great takes on family travel in the U.S.

I just found out about a new card game to improve family communication on long vacation drives and a kid’s seat harness for airline flights to improve safety.

Family Talk-Improved

This weekend our family is driving three hours to visit friends in Clear Lake, CA. We always let our kids watch a movie in the car but that only keeps their interest for part of the drive. They have moved beyond “I Spy” and I have forbidden them from their all-time favorite game, “slug bug” as they think it is fun to slug harder with each turn. No, I didn’t teach them that game, a 28 year old cousin did…(thanks, cuz.) As I contemplated the journey, I was pleased to get a few ideas for improving the car ride from a new company, Around The Table.

Around The Table has created three card decks for promoting family communication. I plan on taking Family Talk. I like the concept because the game looks fun, I think it will create interesting conversation and it is portable. Each card has a question you ask your kids to get beyond the “how was school? it was fine.” daily routine. The question that captured my interest was “what is your favorite stuffed animal.” My ten year old daughter loves her stuffed animals, she brings about a thousand with her all the time and I would like to understand this, well, obsession. For my 8 year old son, I want to ask him, “What would he change about school?” I won’t let him say cancel all classes. Both ideas are from the pack.

Each deck of 100 cards is attached to a carabineer clip you can clip to a backpack or purse. The manufacturer promises, “Anticipating a long wait at the airport? Whip out these questions and the time will fly. Stuck in traffic with the kids? Family Talk, will encourage the kids to ask anything but “are we there yet?”

And I am all about that. For more information about the other games, go here.

Hate schlepping that car seat onto the plane? see more »

From guest blogger Marsha Takeda-Morrison of Sweatpantsmom

When I was asked to write about ideas for a three-day weekend, I panicked since we are a notoriously last-minute kind of family; planning ahead means calling the hotel from the parking lot to see if they have any vacancies.

So I decided to check the paper to see what everyone else was doing, and judging by the endless ads and inserts it was obvious how 99% of America would be spending their holiday – shopping. This was a great idea that involved minimum forethought, and another excellent way to help our economy! My husband wouldn’t be too thrilled, but neither was I when he made me camp in the rain that time, either. Besides, I get just as much joy from bringing home a new purse as I would from lugging back a piece of driftwood.

We’ll start off our weekend by heading out to the mother of all shopping malls, the South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. Supposedly they have something like five million stores in there – I’ve heard that the owners don’t even know how many and when they’re done counting their bags of money at night they just go right back and build another store in the morning.

But first we’d have to eat, so we’ll stop at Coco Noche in Manhattan Beach, a wine and chocolate restaurant that serves excellent tapas dishes. We’d order the Korean beef served with lettuce leaves and their chicken sandwiches. My husband would still be fuming over the whole shopping thing, and would just down a couple of beers. Afterwards we would sample some chocolate – they have exotic ones like chili pepper and cinnamon.

When we got to the mall we’d first have to appease our two tween girls so our first stop would be Hot Topic. I would limit them to 30 minutes because to be perfectly honest that place scares the hell out of me – I’m always afraid I’ll come out of there and realize I’d gotten my tongue pierced and a skull tattooed on my stomach.

Next I would go to Bloomingdales and not come out for three hours.

After hours of spending my husband’s hard-earned cash we’d need to eat again and luckily food was nearby. I truly believe that next to stretch jeans, man’s greatest invention has got to be the Mall Food Court, where a family of four can eat tacos, baguettes and pizza all at the same meal. Next we’d head to our hotel, which I had just reserved three minutes earlier.

The next morning I’d be feeling sorry for my husband, so we’d head across the street to one of our favorite places in the city, Isamu Noguchi’s California Scenario. You wouldn’t expect to find a sculpture garden created by a world-class artist wedged between a Chili’s and FedEx office, but there it is. We’d wander around the cactuses and rocks and listen to the amazing silence in the middle of the city. I’d try to enjoy it and not think too much about that fajita pan I put on hold at Crate and Barrel.

