About a year and a half ago, I wrote a post about how Charlottesville, Virginia (where VibeAgent is headquartered) has many of the essential ingredients to becoming a successful breeding ground for technology startups. We’re home to Mr. Jefferson’s University, and we have lovely weather, a robust live music scene, fancy art galleries, access to world-class parks, beautiful vineyards, free polo matches on Sundays, plenty of rich and famous people, and fantastic coffee and coffee shops; basically, we’ve just got an all-around high quality of life over here.

The only challenge of building a world-class technology business in this great place I alluded to in 2007 was the fact that we needed more nerds. Specifically at VibeAgent, we need more people who understand the web and can build, market and deploy great software. I referenced Paul Graham’s fantastic essay on why Silicon Valley is so good at producing successful technology startups. My post catalyzed an even more interesting discussion over on the OpenSource Connections blog, a talented software development shop also based in Charlottesville. And in personal conversations with Daniel Strickland over at Cloudbrain, Jeff Gunther at Intalgent, Eric Pugh at OpenSource, Otavio Freire at OpenQ, and others, we’ve developed a consensus on one thing - we all want more nerds!

Well, since that post, VibeAgent has grown to 14 people, moved to shiny new offices on the beautiful downtown mall, been covered twice each in TechCrunch, USA Today, and MSNBC, been named a top up-and-coming travel site in the Washington Post and on Forbes.com, and been featured just this last week in our own local paper, the Daily Progress. We’re about to make a major financing announcement, a major partner announcement, and roll out two major software releases. (/blatant self-promotion)

But…..our biggest challenge continues to be finding good technology people, and Charlottesville still needs more nerds. We would hire five talented developers tomorrow if we could find them locally, but so far, we haven’t. And this is forcing us to consider other options for our business, including opening up an office somewhere more nerdy.

So, with a little more experience under our belts, I’d like to put forth five concrete proposals on how technology firms in Charlottesville like VibeAgent can band together to gain some critical mass and solve the #1 challenge facing our business. We love this town, and we’d rather not have to go elsewhere to satisfy our nerd quotient.

How to Strengthen the Charlottesville Technology Community

1. Create an Active Charlottesville Technology Networking Club
Real world social networking is essential to creating strong bonds and gaining critical mass. I’ve set up a group using Cloudbrain’s blastogo to form an sms network for a monthly CvilleNerd meet & greet (if you want to join the sms network and be notified of the time and location of our first event, simply text “follow cvillenerd” to 32075). The idea here is to have a monthly social event to start making more connections and strengthening the Charlottesville technology ecosystem. I’m hoping the active members of Neon Guild and Chuug will join this list, along with all of us who work in the online world here in Charlottesville, and we can start to develop some critical mass.

As this club grows organically, we can create a web site and job board, form groups on existing social networks, and provide a way for Charlottesville technology companies and technology people to get to know each other better in an informal setting. But it takes that first step, so join CvilleNerd today.

2. Develop Stronger Ties to UVA’s Engineering & Applied Sciences Schools
There are a myriad of opportunities for strengthening relationships between the local technology business community and UVA’s leading technology and applied sciences programs. Career fairs, speaking engagements, case studies, internships, school projects, and other activities help build stronger bonds between the worlds of academia and business.

The need here is for a common touch point for Charlottesville technology businesses, and a desire by the University to support the local community. The City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County can also develop programs to stimulate mutually beneficial collaboration between UVA and Charlottesville’s business community. A strong local economy provides more job opportunities for families who relocate here, and increases demand for Charlottesville’s existing businesses. We can all do more to strengthen these ties, and with the development of CvilleNerd, we will.

3. Establish More Continuing Education Options in Applied Technologies
Charlottesville employees need more continuing education options to help them stay current on new technologies, starting with training courses in programming languages such as PHP, Java, C++, and Ruby, as well as in advanced project management methodologies and tools. UVA and Piedmont have practically no curriculum options for these types of classes. With a common organizing body to aggregate demand for and promote the desire for more technology education programs, our goal should be to attract better teaching resources to both of these institutions, and/or develop our own training programs and make them accessible and affordable for our community. Just as America needs to focus on re-training our work force for the new competitive global landscape, Charlottesville needs to invest in training programs for our technology community. The economic future of our city will be driven by our ability to attract, train, and retain the knowledge workers that are increasingly the driving force behind our continued economic prosperity.

