Web 2.0 Travel Tools

Tiki-Toki - Web-Based Timeline Construction Tool

2011-03-30T10:43:00.001-07:00

Beautiful web-based timeline software

This looks like a really nice tool for students to build historical time lines. The graphics are, as they say, beautiful. A basic account is free. I do not know what the paid acct costs.

18 Months Later - How Are They Doing?

2008-09-01T12:59:00.000-07:00

It has been awhile since I lasted posted a review -- been a busy summer and start to the new academic year. Even when I am not actively blogging, I still file away emails that I receive that are Travel 2.0 related to, hopefully, review when I have more time. Most of these are from PR people wanting to promote their website and products.

So what I decided to do today was to look back at the oldest ones that I had files away and see which of them is still of interest today. These three were all promoted to me in April 2007, about 18 months ago.

71 Miles - is an early staycation website, founded before the concept of staycation became popularized. Its beta version was focused on Northern California, and its plans in April 2007 were to go national in "the coming months." That obviously did not happen, as it is still Northern California based, and they do not seem to talk about going national any longer. And they seem to be looking for advertisers on their homepage.

The State of Oregon's GoSeeOregon.com website, which is somewhat of a traditional state travel site, except that you need to join the site to see most of the information. If you register you get access to:

Tips for more than 300 destinations in Oregon and over 90,000 others worldwide
Connect with thousands of fellow travelers from all continents
Rate and review hotels, restaurants, attractions, and more
Search the database for members with similar interests, find top rated places, the most respected users or the most valuable tips
Customize your own passport page and track all your travel

Destinations (sort of global - only a handful of sites listed), Tips and Member profiles are available without registering -- they apparently have about 3,000 registered members -- not hugely successful for a state tourism site, I would guess. I think most of these options are available elsewhere, and since I am not planning a trip to Oregon in the foreseeable future, I did not register. But for anyone who goes to Oregon a lot, say if you had a second home there, this might be worthwhile. The site was created by GoSeeTell.com, which is based in Portland, Oregon, and does not seem to have any other similar products. [UPDATE 2Sept08: There is also a GoSeeArizona.com site, which was mentioned in a comment, below.]

In my opinion, 3000 registered members is not necessarily a huge success. With a little effort they could possibly get close to that number on Facebook. I think the issue of registering is a barrier. Only those people who are most enthusiastic to share and discuss Oregon will likely register. For potential visitors, the Tips section is probably the most useful part of the site and it is good that they make this available without needing to register. So there are probably many times as many users of the site than just those who register.

TravelOregon.com, the state's official travel site, has a Travel Journal tool where registered users can take notes of places they want to see, but they do not have the community tools that GoSeeOregon has. In addition, they only refer people via a very small link at the bottom of their site, to the GoSeeOregon website, so they are not really making full use of GoSeeOregon.com, with which they are apparently still affiliated.

Tripwiser.com launched in April 2007 and was described in the email I received back then as being "devoted to baby boomers traveling in the United States with families. The idea was to take project management out of trip planning and help people collaborate and enjoy travel preparation as much as possible." Its primary feature, in my opinion, is the ability to post your trip itinerary and, optionally, share it with others. You can also comment on the places you went and share photos -- sort of like a personal travel blog. There is no discussion forum, and you cannot comment directly on postings, though you can suggest updates to a post. So it is a lot less open than TripAdvisor.com or 43Places.com.

It is hard to tell how many users TripWiser.com currently has. My impression is that is is OK, but not huge. There seem to be user trips to most of the more popular corners of the world. The site, however, is full of other information from a variety of different sources -- including commercial tour operators. This form of advertising is relatively less obtrusive than what one finds on sites such as TripAdvisor.com. Though it can be sneaky in that way.

In Summary

Of the 18 month old sites reviewed here, TripWiser.com appears to be the most successful. That could be because it is the broadest in its geographic market, covering the globe, instead of only one state or urban region. It could also be because it is the most rich in the user generated tools that it provides -- namely, allowing users to create itineraries that can be private or shared. It does not have a discussion forum, which is a shortcoming, I think. However, the information provided -- a mix of user-generated content and commercial content -- is presented in an easy to access and use manner. Perhaps this is better suited to baby-boomers who just want information and are less interested in active site participation.

Some Travel Planning Tools

2008-04-28T00:22:00.000-07:00

OK, so this is not all of the sites covered are are new, though a couple of them are. But I think it is worth visiting and commenting on the more established sites, instead of just covering the newest travel sites here.

Forbes.com has an article on titled "Travel Websites Get Personal" by Wendy Tanaka, which is accompanied by a slide show of Seven Top Sites for Planning Your Vacation. If you hate those slides shows as much as I do, here is a quick list of the seven sites that they list, along with my own comments on each:

Kayak.com - airline, hotel and vacation booking site, often finds the best deals in comparative studies - This is the one that I use the most on this list, though I normally enter it via the multi-site search engines of BookingBuddy.com or OneTime.com.
TripAdvisor.com - massive database of user-generated review, mostly of hotels - I use TripAdvisor occasionally to get information on hotels in places that I am very unfamiliar with. Unfortunately, I find the often conflicting reviews of the same place very confusing!
IgoUgo.com - user reviews of destinations, hotels, restaurants, etc., more like blog entries, now part of Travelocity.com. I used IgoUgo recently to plan daily activities in Siem Reap, Cambodia. I was too cheap to buy a guidebook for the short trip that I took there and looked at several sites like IgoUgo for tips on what to do and see, which I then printed out and took with me.
TripIt.com - automatically generates guides for trip itineraries that you enter - I tried this once but found the results too general and diverse and not well suited to my interests. If you are interested in this approach, you might want to try NileGuide.com, which is a new site that also creates a trip itinerary around your destination and interests. It currently only covers selected sites outside the US, but I think that will change over time.

And there is also Ving.se's Trip Finder (image above), which does the same thing and is a 2008 Webby Award nominee for Travel, along with several other sites listed here. (Note that the the preference scales on Trip Finder are also offered on Tripbase.com, which I reviewed in June 2007.)
VibeAgent.com - and more user reviews, plus a Q&A section, and links to real-life Travel Agents - I have not used this site and looking at it I am not sure that I, personally, would find its features that useful. Others might be different, though.
Farecast.com - airlines and hotels, attempts to forecast future fares for mostly US cities (good luck with that these days of bankrupt airlines and sky-high oil prices!) - They are slowly expanding their forecasting coverages, but it basically does not work for international travel. Even for domestic US, I find the results of limited use as it cannot guarantee a certain future price (though I think there is a way to do that for a price).
InsideTrip.com - airline fares, but with a Trip Quality Score based on lost luggage, on-time departures, legroom, and flight duration - based on what you indicate as important (US only) - This beta site is the newest on the list and I have not used it, though the concept is interesting. Here is a screenshot of its results - the big number is the quality score, the bars on the left are where you adjust your preferences:

When I plan my trips (which I have been doing a lot of lately), I start from a Hubpages.com site that I created called "My Favorite Travel Websites". Here is a screenshot of that site (the photo of me and my daughter in Hawaii is from over 25 years ago):

On this Hubpage I post anything that I think I might use in planning my own personal and professional travels. Do I use everything that is there -- nope, but I might, some day. And even with this fairly comprehensive list, I often seem to find myself using new and different websites every time I plan a new trip. Go figure...

Tourist Attractions Galore (US only) at HappyMappy.com

2008-03-26T19:50:00.001-07:00

As a geographer, I have a bias toward mapping applications that relate to Web 2.0 and Travel 2.0. So even though I get a lot of links to Travel 2.0 websites in my inbox, and even though I really should be reading student term papers right now, I did mention this new site (still in beta), in part because of its simplicity and mostly because of it potential usefulness for travelers in the US.

HappyMappy.com is a map of tourist attractions in the US. (Sorry, rest of the world.) Attractions include: "history, arts, recreation, nature, science, parks, sports, theater, concerts, nightlife & activities." It is basically a mash-up of Google Maps and Yahoo! Local, with some added information and functionality. At each zoom level HappyMappy will show up to 100 of the most popular attractions. It is unclear just how popularity is determined.

Checking the attractions around Flagstaff, Arizona, I found the results to be quite comprehensive, and there were a couple of items listed that I was personally not aware of. It was not perfect, however, as it included a couple of motels (not really tourist attractions) and places on the Northern Arizona University campus that I thought were a bit questionable. For example, the Du Bois Center is tagged with: Concert Entertainment Live Entertainment Live Music Music Nightlife Venue. However, it is mostly a food outlet for students and a conference center with meeting rooms and an auditorium that may, on a very infrequent occasion, have some evening event that is open to the public. In addition, as student recreation center is listed that is not open to the public.

