As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been working hard to improve the Trip and Journal pages.

You can now add pictures to trips; find out who in your network is likely to have the most amount of expertise about that destination (based on frequency of visits there); and see “sparklines” and other visualisations of the information.

You can also add private notes on trips and see who lives in your trip destination. Pictures can be added from Flickr, and we have a Facebook connection.

The Journal, your record of activity on Dopplr, is now much more detailed and includes a calendar widget to help you look at your past trips. You can also access others’ journals if they share their trips with you. There’s also a web feed that you can subscribe to for automated updates.

Dopplr now gives you email alerts about coincidences in your trusted network. If somebody is coming to your town, or happens to be travelling where you are, you will get an alert in your inbox. You can change your email alert settings on this page.

As MattB notes in a comment in another posting, we just upgraded the way we handle time zones. Your location is calculated just after midnight in your current location rather than midnight GMT, as was previously the case.

What does this mean? Basically this: Travellers in California will no longer have their departures announced 8 hours early.

NY Times: Blessed Silence Is the Newest Amenity. Hotels have tried to one-up one another with everything from custom-branded mattresses to aromatherapy candles to feather-soft sheets to help guests sleep — everything short of dispensing Ambien in the minibar. So why not sound-proof hotels? Spotting an untapped marketing opportunity, hotels are increasingly installing double-paned windows, noise-deadening door gaskets, thicker walls and even listening to heating and cooling systems to find the quietest model.

I’d definitely seek out places like this.

As a North American I’ve been slightly vexed by one of our settings that reflects Dopplr’s European heritage. This is the popup calendar when creating or editing a trip that showed a Monday to Sunday week. I’m used to seeing the calendar as Sunday through Saturday.

MattB and team have come up with a nifty interim fix. They’ve installed a calendar that uses your home location to decide. North Americans get Sunday to Saturday weeks, and the rest of the world gets Monday to Sunday. So my edit-trip calendar looks like this:

Again, this is just an interim step. You’ll soon be able to make this decision for yourself in the “Your account” settings.

AP: Singapore Airlines’ A380 takes off. A Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 took off on a historic journey Thursday—the first commercial flight by the world’s largest jetliner, which boasts luxurious suites enclosed by sliding doors, double beds, a bar and the quietest interior of any plane.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’m not looking forward to flying on airplanes that take an hour to board and unload — and then stand waiting for luggage along with 600 other passengers.

Unless someone buys me one of those first-class seats, I mean suites, of course…

This sign in the bathroom of the Hoxton Hotel in London is just one of the refreshing things about the place. It tells the truth about a common hotel practice, and does so with good humor.

Quote: “Hotels ask you to re-user your towels ‘to save the environment’ (their money more like)…”

Hoxton is rapidly becoming a business traveler favorite in London, and it’s not hard to see why.

Conde Nast Traveler’s Wendy Perrin Report has a batch of great travel tips from readers this month. Sample:

Before zipping up your packed suitcase at home, photograph the inside with your digital camera. When you claim your luggage at your destination’s baggage carousel, open the suitcase and compare what you see with the image. If you don’t discover that something is missing until you get to your hotel, you will have no recourse with the airline.

Lots more where that came from…

The Register reports, “US demands air passengers ask its permission to fly.”

Under new rules proposed by the Transport Security Administration (TSA) (pdf), all airline passengers would need advance permission before flying into, through, or over the United States regardless of citizenship or the airline’s national origin.

Currently, the Advanced Passenger Information System, operated by the Customs and Border Patrol, requires airlines to forward a list of passenger information no later than 15 minutes before flights from the US take off (international flights bound for the US have until 15 minutes after take-off). Planes are diverted if a passenger on board is on the no-fly list.

The new rules mean this information must be submitted 72 hours before departure. Only those given clearance will get a boarding pass. The TSA estimates that 90 to 93 per cent of all travel reservations are final by then.

Well, this will empty some seats on US-bound planes, and persuade more people to avoid traveling to America altogether. BIzarre. Counterproductive. Paranoid.

Also unsurprising, sadly.

Just left St. Petersburg, Russia, after about 10 days in the country (first time there).

We had two meals of note in St. Petersburg, one of them so good that I wanted to mention the restaurant. It’s famous in the city, but this visit was the first I’d heard of it.

Palkin isn’t perfect, but it’s as good as anything I’ve tried in a long time. The food is excellent, and the service phenomenal. Sure, it’s a bit pricey, but not excessively so for such a meal. (We once spent almost three times as much on a meal for two in Paris at a Michelin 3-star restaurant — something to do maybe once in a lifetime. Who can afford more? Not us.)

Actually, let me mention another place. It was less brilliant but still suffused with character. It’s called 1913, and serves solid Russian cuisine including what’s supposed to be the best borscht in town. It’s uneven — a piece of beef was overcooked — but the violin-guitar duo in the corner added enough extra atmosphere to make up for this.