don’t feel like making any sensible use of the app. Any way you slice it, this is possibly the biggest boon to prolific world travelers in decades, as it renders obsolete the awkward practice of thumbing through a translation…

I’m completely fed up with hotels that stay in once place, man. Had it up to here. Haven’t you? They way they…don’t move? What kind of middle-aged barbarism is that? Thank goodness the hotel industry has finally caught up with today’s nomad. Rotel Tours is a German company that – yes – provides hotel accommodations, crammed into an enormous bus. A pimped-out Mercedes 0404 that kinda looks more like a firetruck on steroids than anything, Rotel’s rides accommodate 24 passengers, each of whom get their own passenger seat and coffin-like sleeping berth. All 24 have to share a toilet,…

Virgin Galactic, the space tourism branch of Richard Branson’s Virgin conglomerate, took us one step closer to getting regular people into space yesterday with the maiden flight of it’s sub-orbital spaceship, SpaceShipTwo. …

You gotta’ hand it to the Swedish team behind this World of Light concept video. While other people think about cool new designs for suitcases, these folks are thinking about light travel, man. Okay fine, no-one really knows that means, but the vision of the future presented in the video sure looks cool. But beyond the far-out visions of what travel might be like in the future, the video puts forward some really interesting ideas. Rather than heading to the airport, you just go to a ‘hotel’ that happens to have a state-of-the-art tech that will launch you into space….