"There are plenty of good travel sites, so any new entry needs to have a better idea. Farecast.com uses fearsome computer power to predict the direction of plane fares. That helps travelers figure out the optimum time to buy a ticket. It was founded by Oren Etzioni, who created the Web's first meta-search site (it scans multiple search engines) and first shopping-comparison tool. Farecast uses an algorithm to crunch 100 billion prices in its database, then evaluates 200 attributes that affect plane fares. From those trillions of combinations, it figures out whether you should buy a ticket now or wait for prices to drop."