On our way home we’d stop by Huntington Beach and sit out on the sand for awhile to count our receipts enjoy the sound of the waves. We’d all agree that it had been a great weekend – and while we were coming home poorer, we could all rest in easy in the thought that we looked stunning in our new clothes.

What are some ways you spend a three-day weekend? Are you a plan-ahead or a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of person?

There is plenty of good grub in the Cleveland area, but sometimes by looking outside of the expected area you can find something new to try.

For example, take Salvatore’s Ristorante in Vermilion, OH. It’s a very small, intimate space that probably gets overlooked often because of its location. It’s not in the downtown area right off of Rt. 2 and it’s in a little strip plaza across from a drug store. And yet, you’ll find some of the most delicious authentic Italian food you’ve ever tasted this little eatery.

Be prepared when you walk in the door—you’ll have to walk down a dark hallway that doesn’t seem that welcoming. But once you get inside and see the bar, someone will be there to greet you with a smile on their face. Only after taking a moment to be seated will you note the tacky old-style décor, complete with silver hanging blinds, Italian statues, and dark marble tables with high-back chairs—along with the requisite music by Frank, Dean, or something being sung in Italian by Josh Groban, of course.

You can dress up or down here and families of all types fit in. The wine list is not extensive but decent, and dessert is always a must—the tiramisu is truly wonderful here. You can also spend a little or a lot at Salvatore’s, depending on your taste. When we go we enjoy drinks before and after dinner, a bottle of Chianti, appetizers and desserts, along with dinner. We can drop a pretty penny, but others get in an out for a quick meal at a much lower cost.

It’s important to note that the restaurant can fill up quickly, especially on the weekends. I always recommend calling ahead for reservations anywhere you go for dinner when you can, and Salvatore’s is no exception. For directions and contact information, click here. And then make plans to enjoy some fabulous Italian food!

In addition to launching UpTake, I have also been following the tragic news of the Sichuan earthquake and feeling powerless to help. On my non-UpTake related personal China blog, CNReviews, we created a Sichuan earthquake donation directory with now over 40 methods for contributing. Then a designer named Oliver Ding, who I didn’t know, created a great SlideShare of the post.  The country is now starting a three day period of mourning.  The impact on the country is probably comparable to the impact of 9/11 on people in the U.S.

Please consider making a small financial contribution to one of these agencies, and also consider ways to help in the Myanmar cyclone disaster which will likely have even more fatalities due to barriers to aid put up by the Myanmar government.

Days before launch, we wondered if bloggers and users would understand the fundamental shift our site was making away from the “price & book model of online travel” to the real reasons people travel.

Vacation planning is rarely just about price. Most travelers have a vision in mind: from escaping the routine, seeking a new adventure, re-connecting with family or developing a budding romance. Uptake, of course wants to help people book (how much & when) but more than that, we want people to discover a trip based on who they are going with and why they are taking a vacation.

We also wondered if we had succeeded in simplifying the process. We wanted to offer an alternative to the standard travel planning process of visiting multiple sites before booking a vacation. Couldn’t that information be consolidated, organized and delivered to make it easier?

Since our public beta launch on Wednesday, we were pleasantly surprised by the attention we received from top bloggers and pleased they understood the power of one site aggregating information and organizing it for travelers who needed more than the lowest price to decide on a trip.

Here is what they had to say:
AppScout saw the power of capturing 20 million opinions and data from 1000 sites in one place, “Tired of searching through dozens of Web sites to find everything you need to plan the vacation of your dreams? Now with the public beta launch of UpTake (formerly called Kango; see our preview here), you can plan the trip of a lifetime all in one place–as long as it’s in the U.S, for now.”

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch suggests travelers use UpTake for specific types of trips, “If you are looking for ideas for a family vacation, a pet-friendly hotel, or the perfect place for a romantic weekend, try travel search engine UpTake.” They liked the SEO work we had done to help travelers get to the right page, right away– we realize most travel planners start at search and we wanted them to find us. “Google already loves UpTake’s results. To see its semantic SEO magic at work, try searching for “pet friendly hotels gilroy” or “family hotels” and the name of any city in California. A result with a Kango URL will likely pop up near the top.”

