Unladen me

Unladen "swallows"

Unladen me works to keep you free of the burden of booking tickets. We continuously monitor your calendar and try to get you the best trips, right in your inbox.

Try it out at https://unladen.me

Why we did it

Booking tickets sucks. It's a huge mess of comparing different options, never really finding what you actually want; a hassle-free journey.

The best systems are those that you never even notice.

What it does

Unladen.me monitors changes in your calendars, scanning for travel destinations. When a destination is found the system finds a matching trip, and notifies you with a purchase link. With a single click the user is ready to go.

How it works

By connecting a bunch of public APIs/Services we can automate the booking flow.

Once the user is authenticated the system keeps scanning for new events in the user's calendar.Event locations are compared to previous events in your calendar to find the point of departure and the destination. If a matching trip is found, the user receives a booking link right to their inbox.

Challenges we ran into

Local v.s. UTC please let us make UTC the thing. Slow deploys Intermittent network issues Lack of designer

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It works for real, you can use the system today!

What we learned

There are loads of nice, public datasources that can be combined in creative ways
APIs don't agree on time formats (ISO 8601 with UTC should be universally accepted)
Some APIs can be expensive, especially if used incorrectly
OAuth2 is nice, but cumbersome