In addition, downtown Flagstaff, especially on Route 66 (US Highway 89/180), has a lot of tourist arts/gifts/souvenir shops, but only a couple are listed. And I wonder how well they will be able to keep this information current given the relatively high business turnover in this sector. Finally, urban districts and scenic landscapes are attractions, as well. But these do not show up on the HappyMappy maps. While it might be possible to identify downtown Flagstaff as a tourism hot spot, based on the large number of pin points there, the historic hotels along Route 66 as not so well identifiable.

Also, I was not able to save my points of interest and maps either in Firefox 3 (beta) or on IE 7 after I registered on the site. I would think this kind of problem would be mostly resolved in a beta release, but I guess not this time.

HappyMappy reminds me of VeniVidiWiki.eu - which is a pin map showing links to tourist attractions around the world, but which also emphasizes videos and photos more, and text descriptions of the attractions less than does HappyMappy. VeniVidiWiki also allows users to add additional sites to their database, though there is no social networking related to that. And there is also Simpatigo.com which links the attractions to an itinerary route -- though that makes it more complicated, as well. I covered VeniVidiWiki.eu before here and Simpatigo.com before here.

Personal Travel Search - Simple Is Best

2008-02-20T05:33:00.000-08:00

The Travel-In-Norway.com website has a very simple, Google-based travel search site that works very nicely!

This is the search interface, on which I typed "Singapore":

And here are the results for my Singapore search. Each link basically takes you to a Google page with links to the topic, which, of course, is also a very clean interface, of course. With all the often complicated Web 2.0 stuff out there, simple is like a breath of fresh air.

From Tourist to Traveler - Educating visitors about Angkor Wat

2008-01-20T19:15:00.001-08:00

A friend of mine, Tim Winter, sent me a link to his new website about travel, tourism and heritage in Cambodia, with an emphasis on Angkor Wat <http://www.postconflictheritage.com>. The website is essentially intended to support and expand upon his recent book on the same topic, which can be found on the website. The site also includes links to recent news stories related to tourism and heritage issues in Cambodia.

While a lot of Web 2.0 tends to focus on practical tools for organizing trips and finding the best deals from insiders. At best, they provide users with information on must see attractions.

However, tourists are part of the tourism economy -- which is generally considered the largest part of the global service economy, and has huge impacts on host destinations. Few tourists fully understand their role in this tourism economy, and how they are shaping and changing the destinations that they visit.

Website like this one on Cambodia help to bridge this gap between being a leisure tourist and an aware traveler. Good job, Tim!

One Month of Travel 2.0 Websites

2007-11-10T21:22:00.000-08:00

On average, I receive about two emails a week announcing new Travel 2.0 websites. I know that they mostly come from PR people, but some seem more genuine than others, which can border on spam. I find most of them of some interest, but only now and then am I smitten enough to be drawn away from my other activities to write a review.

However, I also know that just because I may not be overly excited about a new website, does not mean that other people might not be. So in deference to a presenting a balanced picture of Travel 2.0, this blog posting is summary of the websites that have been recommended to me in in the past month (not listed in any special order), along with my impressions.

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Pariscontest.ning.com - A Travel Contest to Build User Content

From surveys that I have heard about, after the US, the top international destination that people in China want to visit in France. Ruyi-ParisHotel.com is a website for Chinese traveling to Paris, and elsewhere in Europe. However, they are also running a contest in English on the free social website buider, Ning.com. It is one of the smaller contests that I have seen. You can win a US$99 gift certificate to Amazon.com if you submit a suggestion on how to visit Paris on $99 or less a day (1 meal, 1 hotel, 1 activity). Sounds like an inexpensive promotional effort that could gain them some useful information. I found their use of Ning.com particularly of interest, since I am a active participant on that site (see here, for example). - Ruyi Travel Blog (blog in Chinese) - English - Contest Promo - Ruyi-ParisHotels (in Chinese)

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Destination Meta-Guide.com 2.0

This is not a new website, but it has apparently undergone some rennovations to make it more of a “daily green travel newspaper” for virtually every country on Earth. This site is for people who want to know what contemporary issues that are really going on in a country, beyond the general guidebook information. In addition to basic visitor information, it provides NGO and UN information and "the latest green travel news." A lot of destination information and definitely more for the serious traveler than the purely recreational one.

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Travelwebdir.com -Travel Web Directory

This site claims to only include sites that have been selected by real humans as being the best in each of their many categories. It kind of reminds me of the old Yahoo directories (do they still exist somewhere?), and as such feels more like Web 1.0 -- find a category and see the websites or online article. It is apparently still very new and many of the categories (such as travel podcasts) are empty. In addition, the email I received stated: "You can add your travel related site or your travel articles for free to our directory: Don't miss this awesome opportunity to gain visibility and pagerank at once!" It is easy to submit a website link. They only require that it be a "quality" site and that the site link back to the Travel Web Directory. There was no definition of "quality," however. Definitely a beta site with a lot more work to do.

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eBookers.es - Mobile phone phrase books

For 4 Euros you can download a 17 language phrasebook from the Spain-based eBookers.es. The website is entirely in Spanish, since English is one of the 17 languages (and the PR announcement was in English), it should work for us Anglophones. There are 200 traveler-related phrases that are both shown in text and vocalized on the phone. Since I travel mostly in Asia, Manadarin Chinese and Japanese are included, though Bahasa-Malay/Indonesia is not. In addition, my HTC phone is not on the list of phones that the phrasebook will work on. And finally, have you actually ever bought one those little pocket phrase books? I have, over the years, but I have never actually pulled one out and used it.

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SegnaloItalia.it - Digg-like voting system for Italian tourism

This website focuses on alternative accommodations, such as B&B and farm stays, plus events, and touring routes. Places and establishments are rated and reviewed, all in Italian, from what I saw. And there is a Google map showing the distribution, and you can see who has voted for what sites. If you know a little Italian, this could be a great resources for seeing the "real Italy."

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Extravigator.com - Discussion forum for luxury travel

The website describes itself as "Haute Travel Talk" and "Where sophisticted travelers go to discuss first class experiences." Categoried includ hotels, dining, spas, shopping, and more. Since I cannot afford traveling first class, this is not a site that I find much interest in. (I am, however, a charter subscriber to Budget Travel magazine -- I have 10 years of back issues.)

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Chokti.com - Multimedia destination information

To me, Chokit is sort of a YouTube portal for travel destinations. They link to audio (podcasts?), videos, photos, maps and journals, and users can upload their own material and aggregate them for specific destinations, which can then be presented on a personal or business website. I am not sure how the latter works. When I browse the site I see about 1300 resources listed -- most of which seem to be videos of the US and Europe. There was only one for Southeast Asia. Some a linked from Youtube and similar sites, while others were apparently uploaded by amateur users. There are quite a few other travel video sites out there, and I guess one difference with Chokti is the ability to add other multimedia files -- though I did not see any browsing around Europe, Asia and North America. I also found the interface somewhat cumbersome.

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Nile Cruise Podcast

This is supposed to be a weekly podcast. They have three episodes up, and the last one was posted on Oct 22. It is a good podcast, but hmmm, they seem to be a few weeks behind -- unless they have already podfaded. (Three podcasts is a very common podfading break point.)
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Tripology.com - Connecting travelers with travel agents

Despite of (or maybe because of) the growth in online travel, Americans are apparently returning to travel agents to some degree, in part because doing it all themselves is perceived to take too much time. On the Tripology website, travelers can submit a trip request (by destination or type of trip) and get responses from one to three travel agents from the Tripology network of over 6000 travel agents. To connect you with the best agent, the site asks a lot of information about your planned trip. While I can see that a travel agent would like much of that information to plan a trip, I can also see how the Tripology website owners could use this information for product development and marketing. I personally am uncomfortable providing a lot of information like this online. I also rarely use travel agents, though their list of travel agent myths gives some good reasons to consider one. Even though they have a blog, there is nothing else that is "Web 2.0" from the users perspective.

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This review took a lot longer to research and write up than I expected. There are some interesting efforts taking place. While quite a few of them fall short of ideal (from my perspective), I still think theat they all provide insight into the exploding landscape of Travel 2.0.

The Coming Boom in Online Travel in China

2007-10-13T22:06:00.001-07:00

The China Web2.0 Review blog recently covered several new Chinese travel sites, comparing them to some of the more popular US travel sites.

