What happened To The Edelman Site??
 

The link gives a Proxy Error.

Does anyone know if the web address changed?

Thanks

I had the same problems..

Which makes me think.. could one of us contact Ben Edelman and perhaps get permission to copy his code so someone can host it somewhere? Seems its running off a Harvard machine, and who knows how long it might be around before it gets deleted or Ben moves on..

Does this sound like a viable idea? I've found the seat map tool to be super..

Yes...please...someone...anyone...Bueler?

I am missing this site more than I missed FlyerTalk!

I sent an e-mail to one of our travel hero's, Ben Edelman, this morning and here was his responce:

"I'm afraid our web server has been hacked, and they're still putting the pieces back together. Expect it to come back within the next day or so. My apologies for the inconvenience."

Also, as you may know, we can earn Ben a little well-deserved compensation by clicking through his site (once it is back up) when making purchases from Delta.com, Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, etc

Happydad

Sorry, what is the URL of Edelman site, and what does it do?

I just tried my benedelman site and had no problem with it. Is this one you are referring to??

http://www.benedelman.org/travel/inventory/

Or is there another one?????

The site referred to in this thread is:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/DLseats/

The web site list's these benefits:
1) Bookmarkable availability listings for specified flights
2) Easier & faster to use than ordinary delta.com seatmap tool
3) View maps for both cabins on multiple flights simultaneously

Apologies & status update
 

Folks,

Sorry for the recent unavailability of the Seatmap site. I know you all depend on it, and it's quite unexpected that our server has been down for so long. We've never had so many hours of downtime in a row, and I gather the IT folks are still hard at work fixing the problem. They've now at least changed the error message users get upon attempting to view the site, so that it's somewhat less confusing.

I'd move the site from my old Harvard location to my new http://www.benedelman.org/travel site, but the kind of scripts I used (when first writing the site) aren't so readily hosted on my new site. Nonetheless, if the server isn't fixed in another day or so, I'll see if I can put something together for you.


Ben Edelman

No need to apologize!

Thanks for the wonderful free info you provide.

I appreciate the update.

When I last wrote, I thought the downtime would be measured in hours, not days. Clearly I was optimistic. But the relevant staff still say they're working on this -- admittedly distracted by other things that got even more broken, but still working on it.

My apologies...


Ben

Site is back & some comments
 

Folks,

My Delta Seat Map tool is back up, at a new URL:
http://www.benedelman.org/travel/dlseats

My apologies for the change in URL. I will try to arrange a redirect from the old site.

My apologies also for the delay in getting this fixed. It was harder and slower than I had ever expected, for various reasons that aren't important. But at least it's back now.

The new system isn't quite as fancy as the old one -- no advanced mode (for now), no deep linking direct to seatmaps, etc. Are these features that people used and cared about? If so, I'm sure I can find a way to restore them too. If not, maybe the new system will be satisfactory as it stands.

I will add a link to the other thread too. Happy planning, seating, and flying!


Ben Edelman

Hi, Ben:

A BIG THANKS for getting your site back online!!

I do miss a couple of features from your old site:

1) It seems the new site doesn't show prioirity seats (orange seats).

2) Also, I LOVED the ability to pull up several seat maps using one manual entry

I, for one, hope these features can be included. Thanks again for your help!

Happydad

I will see if I can figure out a good, easy way to show multiple seat maps without too much more programming. Give me at least a couple days, though...

The URLs by which this accesses the Delta site are the same as the URLs used by the old system. So if the old system showed priority seats in orange, this one should too. Anyone else seeing this problem?

I checked a few flights, and I also don't see the orange seats showing. The tool is wonderful, however.

orange seats, advanced mode
 

Now that I think about it, I think there was some magic change that had to be made to the Delta URL format in order to get it to show the orange seats. Let me check my archives (very old email, very old FT threads, etc.) and see if I can find it. Wish I had my old code from the old server, as I could just copy from there, but it's not to be...

Meanwhile, I've just added an Advanced mode that can check multiple flights at once. Similar syntax to the old system, though perhaps a bit different. Read the instructions to see what to do.