Computers

Tripping has carved a sizable niche for itself in the online accommodation-booking space, and now offers more than 850,000 rentals in 36,000 cities around the world. Founded in 2010 by veterans from Expedia, Travelzoo and StubHub, Tripping has evolved as an online travel site and is now what you’d call a MetaSearch engine, or an aggregator. Indeed, it trawls the likes of HomeAway, Wimdu and Flipkey to pull in listings and compare by price, reviews, ratings and location. So, if one property is listed for a cheaper price on one platform over another (which does happen), Tripping will tell you. You could call it a Kayak for home rentals and, indeed, many have. Instant karma Now, Tripping is integrating ZenRentals vacation rental software for its new Instabook platform, letting property-owners list directly on Tripping, and guests book instantly without having to wait for confirmation. Ultimately, it’s designed to narrow the gap between online hotel and private vacation rentals. ZenRentals originally specialized in hotel booking software, but it seems they were inundated with requests by property owners and managers asking if they could tweak the software for vacation rentals. This is what they did. And result of this ‘tweaking’ has enabled Tripping to spread its proverbial wings. While the likes of Airbnb is synonymous with this type of booking, founder and CEO Jen O’Neal says that Tripping is actually instant, with property managers contractually obliged to give any booking made through Tripping priority. Indeed, with Airbnb you could be waiting up to 24 hours to get a response from the owner, only to discover that they’ve already listed it on another site and, well, it’s not available. Also, another key differentiator here relates to curation – Tripping manually approves properties prior to listing, to ensure everything is above board. The one obvious downside to this, however, is that it will take time for Tripping to gain a sufficient number of Instabook-enabled properties. But given this is an add-on service for users, any search that is carried out will still throw up all the usual alternatives from the likes of HomeAway. An Instabook rental can be clearly identified by the label emblazoned across the main photo as you can see here. At launch, Tripping will only host a handful of Instabook properties, however 700 hosts are signed up who have thousands of properties between them. Plus, ZenRentals will be distributing its own properties on Tripping, so there should be thousands available shortly. It’s also worth noting it will only be available in private beta for select hosts in the US, but it will be rolling out further afield in the next few months. So this is still very much a work-in-progress from a content and availability perspective. “The vacation rentals industry is years behind hotels online, so we wanted to find a way we could work together and bridge that gap,” says O’Neal. “We wanted to make vacation rentals more like hotels from a booking perspective. So by using existing software, and integrating it into Tripping, anyone could make a vacation rental instantly.” In addition, Tripping is also launching a guest verification service, which is essentially a safety check that taps national and international crime and fraud databases to verify would-be guests are of a sound disposition. We’re told it takes seconds to carry out during the booking process. So, Tripping is trying to make the short-term property booking process instant and seamless, which could see it appeal to the lucrative last-minute market. Though it will obviously need to ramp up its catalogue of properties to gain a reputation for this over its contemporaries. And this is something Airbnb could learn from, given that the available dates it lists are often not actually available. Feature Image Credit – Thinkstock

Hewlett Packard just reported its quarterly earnings and we're covering live. Hewlett-Packard posted Q2 EPS of $0.87, $0.06 better than expected. Revenues were $27.6 billion versus the consensus estimate of $28.12 billion. Analysts were looking for 81 cents for earnings per share and 28.12 billion in revenue. That's was a lowball expectation, representing about an 8% drop in revenues and a 3 cent drop in EPS from its last quarter. That's in part because of the soft PC market. On the other hand, Some were also hoping that HP's PC business did relatively well this quarter, picking off Dell's customers as Dell struggles with a very public battle to go private. HP's stock has actually been on an uptick since the beginning of the year, up about 50 percent. Investors are feeling optimistic because “restructuring cost savings and low market expectations have created the impression that H-P is recovering,” Topeka Capital analyst Brian White said in a note, reports MarketWatch's Benjamin Pimentel. The stock is up about nearly 10% in after hours trading. More to come.SEE ALSO: 15 Enterprise Tech Rock Stars You've Never Heard Of But Should Know Please follow SAI: Enterprise on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

Every large next-gen title you wanted to see on the new Xbox and PlayStation are... indeed coming to those consoles.

This chart comes from Business Insider Intelligence, a research and and analysis service focused on the mobile and Internet industries. Sign up for a free trial here. Square's payment volume is growing exponentially. As it launched the new Square Stand register last week, the mobile payments company announced that it is now processing $15 billion in transactions on an annualized basis, or $41 million in payment volume per day. These figures do not include Square's partnership with Starbucks. (The annual run rate is up from $10 billion in November.) Assuming a 2.75% processing fee going to Square, that works out to an annual revenue run rate of $413 million, although Square pays out a hefty portion of those fees to Visa, MasterCard, and others. Back in August, we took a stab at quantifying what the Square-Starbucks partnership might look like. Looking at the latest analyst estimates, we think Starbucks is projected to do $3.7 billion in sales this quarter. If 75% of sales are historically in the U.S. and about half of those come through credit cards, that works out to approximately $5 billion in payments that Square will handle at Starbucks this year. Again, that Starbucks-linked transaction volume is not included in the $15 billion number cited earlier, or in the chart below. With Stand, Square hopes to further cement its place in retail while simultaneously warding off threats from competing solutions like Near-Field Communications (NFC), a technology that allows phones to communicate wirelessly with NFC-compatible payment terminals. As we discussed in our recent report on mobile payments, we believe that software-based solutions like Square are better-positioned to win the mobile payments race because they integrate seamlessly with current consumer behavior. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

Despite cries from the Left, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is still up and running. The same, however, can't be said for Guantanamo's WiFi. The United States military turned off wireless Internet service at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base amid threats from the hacker collective Anonymous. Officials have also nixed access to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, a spokesperson for the Guantanamo Bay prison said. Anonymous reportedly threatened to disrupt activities at the base, although no disruptions have been reported thus far.