Comparing Some New Chinese Travel Websites

The author of that blog post concludes that "Overall, None of these websites seems really impressive. They are still far behind Ctrip on user base. I think adding more innovative ideas like personalized travel plan similar to what Yahoo Travel and TripHub did may help them gaining ground in the online traveling market."

I have an article in this month's (Oct 2007) issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review. Unfortunately, my article (titled "China's Growing Wanderlust"), cannot be seen without a paid subscription. One of the topics that I cover in that article is the state of online travel in China. A few points that I make are:

Although online travel bookings in China grew 72 percent in 2006 to over 2.75 million bookings, valued at 1.54 billion yuan (US$204 million), it pales in comparison to the US, where the online travel market generated revenues of US$83 billion in 2006.
Chinese consumers have been wary of both online transactions and the use of credit cards (both on- and off-line).
Chinese travel agents discourage online bookings because they pay higher credit card fees online (1.0%) compared to in person (0.1%). So the approach to online travel in China is to direct the public to call centers for information and bookings, and to travel agency offices for cash transaction.
Successful online travel agencies in China negotiate special travel packages at favorable prices that are attractive to the middle and upper classes, who are also more willing to use credit cards and pay a little more for the convenience of online travel bookings.
The biggest online travel agency, by far, in China is Ctrip.com, which accounted for 54.2% of online sales in 2006, followed by eLong.com with 17.8 percent of the market. Expedia.com owns 52 percent of eLong.com, but also has its own China website this year.

Although struggling now, many expect China's online travel market to explode in the coming years as more people enter the middle class and the use of plastic (credit cards) becomes more widespread. -- With trends like that, no wonder that the Shanghai stock market is booming these days!

Cool New Ideas: Simpatigo and TravNotes

2007-09-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

Keeping up with the all the new Travel 2.0 websites emerging every week would be close to a full-time job. I already have a full-time job that consumes a most of my time, so all I can do is squeeze out a review once or twice a month. The websites that I pick to review are those that I think are especially creative (giving me inspiration to write) -- and happen to arrive in my inbox or elsewhere when my real job gives me time to check them out.

Two sites that I learned of just today are Simpatigo.com and TravNotes.com. Both are in early beta, and their content and subscriber bases are under development. But I thought they provided creative new twists on current trends in Travel 2.0.

Simpatigo.com is another attraction mapping site designed to help you plan your trips. This is kind of like Venividiwiki.eu and maybe Rrove.com, both of which I reviewed earlier. The difference is that Simpatigo generates a Trip Itinerary that includes driving directions (common on most mapping sites) AND short descriptions of attractions that you will pass en route. The itinerary can then be printed out to take with you.

This is a cool idea, though its realization is still a bit rough (remember it is still beta). I entered an itinerary for a road trip I am planning for next year from Cincinnati to Toronto. My itinerary only included two attractions, in addition to the driving directions, even though there were many more within fairly short distance from the actual road I was driving on. I did not see a way to capture those additional attractions into the driving itinerary.

I would guess that this will be worked out at some point. Simpatigo currently has some 1600 attractions, mostly in the more populated regions of the US. Some attractions are being captured from major travel publications, while users can also add their own points of interest to share with others. It has a ways to go before its database is truly useful, but is a good idea that has potential.

TravNotes.com is a microblog for travel planning and traveling. I have not seen anything that quite compares, though perhaps the popular WAYNE.com ("Where Are You Now") offers something like this. For the uninitiated, microblogging was made popular recently by Twitter.com, which only allows 140 characters to each blog post. (Click here for my Twitter microblog.) Pownce.com is another microblog with some added features like photo sharing.

TravNotes is a microblog with features specifically for using before and during your travels, and perhaps to talk about travel in general. Each microblog can be categorized as for an "upcoming" trip, for current "traveling", as a public "question" about a place or trip, or a "general" other. Groups can be created from friends and posts can be limited or made viewable by everyone.

Again, TravNotes is new and its membership base seems to be modest right now. But if you like microblogging and traveling, then you may like TravNotes a lot.

User-Generated Airports and Airport Wifi

2007-09-07T20:38:00.000-07:00

I saw this on new service from Updates.Orbitz.com on TechCrunch.com:

It is basically a user generated airport news services where users can instantly post the good and bad things they are experiencing at US airports -- like parking problems, unusual TSA delays, flight delays, etc. -- as seen in the Youtube.com video, above. This is in addition to more static information about airport and flight conditions.

Do people really use things like this? I suppose I might if I spent a lot of my life in really large airports that have enough geeks using them to generate some useful up-to-date information, and if wanted to shave off some potentially wasted minutes. However, I do not fly through SFO or LAX that often. For my main hub aiport, PHX, the latest postings tell me that 4 hours ago there were long lines at the US Air and Southwest checking counters -- so what else is new? The lines are almost always long at those two airlines. In my opinion, air travel these days is so unpredictable, the best insurance is to arrive early and be prepared to wait. I may be wrong, but I think that user-generated information can have its limits.

There was a user generated gem in the comments on the TechCrunch posting. It was for AtLarge.com -- a site where users submit reviews and tips on wireless connectivity at airpoirts around the world. I found it one of the better looking and most useful sites of this kind that I have seen. Travelpost.com has a good listing of paid airports wifi services, but no user reviews like AtLarge.com, which is a real plus!

And remember to watch out who/what you are connecting to at an airport, as there have been reports of fake wifi services out to capture your personal information. JiWire.com also has a good guide to using airport wifi, along with a summary of availability at US airports.

PS: I found two other site that have reviews of airports around the world: AirlineEquality.com and ReviewCentre.com. Both have more of a discussion forum approach and have a limited number of airports and/or reviews. And, of course, neither is "live" like Update.Orbitz.com.

What is Travel 3.0 ?

2007-08-14T20:50:00.000-07:00

From the many podcasts that I listen to, I have basically heard of two definitions for Web 3.0:

Web-Everywhere Technology - Always connected portable technology
Total Immersion Web - Virtual worlds and MMOGs

Web 1.0 was the static, expert knowledge web. Web 2.0 is the interactive, user knowledge web. So these definitions of Web 3.0 as an always connected technology and total environment knowledge web make sense to me.

And either way, the significance for travel and tourism is enormous. An everywhere web is a traveling web. It means being connected when you travel locally to work, to the grocery store, to the gym, as well as on business trips and family holidays. The Web 2.0 tools that I review on this website are among the leaders into this everywhere web space, which I predict will move toward greater convergence in the coming decades.

I have personally not bought into the the Second Life virtual world phenomenon, which I think is far from ready for prime time. In the long run, however, I think that online virtual worlds will become an important way of communicating with other people, initially, and with distant environments, ultimately. The newly emerging Web 2.0 sites that have video tours of hotels and destination are important baby steps in this directions -- even more so than the experimental hotel building in Second Life because they are more accessible for the masses.

Travel 3.0 is clearly not here, yet. However, because we can conceptualize it -- imagine what it will be like -- it is an important force shaping the visions of todays Travel 2.0 engineers and entrepreneurs.

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UPDATE: Check out the Sunverse.net blog, which is "All about Virtual Worlds and the Tourism Industry". The site mostly focuses on the development of real world tourism destinations in Second Life.

UPDATE: March 26, 2008: Bill Ryan, heard on Kenradio.com : "Web 2.0" was setting interoperability standards (including AJAX and web services, etc.) and creating communities and user-generated content. Web 2.0 was very exploitative of user generated content. "Web 3.0" is engaging more professionals to create user-generated data/content communities by compensating them. Also the semanitic web as the new tech-side supporting the new communities.

What would this mean for the travel and tourism industry? I am not sure. As an academic working on a couple of textbooks during my sabbatical, I think it is involving other academics who may adopt my books to create teaching and learning communities that provide value both for the teachers, students and the world at large. I had not thought about the potential role of compensation -- but am considering it now. I will be working on this over the summer.
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(Originally posted on my Web 2.0 Travel Tools Blog - Alan A. Lew)

Avvenu - Remote Computer Access for Road Warriors

2007-08-03T23:06:00.000-07:00

Few things drive me more crazy than buying (or buying into) something and then finding a better deal or product at the same or lower price. I use Gmail, for example, even though I know that Yahoo Mail is better. I just keep hoping that Gmail will be updated some day to be more like Yahoo Mail. At least Gmail is free.

