ArrivedOK now passes geographical coordinates of the travel destinations from its database to Twitter, so every arrival tweet is now geotagged, enabling your followers to see on a map the place where you just landed and have additional context when viewing tweets.

Though Twitter website does not display geotags yet, the growing number of third party applications does, for instance, such popular clients as Echofon, TweetDeck, Seesmic. Examples of other location-based Twitter apps are: Happn.in and Trendsmap.

Enabling geotagging in Twitter

By default the geotagging service is disabled for Twitter users. This means that you have to opt-in to sharing your location and this can only be done through the Settings page on twitter.com.

Follow these links right now to enable geotagging in Twitter:

mobile – twitter.com/account/settings/geo
desktop – twitter.com/account/settings

How it looks like

Now your ArrivedOK tweets will be geotagged and marked with an icon of some kind, depending on what Twitter app you use. Clicking the icon will open a map for you – in the app window or in your browser; some apps display Google Maps, some use Yahoo.

See below the example of Arrivedok geotagging in TweetDeck client. Happy landings!

ArrivedOK – “The Personal Flight Arrival Tracker” – automatically tracks your arrival at airports worldwide and instantly alerts your friends and family by SMS, email, via weblogs and social media – right at the moment you turn on your phone after the landing.
Visit ArrivedOK: Website | Mobile site | Facebook | Twitter

The title may sound like an oxymoron, I mean, how happy can you be when travelling, if you don’t own your own personal jet or eye-candy stewards to serve you freshly squeezed juice, and centre filled chocolates with a gentle shoulder rub thrown in for good measure?

But funnily and also thankfully enough, airports have realised that an unhappy traveller comes a close second, to a plane full of screaming babies, hence the recent shift towards travel friendly airports.

Since I am currently based in Singapore I shall talk about the airport that I am most familiar with. Changi Airport offers free wifi at all four of their terminals. Now travellers can surf the net, log on to their office network, if they are suddenly overcome with love for their jobs, or more realistically, check their personal email, update their blogs, Facebook account and register and update their ArrivedOK account. With over 400 free internet kiosks and 80 laptop Ethernet access points located throughout the terminal lounges and transit areas, Changi Airport offers everyone in the vicinity wireless broadband, keeping us happy and connected.

This shift towards being contact-able on the go is great news. There used to be a time when I would have to lug a whole bag of coins to call home while waiting the requisite three hours before boarding. On days that I forgot my bag of change, I used to stare at the worn out linoleum on the floor until my eyes crossed and vision blurred. Thankfully now there are much more constructive things for travellers to do with their time. Of course the luxury of free wifi and air-conditioning is still a foreign concept in some countries, so if you have any horror or happy airport experiences to share, please do, because I would love to have a list of airports I should avoid or at least come armed with an arsenal of entertainment, so as not to go crazy with boredom.

As the saying goes about too much of a good thing…., Its now come to a point, that airports have become such wonderful places to be at, that non travellers seem to prefer to while away their free-time napping or reading magazines while sipping coffee, making it no longer a place no longer exclusive to those of us toting boarding passes.

If this trend continues, one day genuine travellers will no longer have anywhere to hangout at during the three excruciatingly long hours until boarding, what with all the seats taken up by the non travelling riff-raff surfing the net on the mobile phones while sipping their cup of expresso!

We redesigned our Registration form and added the services you can use for login to ArrivedOK to our main page:

Click on a button of the service you have account in – and your ArrivedOK account will be created with your Google, Facebook… whatever login. This has been done to ease the registration for those of us who are reluctant to create new accounts anywhere.

If you already have ArrivedOK account you will be asked once to bind your existing ArrivedOK login and openID login together so you might use both with one account in the future. After that everything happens literally in one click, without entering your username and password.

OpenID login first appeared in our feature tracking system in April 2007 but it was not clear at that time how that thing would be going – with a few supporting sites and quite faulty implementation. Then Google and Facebook released their ‘Friend/Connect’ and voila – it suddenly became fashionable.

We support (click on a link to find out if you already have your own OpenID and learn more about how it works): openid.net, myopenid.com, livejournal.com, openid.mail.ru, blogger.com, openid.yandex.ru, etc.

So, login and enjoy the technology.

What media air travelers choose to inform their friends and relatives about their flights, provided with a choice between SMS, email and social media? See our latest stats on that topic.

ArrivedOK is the service that notifies your designated recipients about your arrival to airports worldwide. ArrivedOK doesn’t do this by tracking flights, it does it by tracking your cell phone when you switch it on in your destination. Once it has been detected as on in the visiting mobile network the arrival notifications are sent out automatically. Users can choose how to send those alerts – by SMS, email, or via social media/networks.

And here comes the interesting part – what media air travelers choose to deliver their arrival alerts? Our latest stats say that despite all that social media buzz, people still prefer SMS and good old email. Perhaps because email notifications are free of charge at ArrivedOK, one might say, but that’s not the case: ArrivedOK provides all social media alerts for free too but they show dramatically lower popularity.

Here is the percentage of all ArrivedOK arrival notifications by media channels (March 2009 – January 2010):

LinkedIn is not included in the stats as we just integrated recently.

One thing could explain the popularity of SMS among our users – ArrivedOK text alerts are remarkably cheaper than roaming text tariffs, but that does not explain the lower usage of social media services, which are completely free.

We would say that Twitter is doing fine, Facebook is overrated, and Blogspot and LiveJournal numbers reflect the decline of blogging.

This is basically European stats as we don’t currently provide the service in the United States and China (though we’re working on it).

ArrivedOK website – http://www.arrivedok.mobi
ArrivedOK Partnership – http://partners.arrivedok.mobi

ArrivedOK is now working with LinkedIn, which is going to make both ArrivedOK and LinkedIn more powerful for you.

When you set your arrival alerts on ArrivedOK you can now make them appear in your LinkedIn status immediately after landing, letting your colleagues and business contacts know where you are in real time – without using your mobile or smartphone onboard. You can also customize your message to your LinkedIn connections, making it different from arrival alerts delivered to your friends, family, or posted to your personal blog.

Let the places you travel contribute to your professional identity on the web. Work, business or leisure, your trips bring important information about who you are, what you do, and how you do it. Show your followers that you’re a smart traveler.

How does ArrivedOK work with LinkedIn?

When you want to share your arrival details with a broader audience via LinkedIn (posting to Facebook, blogs and Twitter is also available) – go to your ArrivedOK Preferences and connect LinkedIn to your Profile.

When creating your arrival message, go to ‘Post to blog/network’ section, check ‘LinkedIn’ box and type your message if you want. That message will appear in your LinkedIn status right at the moment you turn on your phone upon your arrival, altogether following our standard ‘I arrivedOK in…’ text.

So go ahead and get started. Link your ArrivedOK and LinkedIn accounts today.

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