4. Actively Market Charlottesville as a Great Home for Startups
Many of you are already familiar with the Aspen vs. Austin conversation. Will Charlottesville become a community with a strong university, arts programs, and a thriving middle class - like Austin - or will it go the direction of Aspen, another city known for its beautiful surroundings and high quality of life, but that has become too expensive to support a middle class and instead caters to retirees and the superrich? The choice, put in these terms, is clear. The outcome, however, is not.

Charlottesville needs to redouble its efforts to market itself as a great place for small businesses, especially in the technology fields, and to promote policies and investments that successfully support small businesses growth. The downtown mall is a vibrant place where lunch time means bumping into colleagues from other companies and strengthening the bonds that create community. I envision a time when the mall is littered with high-tech startups tackling exciting business challenges and simultaneously supporting the local economy. These things have a tipping point, a phenomenon well documented in Malcolm Gladwell’s book of the same name. We just need to give it a little push.

5. Share Charlottesville’s Technology Startup Success Stories
When you say the words “dot-com startup” to people who have lived in Charlottesville for over 10 years they immediately recall Value America. The company actually relocated from Nevada to Charlottesville in 1998 and went public in April 1999, gaining a valuation of $2.4 billion without a dime in profits. But a little over a year later, the firm had filed for bankruptcy and quickly became a “dot-bomb.”

Those days of irresponsible excess and greed are over. Businesses today have a much higher hurdle to reach before being showered with venture capital. The markets have also become wiser, and are valuing businesses based on their fundamentals once again. A lot of the entrepreneurs that are starting businesses today actually founded businesses and raised venture capital during the bubble days (myself included) and have learned a lot from the experience. There are also significant structural improvements in the web environment that make it far easier to get a startup successfully off the ground these days. They primarily relate to the ability today to a) tap into existing revenue streams in the form of advertising networks such as Google AdSense; b) tap into existing online communities and user bases such as Facebook and MySpace; and c) roll out software and hardware infrastructure at costs approaching zero by leveraging open source software and elastic computing clouds.

So, there are many new Internet success stories out there, and we hope to be one of them. Let’s share the good news, the best practices, the key takeaways that we discover in our collective startup experiences, through face-to-face networking and aggregating our online worlds.

We here at VibeAgent look forward to supporting the development of a more robust and cohesive technology community in Charlottesville. Because, together we can build something much greater than the sum of our individual efforts.

Together, we can create a little Silicon Valley of the south.

As you know, VibeAgent is a hotel search engine. In our efforts to bring you the best hotel search experience available anywhere online, period, we’re happy to announce today the addition of two fantastic new partners to our site - LateRooms and GTA Hotels. Every time you conduct a search on VibeAgent, we go out and search the sites of each of our partners, and starting today, you’ll now be able to view rates and availability for all of the hotels from LateRooms and GTA Hotels on VibeAgent.com.

LateRooms.com is the UK’s leading online accommodation specialist, offering late availability deals in over 16,000 properties across the UK and Europe. Accommodation ranges from budget to luxury five star hotels, and savings of up to 70% off the normal room rate are common for a variety of independent and branded hotels.

Gtahotels.com enables travel consumers to book significantly discounted accommodation at more than 35,000 hotels in over 128 countries and 3,800 cities across Europe, Asia, Americas, Africa, the Middle East, the USA & Canada. GTA has helped over 1 million customers get the lowest hotel rates since 2000.

We’re very happy to be working with both of these fine partners and bringing their inventory directly to you, our loyal customers!

Today VibeAgent is relaunching its site as a Hotel Search Engine.

Our relaunch today is focused on making VibeAgent.com the #1 destination online to help you research and book a hotel room.

You’ll find the entire process of searching for a hotel room on our site greatly streamlined. We hope you’ll try it out and share this discovery with all your friends!

Entering Your Initial Search

If you’re doing a non-dated search, simply enter your location and go! If you want to further refine your search results, you can enter dates, your desired vibe, rooms/guests, even the specific hotel you are looking for or the currency in which you’d like to see rates.

You’ll find the font size for the location field larger for your viewing pleasure, and we’ve also significantly sped up our autocomplete.

We believe our new and improved calendar is the best online, anywhere, period.

Our double month view means you don’t have to scroll from month to month. You can even click on your check-in date, and then slide your mouse to your check-out date, making the date selection process super smooth. The calendar automatically closes after you’ve selected your check-out date.

Adding Your Hotel Vibe

To help you find the perfect hotel for your needs, click the button “Add Tags” to select the ambience, activities, and the type of guests the hotel is known for. You can select as few or as many tags as you want - we’ll use your requests to help filter and order your search results.