“ZDNet Blogs likes our hotel detail and our use of semantics to enrich the experience. “Digging into the detailed listing for the hotel itself, the site does a nice job of summarizing sentiment from across the main review sites.”

“It’s an interesting concept, and one that - in principle at least - does a good job of applying some semantic techniques to enrich the experience without forcing the traveler to interact much differently than they would with a regular travel site.”

Mashable! states that we are “quick to get you where you want to go and offers plenty of search refinements. They also said, “UpTake’s search engine is pretty much its best feature.”

Budget Travel thought we were “innovative.” “A revamped and renamed website has debuted today with a clever twist on travel planning. “They liked the design changes we had made since private beta, “UpTake has now become much bolder.”

They thought our theme based travel was easy to use. “Uptake also makes it easier for you to do “theme-based” travel searching, such as a search for “”girls-getaways” or “pet-friendly” in, say, Las Vegas.”

Josh Catone at ReadWriteWeb discussed our approach to semantics, “The ontology is a lot more focused and the site also isn’t trying to answer specific questions, but rather attempting to semantically determine general concepts, such as romanticness or overall quality. The upshot is that the results are tangible and useful…Beng able to search millions of reviews and opinions and have a computer understand how they relate to the type of vacation you want to take is the sort of palpable evidence needed to sell the Semantic Web idea.”

Search Engine Land understood idea of aggregating opinions created trustworthy results, “It also presents ratings from third party sites side-by-side so that users can gain a consensus view of the hotel’s quality and service. This is very helpful because no single travel site can be entirely trusted.”

Les Explorers interviewed VP of Marketing, Elliott Ng about his vision on our site’s future, the changes in our blog and our deep involvement with the travel industry blogs known as the T-list.

Blissful Travel described us as a site where “you can search and find hotels anywhere in the U.S., read opinions from other travelers and also discover what to do at your chosen destination.” A nice summary.

TechBays stated “UpTake is a travel site that wants to be your first destination when planning for trips.”

Winser-Traveller calls us the, “One-Stop-Travel Service.”

Integration of Business Information Systems: Ibis Cluster discussed sentiment analysis, “One of the more recent Natural Language Processing Techniques Uptake applies is Sentiment Analysis, also referred to as Opinion Mining, which uses syntactic parsing to extract words to indicate, for example, favorable sentiment towards a hotel, such as “good time”, “fantastic view” or “relaxed atmosphere”, and distinguishes positive sentiment from negative sentiment.”

We appreciate the reviews, remarks and suggestions. We hope you take a look at UpTake if you want to search for the right vacation for you.

UPDATE: 10:15 AM - thoughtful coverage from AltSearchEngines (interview, announcement), ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, The Semantic Web, Search Engine Land, AppScout, Creative Think, Mashable, Washington Post, Budget Travel, Blissful Travel, TechBays, CNReviews (Elliott’s blog), L-Experiences, Moraaz.org, E-Marketing, Winser-Traveller, Ibis Cluster, Rootly, NoBosh, Les Explorers, MarketWire, Zedomax Network, Rhea Hollan, WebGuild, ChristineLu, Wandalust, HomeExchangeTravel, FlyAway Weblog, WebSearchGuide.ca, WebWorkerDaily, WebGuild, ZedoMax, JourneyEtc, more to come. We’ll post later this week with responses to all the feedback we are getting from the blogosphere!

This morning, we’ll be celebrating the opening of UpTake to the public!

We created UpTake so you can sit in that beach chair above, having a great vacation, confident you made the very best decisions you could with your scarce time and dollars!

What’s new with UpTake?