In April paid for an account with Logmein.com so I can access my desktop files remotely using my office computer and my new Fujitisu P1610 mini tablet pc. I like Logmein, except for two things: (1) it does not have a search function in its file transfer and sync utility, and (2) you cannot view photo icons in the file transfer and sync.

So now I stumble across Avvenu.com which is a lot like Logmein, but offers remote file search and tranfer in its free version (not sure about photo icon viewing). Its paid version allows access to files even when your home/main pc is off by uploading the files you want to access to the Avvenu website. Very cool, and a lot cheaper than Logmein.com, or the even more expensive GoToMyPC.com.

Avvenu.com also allows you to listen and share music on your home computer from a remote computer or PDA. Although I have not tried it yet, it looks to me like Avvenu.com is a great utility for the traveling road warrior!

(Click Here to read about my Office Anywhere efforts.)

Blog link: http://web20travel.blogspot.com/2006/05/avvenu-access-files-and-share-photos.html

Best Travel Podcasts of 2007 - Nominees

2007-07-25T06:55:00.000-07:00

The following podcasts have been nominated for the People's Choice Podcast Awards for the Best Travel Podcasts of 2007. Congratulations!

- 808 Talk [url] [rss]

- Alaska Podshow [url] [rss]

- Beachwalks with Rox [url] [rss]

- Living in Las Vegas [url] [rss]

- The Amateur Traveler [url] [rss]

- The Dis Unplugged [url] [rss]

- The Meandering Mouse [url] [rss]

- Travel with Rick Steves [url] [rss]

- Trucker Tom Podcast [url] [rss]

- WDW Radio [url] [rss]

Anyone can vote for their favorites, starting July 28th and closing August 11th. The Podcast Awards website is a great place to find new podcasts that you have not heard before.

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OK, so I wasn't nominated, but since this is my blog, I can still mention my own travel podcasts: Travelography: World Travel and Tourism News, and Geography for Travelers, both of which got a great plug on the July 1, 2007 episode of the Home Based Travel Agent podcast -- one that I personally listen to more than any of the nominees above.

Travel Planning Your Way: TripBase.com & TripWiser.com

2007-06-13T00:14:00.000-07:00

Links to two new travel planning website arrived my inbox in the last couple of months that I thought were creative and useful. They both help you decide where to go and what to do when you get their.

TripBase.com has a nice ajaxy interface where you indicate your preferences and trip characteristics, and it gives you a list of suggested destinations, which you can then click on to get more information. You can also click to remove the most popular destinations, for those looking for alternatives to the beaten paths. Variables that you can adjust include Nightlife, Dining, Shopping, Nature, Attractions, Dates, Departure city, Budget, Type of trip (backpacker, middle, luxury), Desired temperature, and Continent.

The interface is clean and quick, with limited scrolling and new page openings. Resources include a list of starred must see attractions and links to online magazine articles and prominent webistes, such as Wikitravel.com. There are also links to air, hotel and car rental reservations, though these did not work for me in the alpha-released website. Which kind of make me wonder how they are making money.

TripWiser.com is somewhat similar to TripBase, but makes its recommendations from a database of trips that have been saved by users. It has a very nice and easy to use interface for building a day-by-day itinerary for a trip, which you can make public or private. You can access and add suggestions for each day, and you give your trip tags which other people can then use to search the public database.

If you are searching for experiences, you can enter a trip name (destination and type) and receive a list of suggestions from the database. You can adjust your preferences by sliding Families-Couples, Luxury-Budget, Adventure-Relaxations, and Nature-Culture. The results change instantly as you change your preferences.

Some of the suggestions did not seem very real -- like an itinerary that included the San Diego Zoo, SeaWorld, Balboa Park and Mission Beach all in one day! (That itinerary was listed as a "Top Family Trip" -- I think my kids would kill me if I tried to make them do all that in one day.) Others, however, are very realistic and provide some great suggestions.

Interestingly, both websites make use of sliders as a way of showing preference. One big difference is that TripWiser is (currently) only for the US, while TripBase is international (yay!).

Blogging in the Tourism Academy

2007-06-02T23:22:00.000-07:00

I recently sent out a question to some 1000 or so tourism academics (professors, lecturers, graduate students, and other researchers) on email discussion lists, asking them "Do You Blog?" The purpose was to see how blogging is used by tourism academics. A summary of my findings can be found here:

http://tourismplace.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-dont-we-blog-university-faculty.html

The major categories or types of blogs that people told me about include:

Blogging about Tourism
Blogging for Classes and Students
Research (and) Blogs
Personal Travel Blogs
Podcast Blogs
Email Lists as Blogs

Click the link above for details. I have been updating these as new blogs are brought to my attention.

TalkShoe - Categories Listing - Travel

2007-06-01T09:18:00.000-07:00

TalkShoe - Categories Listing - Travel

TalkShoe has become the destination for podcasters and podcast listeners who want to record live, synchronous, call-in episodes. I usually listen to these after they have been recorded, but if I were more on the ball, I could partcipate in them by either voice or text message. For both podcasters and podcast listeners this service is free, and although the content is entirely user generated, looking at their website they really do resemble a more formal podcast network.

The reason I bring it up TalkShoe here is because they have a Travel category that contains some interesting programs. You can listen to their most recent episodes and see when their next episodes are scheduled.

Not everyone is organized enough to schedule episodes in advance (I could never do that with my podcasts!), but some are. At the time of this mini-review, the following podcasts had scheduled programs:

Florida Travel Deals -LorenGray 15 minutes (each week) of information regarding destinations in Florid... Next Episode Time: 06/07/07 02:30 PM EDT Talkcast ID: 27267
PlanIt Podcast Live Call Ins - David Martin - Are you looking for the next great party or event location? Do you wa... Next Episode Time: 06/06/07 08:00 PM EDT Talkcast ID: 20394
The TRAVELERS JOURNAL - David Bear - The TRAVELERS JOURNAL is a series of 2 minute audio postcards delivere... Next Episode Time: 06/04/07 09:00 AM EDT Talkcast ID: 14057

VeniVidiWiki -- Wiki Map Travel Guide

2007-05-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

VeniVidiWiki: travel guide

VeniVidiWiki.eu is a Google map wiki mashup for attractions around the world. Anyone can add a POI (point of interest) to the map and provide as much as possible of the following information:

Name of place/poi
Category - those shown above are listed as POI with Video -- so they all have a video link; the full list of categories is listed on the left
Description
Website, and
Photo and/or Video links

The wiki has a large number of sites, and crashed a few times when I was trying to view a lot of them. But in general it is quick and easy to navigate, and worth exploring to learn more about attractions in a place you may want to visit.

Virtual STA - Second Life Travel Agency

2007-04-27T20:59:00.000-07:00

STA Travel in Second Life

STA Travel is among the largest travel agencies in the world with a focus on student, mostly university, travel. This week, STA became one of the first travel agencies to set up business, or sorts, in Second Life. STA's island in second life will offer:

Dedicated Portal and Orientation Island where students can join Second Life and easily and quickly learn how to navigate the virtual world.
Virtual Dorms that students can customize and use for private meetings and get-togethers.
Virtual Travel Destinations where students can experience Mayan Ruins, an Asian Temple and a French Cafe.
STA Travel Main Office where students can get travel and destination information.
Live Weekly Events and Tours produced by STA Travel as well as numerous travel partners.
Sandbox where students can practice building their own virtual environment.

Not all of these are ready now, but will be soon., and I would imagine that more will be developed in the future as STA, along with other travel providers, continue to experiment with virtual travel.

Google Goes Back to Pre-Katrina Maps

2007-04-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

Google Goes Back to Pre-Katrina Maps - WashingtonPost.com

"NEW ORLEANS -- Google's popular map portal has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the storm, leaving locals feeling like they're in a time loop and even fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.

Scroll across the city and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and everything is back to normal: Marinas are filled with boats, bridges are intact and parks are filled with healthy, full-bodied trees."

"Web 2.0 - Over and Out" - or - Moves In Next Door

2007-04-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

EarlyStageVC: Web 2.0 - Over and Out

Amid Peter Rip's (link above) dire predictions of the demise of Web 2.0, I think the emphasis should be on the mainstreaming of Web 2.0 (as evidenced by Time's Person of the Year award). And this should be good news for a travel industry that, to my mind, has a long ways to go to fully utilize the potential of the new social media.

See also the article on TechCrunch, where I first found the link above.

