Firefox add-on helps plan trips and find travel deals

Travellers planning a trip can already tap a variety of sites for creating guides and itineraries, including TripIt, Offbeat Guides and Tripwolf—to name just a few. Focusing more on travellers’ own search process, however—specifically, the time they spend scouring the web for ideas—comes Gliider, a Firefox plug-in aimed at organizing all the best results in a single, online place. Now in invitation-only beta, Brooklyn-based Gliider is essentially a digital file that lets travellers keep track of all the interesting ideas they come across while researching and planning a trip. Users begin by downloading the application, causing the Gliider icon to appear in their Firefox browser bar. (Currently, Gliider works on Firefox 3, but support for Explorer, Safari and Chrome are coming soon, the company says.) When they’re surfing the web and come across a hotel, restaurant or photo they want to remember as they make their plans, they need only click the icon and Gliider drops down on the right-hand side of the browser. Into that window they can then simply drag and drop whatever it was they wanted to save, creating a neater, more organized alternative to a list of bookmarks. Users can share their trip files with up to four other users, and they can also create a summary travel document PDF for emailing and printing. Perhaps most interesting of all is that Gliider tracks deals on hotels relevant to a specific trip and allows users to take advantage of them in a single click. Through a partnership with Expedia, Gliider currently earns revenue from affiliate fees when users click on the deals it presents to book a hotel, according to TechCrunch. Coming soon are deals on flights too, as well as an iPhone application and an “ask around” feature that taps Facebook. Hospitality entrepreneurs: one to get in on—or emulate—early…? Spotted by: Carmen Magar