

Startup Hipmunk offers dazzling new view of flight search - jacquesm
http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/19/technology/hipmunk/

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pavs
Perhaps during query you might want to show "Searching..." instead of
"Loading..."? The word "loading" gives me the impression that the site is
struggling to process the information and is currently on heavy load. While
"Searching" gives me the impression of whats its actually doing, looking up
the flights you are searching for.

I guess I am nitpicking. :)

~~~
spez
Favorite feedback of the day! Something that both makes sense AND is easy to
do.

~~~
pavs
Hey, thats the least I could do for giving us reddit. :)

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hristov
If you do not mind sharing a shop secret, how did you make CNN? Did you use a
publicist? Do you know someone? Or did they just call you out of the blue?

~~~
spez
CNN contacted us, but we launched with a fair amount of press from people we
had relationships with (e.g. techcrunch, reddit), which is probably what led
them to us.

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mansilla
I predict that it's only a matter of (short) time before one or more of the
larger airfare search engines start to clone the output visualization. I
understood it the first moment I looked at it.. just made sense, really. Great
job, Hipmunk.. logo is cuddly adorable, too. :)

~~~
kn0thing
They should clone the visualization, but if other large companies are any
indication, the process will take months. They can't clone the hipmunk, though
;) thanks for validating my doodle-work.

~~~
jacquesm
The hipmunk is a stroke of brilliance.

In the article it says:

> Hipmunk's flight-goggled chipmunk mascot has the same "awww" factor as
> Twitter's iconic bluebird. With that, Hipmunk was born.

But I think it goes far beyond the Twitter bird, which to me looks very
sterile and artificial. This little guy is cool, like the Scrat character from
ice-age.

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alanpca
I think "dazzling" may be overkill. They have slightly modified output already
available (grouping it). It's incredibly nice, but I'm not sure it's dazzling
-- yet.

~~~
jacquesm
It did make CNN though, which I think is pretty damn good publicity.

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kyro
Some minor feedback: When search results are loading, I get confused by that
general information image you have there showing a trip from San Francisco to
JFK. For a split second, I think my search got messed up before realizing my
actual search is in the background up top. So maybe make it clearer that
you're showing me a sample search.

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StavrosK
It's exactly identical to this [1], which is quite good also!

[1]: <http://matrix.itasoftware.com/>

~~~
spez
Similar visualization, but totally different products.

I think the most important feature we have is that we remove about 80% of
results from listings because they're totally redundant.

We also have draggable time sliders, instant sorting, and multiple searches in
tabs, all of which are things we added to make finding flights less tedious.

Also, you can't book tickets on matrix...

~~~
jemfinch
The draggable time sliders seal the deal for me. Finally I can choose between
the for flights that are actually relevant to me and not the 200 that aren't.

Find a way to get Southwest in your output and I'll never use another site.

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jacquesm
> Server: HipmunkServer/0.1

what's a hipmunkserver? Is that a changed server id or is it really something
custom?

~~~
spez
It's just a custom Server header.

~~~
jacquesm
Do you mind revealing what it is built in? Or is that part of the secret
sauce?

~~~
spez
It's built entirely of secret sauce, incidentally. And Python.

~~~
jacquesm
I'll take that for an answer :) Good luck with it, it looks like you have a
winner on your hands.

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atomical
Who is the target market for this? Most of the comments here are targeted
towards the visualization aspect. Isn't the real value in providing people
with cheaper fares from the carriers they like?

~~~
wiredfool
Personally, flight times and layovers are quite important to me. I'm a ferry
ride away from the airport, so leaving early, or arriving late really sucks.
Either a night in the car at the dock, or an extra hotel stay.

I put in a search for a flight that I recently booked, and the two top choices
were the ones that we had pulled out of tens of kayak searches. They were
right there. Not the cheapest, but the most sane. Kayak had a couple of
flights in the early results with a 12 hour layover in Pdx followed by a 30
min flight to Seatac. They were way down in the agony listing on hipmonk.

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TorKlingberg
I tried searching from Sweden, and it assumes I want to fly from Sundsvall.
Not likely. Either implement searching from all airports in a country, or
require me to enter a city.

Also, any chance it will be possible to search for date ranges rather than
exact departure and return dates?

Third, a mouseover for airport codes and airline names would be great.

Perhaps you are aiming for frequent business travelers that have fixed dates
and know all the airport codes by heart, but I thought I'd share my thoughts.

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blueski
Love this. A true "why hasn't anyone done this?" moment for me. If they can
expand the range of providers to be competitive with Kayak and Skyscanner I'd
make this my first and only stop.

Speaking of travel visualizations... a shameless plug for my own "Hotels.com
hotels on Google Maps" site: <http://www.roomatlas.com>. Live prices in the
markers, Street View and Wikipedia placemarks.

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aamar
The UI is reminiscent of the hypothetical Southwest Airlines redesign from
"Magic Ink"
([http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#demonstration_trip_planning_...](http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#demonstration_trip_planning_redux)).

This is a good thing. It's sad how few of the great ideas in that essay have
been realized.

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bengl3rt
Hmmmm... "Agony sort" doesn't seem to take into account whether one airline is
better or worse than another, which definitely influences the amount of agony
I experience while traveling. Sometimes people are willing to pay a little
extra or be flexible on price in order to fly their preferred airline, or at
least avoid one they dislike.

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JimmyL
Doesn't have the depth of information (airports and airlines) that Matrix has,
but I'm a big fan of the UI.

Also, props for the great customer service (had a very helpful chat with
someone) and for the continuous deployment while launching (was told "reload
your page, and check out this new feature we just pushed").

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fortes
Tried to search from NYC to Panama city in Feb: "sorry, no results could be
found"

Do I need real airport codes?

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aaronkaplan
Really good. But I need an "open jaws" option, i.e. fly from A to B and then C
to A. Usually (at least on the routes I use) this gets priced at 1/2 the price
of a round trip A-B plus 1/2 the price of a round trip A-C. Buying two one-way
tickets is no substitute because it usually costs far more.

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snowmaker
Wow, awesome press right after launch for @spez and gang. While the HN first
reaction may have been "oh, ITA already did that", the mainstream reaction is
apparently quite different. Good on them for commercializing this idea and
bringing it to a wide audience.

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teoruiz
I can see you are using Amazon EC2.

Any other comment on the technology used?

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sireat
Display of results is nice.

What's especially commendable is the fact that the search works quite nicely
over intercontinental flights with many connections and also far into the
future (2011).

