So I was reading Techcrunch today, and it seems that Farecast has gone into a public beta period. While beta software has been around for years and years, tagging a new product beta seems to be all the rage among Web 2.0 sites (Yes, Windows Live and Google, I'm looking at you guys).
Anyway, Farecast is an innovative little site that predicts airfare prices for trips you want to take. Basically, you plug in where you're leaving from (current limitation of the beta is they're only doing this for Seattle and Boston), plug in when you want to be there, and Farecast will tell you whether or not it thinks ticket prices will go up, based on some magic-Internet-pixie-dust (I'm guessing they've got historical data; these things are fairly cyclical, I expect). Best quote from the Techcrunch article:
It's nice to see data mining applied to more than watching you and me, for a change.
Overall, it's very cool. Great use of AJAX throughout the site. Brilliant idea, let's see if the major travel sites come up with a response.