Rrove - Save, Share & Discover Places

2007-03-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

Rrove "Share Your Special Spots"

Rove is a point or pin map creation tool that mashes up with Google or Yahoo Map. The example above is one person's list and map of the top attractions in Rome. Many of the maps are tourism and travel related (as maps tend to be, in general), including the Best of New York, and World's Best Beaches. Other maps show the location of members of a group (such as VlogInternacional ). Two nice features are (1) Detailed information that can be included on each item posted on the map, including descriptive tags, and (2) A short bit of HTML code that can be easily copied into any web page that you may have.

In fact, I created my own Rrove map for my Responsible Travel Network at Ning.com (see image below). It was easy to insert the code and tweak the width and height to fit the Ning.com size restrictions. Now members (and anyone else who visits ResponsibleTravel.ning.com) will be able to post their locations and their favorite responsible travel destinations. (You can also keep your map closed so that only you can post to it.)

Rove also promotes itself as a website for discovering places in the world, based on the maps that users have created. There is a search function, but I found it woefully lacking in its ability to find place that I searched for -- even though I had seen them on existing maps. In addition, there does not seem to be a way to search for a map (which they call "sets"). There were only 97 maps/sets on the day that I created my own map (above). But even then, it was a hassle trying to re-find the maps that I mentioned above.

In sum, Rrove.com is a great tool for creating and embedding user maps on your own web pages. I recommend it.

Ning - No More Excuses to Creating a Web 2.0 Travel Site

2007-02-28T13:36:00.000-08:00

Ning.com is hottest new Web 2.0 tool to be announced this past week. Ning.com (now in version 2) allows anyone to easily create, through a drag and drop process, a Social Network on which members can post discussion items, blogs, photos and videos, and more. It is entirely free, with advertising, and $19/month without ads. Although it is in no way only for travel and tourism, there were close to 200 social networks that are tagged "travel" on the day that I wrote this.

I have created two social networks of my own at Ning.com. One is centered on my Travelography Travel News podcast (at http://travelnews.ning.com), and the other is on Responsible Travel and Sustainable Tourism (at http://responsibletravel.ning.com).

It was very easy to create these, though doing more customizing will probably take some time. In particular, I would like to add a Google Map mashup, which is found a quite a few of the social networks (such as the Travel Tips one, below). The networks with these maps appear to be from version 1 of Ning.com, and is not a standard tool built into version 2.0. In fact, if anyone has some tips on how to create a map mashup and add it to Ning.com, I would appreciate the help.

For a video introduction and tutorial to Ning.com, go to the Scoble Show blog. Also see Ning reviews on Tech Crunch and GigaOM.

--------------------
NEW (7 Sept 07): There are other web services similar to Ning that may meet your needs better. TechCrunch.com reviews nine of them here.

Step Up Travel - Sustainable Travel Does Web 2.0

2007-02-27T00:04:00.000-08:00

"We promote responsible travel which emphasizes the importance of personal exchanges, deeper cultural understanding, genuine benefit to local people and their communities, preservation of the environment, and ultimately a more peaceful and equitable world."

Step Up Travel claims to be the first application of Web 2.0 to Responsible Travel, and I think they may be right. There are older websites devoted to responsible travel, including both resources on responsible travel issues and listings of responsible tour products. Two that I am familiar with are Planeta.com and the Big Volcano Ecotourism Centre. But both of these are in need of a major Web 2.0 face lift. And there is the National Geographic Center for Sustainable Destinations, which is sometimes related to the more commercial National Geographic Traveler. As colorful and engaging as National Geographic is, however, it lacks a social interface and comes across as more institutional and less in touch with the "real" people in a destination.

So I think, yes, Step Up Travel is the first responsible travel site on the Web 2.0 era:

It has an attractive and clean interface,
it provides resources to help make travel more responsible,
it appears to be making a concerted effort to market truly local products that support the destination, and
it has a Travel Network for "Socially-minded Travelers to Connect with local people, Get off the beaten path, and Change the face of travel."

The Travel Network will be the real test of the success of Step Up Travel in achieving its goals of linking local people with concerned and responsible tourists. I have joined and it is successful.

2007 Travvies Nominees for Best Travel Blogs

2007-02-26T20:00:00.000-08:00

Upgrade: Travel Better - 2007 Travvies: Meet the finalists, meet the judges, and vote!

The Upgrade: Travel Better blog is running a "Best Travel Blogs" contest. I just stumbled on this and thought it was a good idea -- at least a way of spreading the word about travel blogs.

I have only heard of a few of the blogs that made the final nominations, and the nomination process seemes a bit free-wheeling. But at least its a start. And I do hope to find some time to check out at least some of the nominees.

Voting ends on February 28th. So it you are the voting type, you need to head over their quickly.

MyGreatRides.com - The Online Motorcycle Community

2007-02-06T14:06:00.000-08:00

MyGreatRides.com - The Online Motorcycle Community

"The open road meets the Info Superhighway at MyGreatRides.com, a virtual community for people who have a passion for riding."

I am personally not a biker in any way, and this website is still in beta (you need to sign up for an invitation). However, I thought it was an interesting niche travel idea, and one that may catch on with that very devoted segment of the recreation travel and tourism market. I did a quick search and did not find anything quite like what this site may be -- though I can't really tell until it become public. The closest thing was Total Motorcycle.com, but that seemed a lot more Web 1.0.

ALSO CHECKOUT: BikersWorld.com

TripConnect.com

2007-02-05T09:29:00.000-08:00

"TripConnect allows you to get travel advice from a network of friends and others who share your tastes and interests." (from their website)

TripConnect started up in September 2006 and seems to being going strong. It is another social travel website, like 43places.com and Wayn.com. Like those, and others, TripConnect alows members to list, review and blog about places where you have been, and asking others members about places you want to go. TripConnect also allows you to suggest and join special interest groups (see the image above), which is less common elsewhere -- though others may also have added since the last time I looked! It does seem to be lacking a map interface, which is something that is really well done on the VCarious.com website.

Personally, I found TripConnect to be simple and straightforward - and that alone can give it a considerable advantage in the growing world on social travel websites.

Mobile Video Blogging Experiment

2007-01-16T03:02:00.000-08:00

Jesse in Belgium sent me a link to a blog where he describes how he recently used his Nokia N91 to take videos, geotag them with a GPS receiver, and upload them to a travel blog -- while traveling in Thailand.

This is probably easier to do in the Europe or the US, and probably impossible in most of the areas of Nepal that I recently traveled through (click here).

Reactive: Web 2.0 for Travel and Tourism

2006-12-19T01:28:00.000-08:00

Reactive, a UK and Australia-based web design agency, has released a free "white paper" titled Web 2.0 for Travel and Tourism. The white paper is a good summary of different aspects of Web 2.0 and examples of companies and websites that are using them. Each category (listed below) is discussed in three sections: (1) Basics, (2) How does it relate to the tourism and travel industry?, and (3) Examples. The major Web 2.0 categories are (from their blog):

Blogging (Starwood, Eurostar and STA Travel)
Podcasting (Lonely Planet, Orbitz, Virgin Atlantic, The Independent and Heartbeat guides)
Social networking and user generated content (TripAdvisor, Yahoo, Contiki and Sheraton)
Online video (YouTube, Travelistic and MGM Grand Las Vegas)
RSS (Expedia, STA Travel, Virgin Holidays, Orbitz, and Conde Nast)
Tagging (del.icio.us, Flickr and Travbuddy)
Mash-ups and Open API’s (Locale, Virtual Tourism, Blogabond, 43 Places and TripAdvisor)
Wikis (Wikitravel, World66 and TripAdvisor)
AJAX (Kayak, Sidestep, Farecast and Google Maps)

You can request a copy of the white paper (.PDF) file from Reactive's blog.

ebookers.com's Travel Calendar

2006-12-17T23:17:00.000-08:00

The UK-based online travel agency, ebookers.com has just introduced a new, downloadable desktop "Travel Calendar." This seems to be a first, at least for Travel 2.0 applications. You can use the online version of the calendar, but the preferred approach is to download it to your desktop to you can more easily personalize it with your own entries and access it off-line. The "travel" part of the calendar includes special events from around the world, National Geographic-like travel photographs, and, of course, special travel deals and contests that are pushed to the calendar from ebookers.com. You can customize the calendar to some degree and can print it.

You need to register with ebookers.com to to download or access the calendar online. Personally, I am not willing to register and install a program on my computer so I can have advertisements pushed to me. If I were a heavy user of ebookers.com, I might consider it -- maybe, maybe not. Either way, it is an interesting way to create a user relationship with a travel company, including user generated customization. It kind of reminds me of Yahoo Travel's Trip Planner. If successful, and I think it probably will be, I think we will see more Travel 2.0 calendaring in the future.