Google on Wednesday updated its Drive for Android app with a new look and features aimed at making it easier to store and access your files on-the-go.

Thanks to falling prices and a push from Intel, 2013 is expected to be the start of a booming growth spurt for touch-screen equipped notebooks. View the full article HERE.

After a series of high profile hacks, Twitter is finally getting serious about log-in security with a new feature that will require users to enter an extra pin code when using non-familiar devices. The feature, known as “two-factor” authentication, is already used by companies like Google and Apple and works by sending a pin code via text message to a user’s cell phone. Twitter has details and a tutorial video here. The decision to add an extra security feature comes after hackers have repeatedly gained control of high profile Twitter feeds. The most prominent example occurred last month when hackers used the Associated Press’s account to say bombs had injured President Obama. The fake tweet roiled financial markets and led to calls for Twitter to improve its security features. Attackers have also targeted CBS, the BBC and the Onion. The latter offered a candid account of how the hackers phished employees accounts and induced some of them, including a person with control over social media passwords to share log-in information. Two factor authentication would likely have prevented those attacks because the attackers would have had to enter a password sent to the employee’s cell phone. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Connected world: the consumer technology revolutionThe 2013 task management tools marketHow consumer media will change in 2013

Verizon Wireless is going after the Latino market through a new venture called Viva Movil and it’s getting a little bit of help from Jennifer Lopez. The new venture, owned by Lopez, retail chain Moorehead Communications and mobile supply chain manager Brightstar, will have its own physical and online stores, but the devices and service plans all will be Verizon’s. Speaking at a Verizon press conference at CTIA Wireless, Lopez said that there are 52 million Latinos in the U.S. with a combined purchasing power of $1.2 trillion annually, presenting a huge opportunity for a premium mobile service. “As modern Latinos, we do things differently, including how we shop for mobile devices,” said Lopez, who is assuming the role of Viva’s chief creative officer. The venture might sound like one of the new breed of mobile virtual network operators, like TracFone’s Telcel America, which also targets the Latino community. But it’s not an MVNO. Nor is it a Verizon brand, like Virgin Mobile is brand of Sprint. The best way to think of Viva Movil is as an authorized dealer, like RadioShack or Best Buy. Verizon has no ownership stake in the Viva, but it will be the venture’s exclusive service and device provider, said Verizon COO and EVP Marni Walden. The only thing Viva stores will sell other than Verizon phones and services will be a line of accessories such as smartphone cases supposedly designed by Lopez. Viva is also adding a twist on the online front. It will turn its Facebook page into a full retail portal. Customers can see what phones their Facebook friends have bought or recommended, and they will be able to buy their devices and set up their accounts directly from the Facebook page, Lopez said. The first store will open on June 15 in New York City. Lopez and Walden wouldn’t say where it would be located, though they strongly hinted it would be Times Square. The company plans to follow up with 15 more store openings in cities with bug Latino populations. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM ProMobile 2012 and beyond

Google X, Google’s lab where the company hatches big ideas like driverless cars and Google Glasses, is acquiring the high altitude wind startup Makani Power, according to an article in Bloomberg Business Week. This is the first time we’ve heard that Google’s secretive moonshot lab has bought an outside company and is bringing it in house — usually the lab works on crazy ideas in house, and if these ideas become less risky, then Google turns those into actual Google products or pushes the products into other Google divisions. Makani Power has been building and testing a new type of wind turbine that is attached to a long tether (that could be 600 meters long) and which rotates high off the ground, capturing wind that is stronger and more consistent than typically found on the ground. The idea behind the innovation is that capturing high altitude wind could be cheaper, more efficient, and more suitable for certain environments like offshore than traditional wind turbines. Makani Power has said its kite-style system could deliver twice as much capacity factor (a measure of energy generation productivity) with 20 percent less mass than conventional wind turbines. A computerized system launches the turbines and monitors and tracks the data on how much energy is generated. Makani Power’s kite turbine on display at ARPA-E 2012. Makani Power was founded in 2006 by Saul Griffith and former World Cup windsurfer Don Montague and a lot of the early employees were kite surfers. Griffith has since gone on to run Other Labs, his incubator workshop in San Francisco that is building things like a new natural gas engine and tiny solar thermal devices. Makani Power previously raised $15 million from Google.org, back when Google.org and Google were more actively funding next-gen energy devices. According to the Business Week article Google X’s captain of moonshots, Astro Teller, proposed the idea of buying Makani Power to Larry Page and Page’s response was that Teller had to make sure to crash at least five of the high-altitude wind devices in the near future (basically put it to a rigorous enough test). While Makani Power has been working on this innovation for seven years, it’s been slow going commercializing a product. The company has survived on the funding from Google.org, and grants from the Department of Energy’s early stage ARPA-E program. Late last year Makani’s charismatic, kitesurfing CEO, Corwin Hardham, tragically passed away unexpectedly. Earlier this year former energy policy maker and energy exec Cathy Zoi joined Makani’s board of directors. Google is interested in clean energy generation partly because its data centers suck up a ton of energy and cost it a lot of money. Google has invested over a billion dollars into various clean energy projects, but in recent years moved away from making equity investments into clean energy startups. Perhaps Google X is a better place for this high-risk clean energy ideas. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantechCleantech and investment in 2013The economics of clean-data-center innovation