UpTake [logo], formerly Kango, is a travel search application that helps travelers make better decisions by providing recommendations based on analyzing over 20 million opinions from thousands of websites. More details are on our press release. Here’s what’s new:

• UpTake now covers the entire United States–over 20,000 destinations across the 50 states.
• We’ve got the largest travel database on the Web, with over 400,000 U.S. hotels and attractions.
• We’re launching two more themes: “girls-getaways” and “pet-friendly.” [screenshot] Just like our original “romantic” and “family friendly” themes, these ratings [screenshot] are driven by our database of 20 million opinions
• Launched new check rates button to check rates at multiple booking engines. [screenshot]
• Home page is simple and relaxing! [screenshot]

If you’re a blogger, journalist, or just curious, we have lots of other info here, including our logo, releases, our RSS feeds, quotes, company timeline, bios, photos, recommended travel blogs, and my Twitter account!

Some example searches for you to try…

Feel free to just go to the home page and start searching! Or if you want to jump right to a couple examples, look at: San Francisco Hotels, San Francisco Family Hotels, San Francisco Family Things to Do.

…or you can just watch this video (thanks DemoGirl).
We still want your feedback!

Our U.S. hotels search is in “beta” and our U.S. activities is still in “almost beta” as we add more data sources and activity types. So keep the suggestions coming so we can build a truly great travel search site.

On behalf of co-founders Yen Lee and Gene McKenna, I want to thank all of you for your support and help!

From guest blogger Marsha Takeda-Morrison of Sweatpantsmom

We were asked to write about our favorite restaurants this week, and the only difficult part will be writing a post that doesn’t go on for five pages. My list is long and varied, and I’m always up for trying new things - including half a Pink Pearl eraser that I once ate on a dare when I was working at an ad agency. It definitely didn’t taste like chicken.

I’m going to keep this list to my top four, and also limit it to restaurants that I haven’t mentioned in this blog before. That still leaves around 50,000 possibilities, and I’ll have a hard time whittling it down. But I promise there won’t be an eraser in sight.

First on my list would have to be Kyushu Ramen in Van Nuys. My two daughters and I are huge ramen fanatics (not the packaged, brick-of-noodles version from the grocery store) and I was excited to find this little oasis of authenticity in a non-descript mini-mall in the east Valley. They serve around thirty versions of ramen, everything from your basic shoyu (soy sauce based) version to their specialty, Kyushu ramen, which is in a rich, cloudy broth made with pork. They also offer other dishes like Japanese-style curry and sushi on their huge menu, but the noodles are what we will drive through rain and traffic for at least a few times a month.

My husband and I are longtime fans of Border Grill in Santa Monica. This restaurant has been here for awhile, and is owned by Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feigner, who you might remember from the Too Hot Tamales series on the Food Network. Border Grill features “authentic home cooking and street foods of Mexico” not to mention the tastiest margaritas in town. I highly recommend their Green Corn Tamales and their Potato Rajas Tacos. Did I mention the margaritas?

Next I have to mention a new favorite. The urge for a hot dog hit me, and we decided to finally try The Stand, a restaurant located only ten minutes from our house but one we’d never ventured into. I describe it as an upscale hot dog joint, serving traditional hot dogs (many versions) but also sausages and burgers. We ate outside on their beautiful tree-canopied patio and listened to a live jazz band. After my kids stopped freaking out over the ‘neon relish’ on my Chicago dog they had a great time. Definitely not your average hot dog and fries experience.

Last but not least would be Farfalla Trattoria, a small Italian restaurant located in the Los Feliz area. My husband and I have been going there since we were first dating, and the quality has never faltered. It’s a traditional menu, with homemade pasta and a great wine list. I seem to order the same dish every time: tagliolini cozze e vongole, homemade thin pasta with mussels, clams and tomato sauce and an order of bruschetta to start. Fortunately, after eating a weeks worth of carbs in one sitting, you can walk it off by strolling the streets of the hip Los Feliz district.

What are your favorite restaurants in your city? Who serves the best margarita?

Photo: BorderGrill.com