Tourism and Social Media Class at NAU

2006-12-11T07:25:00.000-08:00

I have added Social Media to my Spring 2007 class, "Planning for Sustainable Tourism". The class is taught 100% online. Hopefully I will not overwhelm the more technologically challenged students in the class! Click on the title above to go to the current version of the class overview. Registration information can be NAU Distance Learning.

OVERVIEW of PL 376 for Spring 2007
- January 16 - May 11, 2007

Click here for Syllabus

Topic Groups: Each student will be assigned to one of the following three groups at the start of the semester. Students will be given the opportunity to switch groups later in the semester. The Final Project will be related to the topic of the group. A couple of sample topics for each group is shown below.

Sustainable Tourism and Money
- Promoting Destinations and Sustainability Online
- Monetizing Sustainable Travel and Tourism Websites, Blogs and Podcasts
Sustainable Tourism and the Environment
- Social Networking for the Environment
- Online Environmental Education
Sustainable Tourism and Community (Physical and Digital)
- Online Citizen Participation / Political Activism
- Virtual Communities and Real Communities

CLASS SCHEDULE - Please See the LEARNING MODULES and CALENDAR for Actual Assignments and Due Dates

This Schedule is Under Construction, though it will probably not change much.

Week		Points
Module 1 - Intro to Class, Sustainability, and Social Media
1-2	Class Intro Assignment: Tourism Development Issues	75
3	Sustainable Development and Tourism	75
4	Social Media and Tourism	75
5	Planners and Planning for Tourism	75
6	Sustainable Tourism, Planning and Social Media	75
7	Midterm Exam #1	100
Module 2 - Tourism Impacts (using collaborative blogs)
8	Economic Impacts of Tourism	75
9	Social Impacts of Tourism	75
10	Environmental Impacts of (and on) Tourism	75
11	Topic Group Wiki Projects: Resources for Manging Tourism Impacts, Greening the Tourism Economy, or Tourism Planning for People	75
12		75
13	Midterm Exam #2	100
Module 3 - Social Media and Destination Marketing
14	Final Project: Place Promotion with Social Media (website creation, podcasting, and other Web 2.0 Travel Tools; there is no final exam)	75
15		75
16		100
	Total Points (subject to change)	1200

Definitions: Social Media - Social Software - New Media

Social Software Tools that will be used in this class, include:

Message/Discussion Boards (we will use this in Blackboard-Vista)
Websites (this will be part of the final project, most student will use the simple online web creator at Weebly.com, or the free domain service from Microsoft Live)
Wikis (at a minimum, there will be one wiki for each of the Topic Groups above)
Social Bookmarking (e.g., Del.icio.us - optional)
Blogs (potentially including video and photo blogging; at a minimum there will be one collaborative group blog for each of the three Topic Groups above)
Podcasts ( this will be part of Final Project, and if it is good enough I will put it out on my Geography for Travelers podcast - with your permission, of course; this will also be shared with student at the University of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia)
Virtual Reality (optional; can you promote a destination through Second Life? want to try?)
Social Networks (all students will be required to join and report on a travel-related social network)

Trippermap.com - Making Flickr.com Geotags Easy!

2006-12-06T19:43:00.000-08:00

I got an email today from some place called Trippermap.com. At first I thought it was spam and almost deleted it. But instead I opened it a took a look. -- and I am glad I did. Trippermap.com used to be called Flickrmap.com, and I do recall signing up for their service a while ago -- a little before Flickr.com added its own geotagging function. However, at that time I did not really feel like going through and adding geotags to my many Flickr pro account photos -- which now numbers almost 22,000 (most of which are "public").

Well, apparently the Trippermap folks have been updating their tools and I think the current version is great! What they sent me in the mail was a link to my Trippermap, which automatically locates any photo that I have tagged with a city and country. Not all my photos have that, but many do -- and I think it would be quite easy to add those tags to sets of photos in Flickr. I copied the code from the Tippermap site and plugged into my homepage (near the bottom) and now I have a nice size map tagged with icons for many of my public photos , along with a photo bar and java-based viewing function. I have tried a few other Flickr photo bars, but never really liked the results. This is the first one that I will probably keep on my website!

In addition to the basic city and country tag approach to locating photos, Trippermap also provides a Google Earth tool that allows you to use satellite images/maps to locate one or more photos more precisely, and then add the latitude and longitude coordinates direct to your Flickr site photo for searching and viewing using Flickr's map link. A video Tutorial is provided on the Trippermap.com on how to do this.

The free version of Trippermap only comes with a blank outline map of the world, on which photo icons appear, and only shows 200 Flickr photos. Trippermap Premium costs $9.75 year and includes full color Google Maps, all your photos, and Trip Route/Itinerary creation by drawing lines from one photo icon to the next. (Each icon, by the way, can include an unlimited number of photos.) They convinced me to go for the Premium account.

NEW: After posting the blog above, I received an email about Panoramio.com you can geolocate your photos via drag and drop interface and using Google Maps and you can watch uploaded photos inside Google Earth with a KML file (http://www.panoramio.com/panoramio.kml)." - I visited the site, but you cannot really tell what it does without registering, which I was not ready to do (and there was no Bugmenot.com). However, there were some cool sample travel maps on their blog page, and you can also search without registering (type in the name of a place to get a map with geotagged photos).

"Web 2.0: Too much of a good thing?" - Or Not Yet Enought?

2006-12-01T19:39:00.000-08:00

Charles Leocha, publisher of the Tripso.com travel travel news and commentary site, recently posted an item titled "Web 2.0: Too much of a good thing?" that readers of this blog might find of interest. (You can also click on the title of this blog to go to his article.)

I read through his "article" (it is not a commentable blog) a couple of days ago and have been troubled by it since. He basically defines "Web 2.0" as user-generated websites, and cites two major uses of Web 2.0 for travel and tourism: sites where users rate places, and sites where users share travel experiences. He then cautions that both rating and sharing sites can be manipulated for insidious or untrustworthy commercial purposes, citing examples from MySpace.com and Sony Pictures -- not the most trustworthy spaces on the Internet, in my opinion.

Personally, I found the definition of Web 2.0 and the examples provided to be very narrow. Two key elements missing are (1) the community and social aspects of Web 2.0, which includes the importance of reputation and trust, and (2) the rich Internet user interfaces and applications (see Web 2.0 on Wikipedia).

Hotel ratings are one of the oldest, and still not very sophisticated, examples of Web 2.0 that Charles Leocha discusses. In fact, I am barely able to to even include TripAdvis0r.com in the realm of Web 2.0 -- it just feels more like a Web 1.0 free-for-all, lacking a real sense of community. I agree with Charles Leocha that it leaves the user with a sense of “Who can I trust?” I think that this is because its user base is so large (over 5 million reviews), that every possible opinion on any place can be found there. It lacks the strength of a Web 2.0 long tail niche community of like-minded users. In my opinion, TripAdvisor could use a major Web 2.0 work over -- more in the direction of 43Places.com. However, with their current use rates, I doubt that they have any incentive to do that!

Is Web 2.0 too much of a good thing? In my opinion, Travel 2.0 is in its infancy. Examples of websites that are exploring and pushing travel and tourism in the direction of user communities and rich interfaces are found in the postings on this blog.

Travel Videos - Coming to a PC near you now!

2006-11-18T18:23:00.000-08:00

Travel videos appear to be the hottest thing on Travel 2.0 websites! This really hit me when, in two days I received announcement of new travel videos from the discount travel agency, Travelzoo.com and from the social travel site Tripmates.com.

Travel Zoo Unleasehed Travel Videos currently has three 20 minute long videos up: Washington DC, Atlantic City NJ, and Lower Manhattan NY. These have a professional polish, some of which are hosted by budding celebrities.
Tripmates' Trip Flix videos are uploaded by site members, and, or course, are much shorter and less professional. It is more of a Youtube.com experience, though probably more focused on sharing destination experiences.
-- Also like this is ZoomAndGo.com
-- And a note from Indra: VCarious.com also has a Travel Video service. Users can upload their own travel videos, along with their photos. Videos and photos can be attached to the journals and travel guides. Everything can be explored using maps.

