Every once in a while someone comes up with a new piece of technology aimed at business travellers that makes me say: “I wish I had thought of that.” Expertflyer’s new Seat Alerts service is one of those.

Websites such as SeatGuru and Seatplans have made finding the best seats on an aircraft less of a gamble and a scramble. Yet, it’s all very well knowing which seat is the best, what if you can’t bag that seat for yourself?

Seat Alerts gets round that problem. For the 85 airlines on the ExpertFlyer system, which includes BA, Bmi, Virgin Atlantic, Air France, Swiss, and Lufthansa you can ask it to send you a email when a specific seat or perhaps just a window or an aisle seat becomes available. You can also tell it to ignore seats that are only available for frequent flyer members with a particular status level if you don’t have that yourself.

The system is also cool if you are being forced to travel in economy by your company travel policy and want to grab an exit row seat.

How clever is that? Access to the service comes as part of ExpertFlyer’s $9.99 a month premium service, which also gives access to lots of other cool stuff, including frequent flyer upgrade details and flight availability.

While we are talking cool technology, here’s my wishlist of websites and other technology I would like to see developed to help the business traveller:

AirportNav: A gadget to tell you the best route to take through the airport, avoiding the extended families with trolleys and automatically choosing the quickest security lane. We know that airports track people as they pass through via Bluetooth on their mobile phones so why not let passengers take advantage of the information?

Comparethedutyfreemarket.com (sung in a dodgy Russian accent of course): A website that tells you instantly whether it is worth buying a litre of whisky in Rome duty free in euro or wait till you get back and buy it in pounds in Sainsbury’s. It will also give a list of the best duty-free bargains for each airport before you head for your flight.

Smugfare^TM: A system that can automatically work out how much your next door neighbours on the plane paid for their tickets so that you can brag about getting a lower fare (even if you didn’t). The premium version lets you print out a copy of that day’s Times newspaper which contains an advert showing 1p fares on the airline in question if you travel the same day.

Biztripfootiefinder.com: You want to enjoy a little local culture on your business trip, no? No. You just want to find a bar with a huge plasma showing the football because it’s the one time in the year that your League 1 team gets televised and you’re on a **&*&!£$ business trip. This website will find the bar and put you in touch with fellow fans in the city while you’re there.

Receiptmaster Pro: Windows software that will print out bogus but convincing receipts and bills from foreign countries. If some snooping busybody from HMRC checks on Google for the establishment, they will find a fully functioning website for it; calls to the telephone number on the receipt are diverted to an international call centre with operators speaking Serbian, Finnish and Swahili.

If any web development company follows these up, I'm expecting royalties.