Adding Your Desired Location

Location is one of the most important criteria people use when making a hotel booking decision. VibeAgent’s unique location filter is the best in the business. For larger cities, you can choose to whittle down your search results to specific neighborhoods. You can also create a customized location filter - moving the borders of your search area wherever you want. You can even do this after you’ve gotten your initial search results and the search results will update in real time. Use this feature to narrow down your Manhattan hotel search, for example, to a specific city block.

Filtering Your Search Results

VibeAgent provides robust filters to help you narrow down your hotel search results in real-time so you can be sure you’re looking at the best hotels for your needs. These include a price filter, a star rating filter, a loyalty program filter, and an amenity filter. Do you want to stay in a hotel between $150 and $180 that is in the Hilton chain and has a pool and free breakfast? No problem! Let VibeAgent’s filters help you narrow down your hotel options accordingly; simply use your mouse to adjust the slider bars or check the boxes and your results will update instantly.


Comparing Your Rate Options

VibeAgent now parses the different room types that you can book, and shows you on the hotel’s room rates page the best rate for each room type in a summary view. Of course, to see other room rate options, you can expand each box by clicking on the “See all rates for this room type” link and the page will instantly expand to show you all of your available options. You can also filter this page by specific provider (e.g. Priceline or Hotels.com) if you only want to see rates from your favorite booking channel.

Navigating the Community Features

Finally, we’ve streamlined the main navigation on VibeAgent so it’s easier to find what you’re looking for quickly. We hope you find the new and improved VibeAgent.com site makes it even easier to find great hotels at the best available rates, and we look forward to servicing all your future hotel searches!

We get asked here four or five times a day, “So why should I use VibeAgent instead of, say, Orbitz or Expedia?”

I guess the answer to that question is so obvious to those of us that work in online travel, because we understand the intricacies of how the industry works.

But to you, the everyday traveler, this might not be so obvious. You just want to stay in a great hotel at the best available rate. And who can blame you! Why pay more than the guy down the hall staying in the same room?!

So, give me a few minutes of your time to lay out the case for Hotel Meta-Search. Keep reading, and I promise that what you’ll learn will save you thousands of dollars in hotel room fees, and make each and every one of your future hotel stays significantly more enjoyable.

VibeAgent searches each of our partner sites every time you use our site. This provides you with five major benefits, which I detail further below. They include: price; selection; room availability; time; and personalized recommendations.

PRICE
Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Hotels.com, Priceline - each of these sites are what is called an Online Travel Agency, or OTA. Each OTA goes out and signs agreements directly with hotels and hotel chains to distribute their inventory on the OTA’s site. They each negotiate their commissions and specific agreements separately.

There are lots and lots of OTAs out there. You’ve probably heard of the brands I just listed, but you might not have heard of smaller niche OTAs such as TravelWorm or Agoda or Skoosh. Some of these smaller niche OTAs focus on specific hotel segments, such as independent hotels, or luxury hotels, or hotels in Las Vegas or Asia. Because they specialize, they can often negotiate even better rates for some types of hotels than the larger, more recognized OTA brands.

Also, there are two major room types in the industry; Net Rate rooms, and GDS (Global Distribution System) rooms. Net Rate rooms are negotiated specifically between the OTA and the hotel supplier. They vary from site to site. GDS rooms are rooms that are distributed via the big global distribution systems such as Sabre and Amedeus, and each OTA has access to the same rates.

So, one OTA may have negotiated a customized agreement - a Net Rate - directly with a specific hotel, whereas another OTA only has access to that hotel’s GDS room rates. In addition, an OTA may negotiate access to a specific room type (say, suites), or last minute rooms, or rooms on specific dates, etc., whereas another OTA doesn’t have the same agreement.

The bottom line is, there are lots of reasons why one OTA’s rates for a particular hotel may be different than another OTA’s rates for the same hotel. So, why would you want to risk booking a room from one OTA, when you might be able to get a better rate on the same exact room from another OTA?

Because VibeAgent searches over 20 leading travel sites every time you use our site, we can show you rates from multiple OTAs for the same hotel all on one page. The rates you see on VibeAgent are the exact rates you’d find if you searched each of our partners’ sites directly. So, by using VibeAgent’s hotel search you can be sure you’re getting the best price for the room that you’re going to book.