There are, however, a bunch of other sites with travel videos, include YouTube.com, the recent $1.6 billion sale of which has probably prompted this sudden rush to enter the video marketplace. Among them are:

TurnHere: Short Films, Cool Places - "Free video guides for travel, restaurants, hotels, local events & music". Turn Here is very much place-based. Its professional and semi-professionally produced videos are organized around destinations. The major ones are the San Francisco Bay area, New York metro area, and the Los Angeles metro area. Other cities are also listed, though with fewer films. The videos are really nice -- better than most of my home videos. -
Travelistic: Videos for Travelers - "We host all kinds of travel videos, including user uploads, professional content, and tourist board videos". You can search videos on this site by Tags, Places (from a google map that shows the number of videos for each country), and People (that is, the people who made the video).

I did a quick search for other travel video websites and came up with a bunch of them. Many are commercial sites that sell travel videos, and which I am not really interested in covering here. Free sites include a number of destination convention and visitor bureau sites. Some others that are worth checking out are:

Discovery Channel Video Tours of US National Parks (using Google Earth)
Travelago.com - Similar to TurnHere - lists itself as having one of the largest collections of destination and attraction videos
TravelRapidly.com - Videos on a wide range of attractions in Arizona (if you are planning a visit to my home state!)

EveryTrail - GPS and Photo Travel Blogging

2006-11-12T22:39:00.001-08:00

If you are into GPS, then Everytrail.com is fairly simple concept. If you are not into GPS, you may become more interesting after checking out this interesting website.

Everytrail.com allows users to mashup their GPS tracks and geotag them with photos and short comments. Comments are indeed quite short, so it is not really a full travel blogging application. Instead, the focus is on sharing your treks with the world on a Google Map -- preferably a satellite image. The image draw as a line tracing the route, and the user adds photo and text icons. Zooming in and out is a breeze, making this a is a very nice way to virtually experience a place!

The treks that were up on the site when I visited seemed to be very limited in the number of photos and comments that they included. I wonder if there is a limit. I tend to take a lot of photos on most any trip that I take -- several hundred a day, of which I keep about half. It seems that a high density of photos taken at ground level, combined with the Google satellite image, and short text comments, could go a long way to provide a virtual travel experience. Visitors can also comment on the trails.

Evertrail.com is a fun site, worth checking out.

RealTravel.com Trip Planner Review on TechCrunch

2006-10-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

FYI - TechCrunch.com has a good review of RealTravel.com's new trip planner. Click the title above to see what they have to say.

Farecast Expands to 75 Cities

2006-10-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

Farecast is now available to for 75 cities! The website that predicts the best air fare prices on a given day based on historical data was previously only available for Boston and Seattle.

Farecast is basically an airline fare search engine. I am not sure just how good it is at that, and suggest that you compare it to your current favorites before you buy anything. What Farecast offers that is unique is a tool that tries to predict when the lowest prices can be found between any two cities. Unfortunately it appears that this tool only works for flights between the 75 cities that are in its database. I could not get a price on a flight between Phoenix and Fairbanks, for example, because Fairbanks is not in its database.

However, this is a big move up from the original two cities that previously made the site a curiosity, but not very useful. The intend to continue to grow the database, and I will look forward to the day when they also add international cities!

Tripmates.com: an American "Donkey Friends"?

2006-09-20T21:25:00.000-07:00

I recently attended a tourism research conference in Singapore, some of the papers from which are appearing on the Geography for Travelers podcast. One of the things that I learned about, through two different researchers, was the Chinese concept of Donkey Friends. In Mandarin Chinese, the words Travel and Donkey have the same sound ("lyu"), though the tones are different. Because of this, the word Donkey has come to applied to a distinctly Chinese for or "backpacker" travel.

Using a social software travel website, the Head Donkey posts a notice that he or she is going to organize a trip on a certain date to a certain destination, and asks if anyone wants to join. Other Donkeys sign up by responding to this post. The trips are self organized and catered to save money, and everyone has their backpack. Like other tour groups, there are expected standards of behavior and role differentiations (some of which are along gendered lines), and people develop friendships that last beyond the one trip. Apparently the Chinese media has cautioned about the the potential dangers of traveling with strangers. Searching for information in English on Donkey Friend Travel online, however, did not result in anything that I could find.

This type of travel has not, to my knowledge, been very common in the US. Tripmates. com, however, may hope to change that. Tripmates is a new social travel site that share a lot in common with other social travel sites, such as 43Places.com, VCarious.com and MyLifeOfTravel.com, all of which I have used in the past, and the new TripConnect.com. This includes asking and sharing information about destinations and blogging about trips. What is different with Tripmates is an explicit focus on meeting new people. According to the website you can:

Find a trip buddy so you don't have to travel alone
Organize group trips with our exclusive Tripvite feature
Meet locals or people traveling to your destination

There is an interest in this kind of travel, at least among a segment of the population in the west (see, for example, CouchSurfing.com). It will be interesting to see if traveling with Donkey Friends catches on outside of China.

FYI -Tripmates has also been reviewed breifly on Mashables.com

NEW: 6/21/07 - I see that TripMates has changed its name to TripUp.com - though the concept seems to be the same.

WAYN.COM - Where Are You Now?

2006-09-03T00:41:00.000-07:00

WAYN.COM - Log your trips - see who is where - make new friends

If you have a ton of friends who travel all over the world, or if you want a ton of friends who travel all over the world, then WAYN (Where Are You Now) is probably just what you need! Personally, I like my small group of friends, who happen to live all over the world, but I do not feel any need to know exactly where everyone is at any one point in time. However, if you do want to know that, and if they want to let you know that, then WAYN is what you need.

Personally, I am a bit skeptical that people travel all that much, and that they really want to let all their friends and the whole world know every time they make a trip anywhere. Or that they are open to meeting strangers everywhere they go in the world.

But then I am an old guy, who does not do MySpace nor Second Life.

Actually, WAYNE kind of reminds me of 43Places.com, but is much more socially oriented. It is built around your friends, who you can notify about your travels, search to see where they are in the world, and SMS to their cell phone (as well as non-member cell phones). The focus on friends (current and potential) gives it a MySpace-ish feel -- more so than 43Places, which is very social, but feels more focused on places than WAYNE. WAYNE does have place discussion (a core feature of 43Places), and it allows you to upload trip photos.

While it may not be my cut of tea, it is certainly interesting -- so check it out.

Fresh Logic Atlas

2006-08-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

Atlas - powered by Fresh Logic Studios

The Fresh Logic Atlas is an Ajax-like and Google-like mapping site. There are three tabs at the top right of the screen:

Start: Directions, Email (send an email to Fresh Logic), Search, Toolbox (zoom and map type), Defaults, and Help
Features: Locate with pins Blogs, Events (from Eventful.com), Gas Prices, Movie Theaters, Traffic Notices, and Wifi Hotspots
Services: GPS to locate yourself and get direction (beta; requires registration and a GPS receiver coupled with a Windows Mobile 5 pda or phone)

The map of Phoenix, Arizona below shows the Features bar open in the right corner, with Traffic and Event showing on the map. The Traffic notice list is open, while the Event list is closed. Information on one of the Traffic points and on one of the Event points are shown in more detail. The navigation Toolbox is also open.

The Fresh Look Atlas is graphically the slickest and sophisticated mapping tool that I have seen. It also provides useful information for both residents and visitors to a place. Unfortunately it is currently limited to the US and Canada. And it can be somewhat sluggish, even on my DSL connection -- it appears to be doing a lot of processing! Using it over a dialup would probably be excruciating. Registration gives you additional features (though I could not see just how this was different from not registering). The Fresh Logic Atlas does not work with Safari for Mac OS X.

Yahoo! Map and Directions on your iPod

2006-08-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

iPod Directions : Use your iPod Video, Nano or Photo as a Yahoo! Maps directions viewer!

My son has an iPod, but I have resisted. I do, however, recognize their overwhelming popularity, and do not deny Apple its great iPod success. o, now all of you who own an iPod Video, Nano or Photo can easily download Yahoo! Map directions to your player -- which could be more convenient, and maybe cheaper, than a GPS unit.

From the website:

"Yahoo Maps and the popular iPod portable MP3 player are used together to bring you an exciting online service called iPod-Directions. What is it? iPod-Directions is a powerful step-by-step directions saving tool that will export online driving directions from results by Yahoo Maps and import them into your iPod. It’s an easy solution for getting Yahoo Map directions saved and displayed onto any iPod Video, Nano or Photo, and without the need of additional software!"

Sheraton Becomes Social with New Website

2006-08-03T12:33:00.000-07:00

"Sheraton Hotels & Resorts has launched the new Sheraton.com – termed as the first hotel industry website to embrace social media and feature user generated content."