SELECTION
But it’s not just about pricing. Our largest partner has rates and availability for about 65,000 hotels. Because VibeAgent aggregates rates and availability from over 20 partner sites, we actually can show you rates and availability for over 120,000 hotels, almost twice as many hotels as our largest booking partner!

Remember, some of the OTAs we’ve partnered with focus on specific niches, like hotels in Las Vegas or Europe or Asia or high-end hotels or independent hotels. So when you search on VibeAgent, you’ll gain access to a much larger selection of hotels than you would searching any of our partners’ sites individually.

ROOM AVAILABILITY
As we discussed earlier, there are two major room types; GDS rooms and Net Rate rooms. While GDS rooms are centrally distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis, Net Rate rooms are distributed according to the individual agreements negotiated between an OTA and the hotel supplier. So, during busy periods, it is possible that a hotel’s GDS inventory is sold out, while a specific OTA still has availability through their Net Rate rooms. Using VibeAgent, a hotel is more likely to have availability than if you searched our partners’ sites individually.

TIME
Your time is valuable, and we know that! How long would it take you to search each of our partners’ sites individually to find the perfect hotel at the best available rate? Hours! In fact, the average travel consumer visits 4 to 10 sites every time they are looking for a hotel room.

VibeAgent’s proprietary meta-search technology and matching algorithm solves this problem by searching our partner sites and integrating their rates and availability all in one place, so you only have to come to one site - VibeAgent.com!

PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATIONS
Finally, here’s an advantage that’s unique to VibeAgent. You can register on our site, and then post and share hotel reviews with your friends. We’ll keep track of your hotel preferences, and your friends’ hotel preferences, and integrate these social recommendations in how we display your hotel search results. So, if a friend of yours highly recommends a hotel in Paris, the next time do a search on VibeAgent for Paris, the hotel your friend recommends will appear at the top of the list of results along with a direct link to their hotel review.

Using VibeAgent, you can also tag your ideal hotel experience (e.g. Romantic, Stylish hotel with a Spa) and we’ll prioritize your search results accordingly. This way you can be sure you’re staying in the perfect hotel for you.

So, in conclusion, why wouldn’t you use VibeAgent for all your hotel searches? We hope you’ll think of us the next time you’re researching or booking a hotel room online, and feel free to help us spread the word.

Following the landmark ruling by the California Supreme Court, same-sex couples from across the country have a new reason to visit The Golden State.

Wondering what California’s top-rated gay-friendly hotels are? While we at VibeAgent do the leg work for you to find the best hotel deal on the internet, our community of savvy travelers has done the work to identify California’s top-rated gay-friendly hotels.

The top recommended romantic, same-sex friendly hotels at five of the most popular California destinations are:

San Francisco:
1) Le Meridien San Francisco
2) Clift Hotel
3) Mark Hopkins Intercontinental
4) Hotel Vitale-Embarcadero
5) Parc Fifty Five Hotel

Los Angeles:
1) Mondrian West Hollywood
2) Hyatt West Hollywood
3) Le Montrose Suite Hotel
4) W Hotel Los Angeles Westwood
5) The Beverly Hills Hotel

Santa Monica:
1) Le Merigot - A JW Marriott Beach Hotel
2) Huntley Santa Monica Beach
3) Georgian Hotel
4) Viceroy - Santa Monica
5) Shutters on the Beach

San Diego:
1) Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina
2) Hilton San Diego Gaslamp Quarter
3) Bristol Hotel
4) Hotel Del Coronado
5) Marriott San Diego Hotel and Marina

Santa Barbara:
1) Bacara Resort Spa
2) Hotel Oceana Santa Barbara

What happens when you challenge travel experts to see who really has traveled the most miles? The answer: The Ultimate Jetsetter - Blogger’s Edition!

Two weeks ago VibeAgent decided to challenge some of the most respected travel experts in the Blogosphere to log their trips on our recently launched Facebook app - Jetsetter. With nearly 20 bloggers vying for bragging rights as the Ultimate Jetsetter, the contest proved to be a telling and grueling competition!

So which blogger has truly traveled the most in the past year?

The winner is…

Tim Hughes from The BOOT (Business of Online Travel)! At a whopping 144,142 miles traveled, Tim easily surpassed his fellow bloggers. With all that traveling across the world, it’s admirable that Tim still finds time for his blog (though, we hope that he hasn’t suffered from too much jet lag!).

How did the other bloggers fare? Listed below are the rankings of the top ten Jetsetters of all the bloggers that participated in the competition.

1. Tim Hughes - The BOOT (144,142 miles)
2. Jens Thraenhart - Tourism Internet Marketing (113,828 miles)
3. Ben Mutzabaugh - USA Today’s “Today in the Sky” (56,202 miles)
4. Juliana Shallcross - Hotel Chatter (49,506 miles)
5. David Molyneaux - Travel Maven (34,250 miles)
6. Gil Zeimer - Vagablond (19,370 miles)
7. Kevin May- Travolution (18,903 miles)
8. Patti Mangan- TangoDiva (17,649 miles)
9. Chris Clarke - Vacant Ready (15,520 miles)
10. Guillaume Thevenot - Hotel Blogs 2.0 (15,050 miles)

The true question is whether or not miles traveled is any indication of blogger’s expertise in travel. You be the judge. Until then, keep Jetsetting!

If you’re like most online veterans, you probably like buying domain names for fun and profit. I know I do. I’ve been doing it for about twelve years now.

But it was not until very recently, as in about like 10 minutes ago, that i realized this: how I end up buying domain names is probably very different than the way you do. Read on, and then if you want you can share your opinions in favor or to the contrary in the comments, or win a shiny new domain name.

That is, if you’re a real a person and not some robot spider sent by Google.

Many of us buy a domain name because we think somebody else might want it later, or perhaps somebody forgot to do something obvious, like register their own name or company or slogan or whatever.

I guess I might do that sometimes. But that’s usually when the domain name doesn’t end up being worth much.

I usually come at the whole domain thing a little differently. Usually when I decide to buy a domain name it is because there’s that semblance of a seemingly marketable idea bouncing around my head and I think I might as well go ahead and buy a little insurance policy on that idea. Like a $10 policy. $50 if i want the 5 year one.

Who knows, maybe it was a great idea. Maybe in 4 or 7 or 10 years I’ll circle back to that idea and think; right time, right place. Let’s do this. Or you will. No worries, you can have it. If it is the right time, right place for you, then I would be happy to contribute to that. Redirect and transfer!

Then I will have given someone a present while having a new story to tell…for $10 - what a bargain!

So here’s a little sample of five particular gems i’m sitting on right now. If you have a good idea for using one of these things, tell me below. If I like it, the domain is yours, free. My call.

feedbreaker.com
pillowbank.com
snufflebug.com
tastemakr.com
scubapals.com

I’m such a Jetsetter. I’ve traveled 29,728 miles so far within the last year, which is more than 1.2 rotations around the earth’s equator. I’ve logged 18 trips to 4 countries, and I’m the 8th most well-traveled person amongst my jetsetting friends. On all of Facebook, I fall to being the 255th most well-traveled person, amongst all jetsetters.

How do I know this? Because I downloaded the Jetsetter application for Facebook, built by….VibeAgent!

In the first month alone, we’ve had over 2,000 downloads and 10,000 trips created on Jetsetter. It’s one of the most popular travel applications on Facebook, and growing every day. Jetsetter lets you log your trips and share them with your friends, and then compete to see how many miles you’ve traveled. If you haven’t checked it out already, please do. That would be swell.

So I was in London last week for the Travolution / PhoCusWright Summit, which was a solid event. But this isn’t about the event. It’s about the Yotel.

The Yotel is coming soon to an airport near you. Founded by Simon Woodroffe (founder of all things Yo, including Yo Sushi) and Gerard Greene in 2005, Yotels are currently found in London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports, with plans to be in Frankfurt within the year. Think of them as mini-hotels. You get just the space you need to rejuvenate yourself on a layover or after a long flight.

The beds, showers and entertainment centers are super plush - I could totally get comfortable in these “pods,” which are based on the Japanese capsule hotels. Prices run about $50 for a standard room for 4 hours, and $70 for a deluxe room (larger bed, larger room, entertainment system).

I think this is a great concept and I wish Simon and Gerard the best of luck with it. I know I’ll be staying in a Yotel the next time I have a layover in one of their airports!

I’m looking forward to attending and speaking on a panel at the Travolution Summit next week. We’ve got a great lineup of folks, including Philip Wolf from PhoCusWright, Steve Hafter of Kayak, and Ian McCaig from lastminute.com, which should make for some interesting discussions.

There’s definitely been some things happening in the meta-search space of late to talk about - namely Microsoft’s acquisition announced yesterday of Farecast for $115 million. This comes on the heels of Kayak’s acquisition of Sidestep in December.

Of course, as a meta-search site focused on the hotel space, we’re excited to see so much activity in this area - hope to see you next week in London!