Well,I am impressed. The new Sheraton.com website is a very alive and exciting site. The globe is definitely cool, and inviting. And it looks like quite a few contributors have already added thier peronal Sheraton stories (I think the site when live a month ago), though there are still a few "Be the first" links. I bet we will be seing a lot more of this from the big travel industry players in the coming year.

You can read a short story about this on eyefortravel.com.

Next wave of travel websites feels like MySpace | csmonitor.com

2006-08-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

Next wave of travel websites feels like MySpace | csmonitor.com

This is a Christian Science Monitor article on Travel 2.0 (Web 2.0 applied in the travel sector). The article is somewhat narrowly focused on TripAdvisor.com, though it does mention Farecast.com (great idea, if you live in Boston or Seattle, useless for the rest of the world) and Gusto.com (not one I am familiar with). Personally, I think the hottest Travel-Mypace is 43Places.com, though I personally am currently using MyLifeOfTravel.com and Vicarious.com.

CLICK HERE to go to read about and listen to my recent "Travel 2.0" conference presentation on my Geography for Travelers podcast.

The SoundSeeing World of Audio Travel

2006-07-20T09:35:00.000-07:00

The SoundSeeing World of Audio Travel

A soundseeing tour is an audio recording of the sounds of a place. There is typically no narrative voice, so it helps to have a website that tells you what the file is about (or to have the file properly coded to show this in the file information). Soundseeing tours are a fairly popular form of podcast, though they usually supplement more traditional podcasts. At least that is the way I have used them in my Geography for Travelers podcast (listen, for example, to my Hawaii episode).

Below are the two best sources for soundseeing tours that I have found. If you know of others, please send me the links (travelgeographer@gmail.com).

SoundTransit.nl

"SoundTransit is a collaborative, online community dedicated to field recording and phonography."

This is a database of soundseeing tours from around the world. SoundTransit.nl gives you two ways of listening to soundseeing .mp3 files. The first is to search by country and place, which results in a listing and description of contributed sound files.

The second version is more of a random file generator, although that is not very obvious from the description. What it does is it allows you to "Book a Transit" by identifying a start and end place, and indicate 1 to 5 stopovers. The site then generates several sample itineraries of sound files that one might encounter by following this transit. It also creates a map showing the transit route and the locations of the soundseeing files. However, the transits actually make no logical sense. I entered Montreal and Cuauhtemoc, Mexico, and the itinerary included Portland (Oregon), Yamaguchi (Japan), and New Plymouth (New Zealand). The site design is very Web 2.0/Ajaxy, so I am guessing that this randomness is intentional.

SoundTransit.nl is a collaraborative website, and those who wish to post their sound files to the site submit it to the site owners by email with a description. As of this writing, some 225 different people had submitted sound files and were listed in the Artists section. There is no RSS feed, though there are plans to start one in the future.

Soundseeing Podcasts from the AudioCollective.net

"This podcast is here to aggregate the best of soundseeing podcasts. There are so many great ones and their need to be a central place for finding these gems. Anyone can submit his or her podcast for addition to the feed."

This is more of an open source site for podcasters who play around with soundseeing tours from time to time. They can submit their soundseeing podcast episode here, and anyone who subscribes to the SoundseeingPodcast.com's RSS feed will get it. The result is an incredible diversity of sounds. It looks like there were 42 postings when I checked the site. It also appears to be a way for podcasts to broaden their name exposure, which means that these are experienced podcasters who are posting these audio files. As mentioned above, just hope that the file is properly coded so you can find out just what you are listening to, without having to always check back on the website.

--------
UPDATES (17Aug07)
1- HearingPlaces.org is a new US-based website for soundscenes.
2- I recently posted a soundseeing tour of Danxiashan in China
--------

GeoBirds - Your Online Birding Community!

2006-07-19T13:57:00.000-07:00

GeoBirds - Your Online Birding Community!

Birding? Tourism? You bet!

Ecotourism is one of the fastest growing niche tourism segments in the world. And Birding is the fastest growing segment of the ecotourism market. Personally, I am not a birder, though I did find that watching the Fairy Penguins return from the sea after sunset on Phillip Island (Melbourne, Australia) last month was absolutely thrilling! (see my travel blog here)

GeoBirds.com is a website for:
(1) Identifying birds - I often wonder about the birds in my backyard; there is also a bird identification game
(2) Sharing sitings of rare birds - This is more for the pro-bird watcher, and includes links to birding clubs!
(3) Learning about birds - an online field guide and news about birds around the world

And so, ummm, how is this Web 2.0? Geobirds.com is a social sharing site and birding is a longtail niche travel market, so I think it fits the definition.

Hmmm, maybe I will try a little birding on my next nature-based vacation. . . .

VCarious Travel adds Google Maps-based Photo and Journal Searching

2006-07-09T15:25:00.000-07:00

Explore the World | VCarious Travel

The travel blog and social software website, Vicarous.com, has recently added the ability to scan over a Google Map to find photos, journals (travel blogs/diaries), and wiki guides for different parts of the world.

The feature is still in beta, but seems to work well (other than being a bit overloaded on their server when they first put the feature up a few days ago). You can zoom in on the map to filter out photos and journals for geographic areas you are not interested in. And you can filter the photos by set category tags, such as Oceans, Landscapes, Cities, Wildlife and Travelers, or by typing locations or photo titles.

The photos are not very large, however, probably due to the fact the Vicarious allows unlimited uploads and its upload tool allows you to pull entire folders off your computer and from a Flickr.com account. It is possible to get to a larger version of each photo, but is takes several clicks and is not intuitive. (By comparison, MyLifeOfTravel.com has nice, big photos readily viewable on its travel blogs.) And, of course, for the photos to show up on the map Explore page, the photos need to be tagged to a location. Vicarious allows you to locate all the photos uploaded as a batch in one simple step, and allows you to title each photo at the time of upload in a very quick and easy way.

The wiki guides allow similar filtering and searches, while the journals can be searched by "concepts" only, which I assume are words that appear in the journals. As a relatively new website, Vicarious does not have the entire world covered, and only has about 350 members listed on its site. I must say, though, that Vicarious has gone through an entire facelift since the first time I visited the site a couple of months ago. They have also addes a route-tracing map tool (connecting the destinations on trip with a line), which I had not seen before (though it is not as flexible as a similar tool on MyLifeOfTravel, which allows several locations to be placed in each blog entry).

The new map searching capability on Vicarious.com is really nice and is an attractive tool for those of us who take LOTS of photos on their travels that they want to share. Check it out by clicking on the blog title above.

Tags: vcarious,photo,search,map search,travel journal,travel blog,google maps,wiki guides,guidebooks

Wifi Free Spot.com - free wifi hotspots worldwide

2006-07-07T21:52:00.000-07:00

WiFi Free Hotspots.com

You pretty much have to be online to access Web 2.0. For me, this has become the single biggest hassle of traveling! After my recent trip (to Australia, blogged here), I have sworn to only use hotels that can provide high speed Internet access, preferably wireless.

And of course, wouldn't it be great if it were free, as well?

Well, WifiFreeSpot.com lists airports, hotels, campgroungs, vacation rentals, coffee shops, bookstores, and other places that offer free wifi access. This site is likely to become a must-use resource for my future travel planning. It is part of JiWire.com, but I found it much easier to use than JiWire's hotspot finder, which focuses more on paid hotspots. (JiWire does have an interesting wifi newsletter that I susbcribe to.)

BTW - You should really install a personal firewall when using public wireless access points, and even hotel ethernet wired access points. I use the free Comodo Personal Firewall, which is discussed on the Leading Edge Technology podcast. I only turn it on when I am traveling.

Other Web 2.0 Related Travel Blogs

2006-07-03T16:08:00.000-07:00

Of course, why should I think that I am the only one out there blogging about online innovations in travel and tourism? Here are a two more that I just learned about and which cross many of the same boundaries that I do, though each in our own way. Check these out:

Les Explorers - by Claude Benard
<http://www.lesexplorers.com/> covers a wide range of travel and tourism, and while I do not know any French, I still find it of considerable interest

Hotel Blog - by Guillaume Thevenot
<http://www.hotel-blogs.com> had a focus on the hotel and hospitality industry, though not exclusively so

Let me know if there are any other worthy blogs out there, and I will add them to this blog entry.

TripHub and Triporama - Group Travel Planners

2006-06-23T09:25:00.000-07:00

What could be more social than traveling witha a group of friend and/or relatives to a fun destination? Well there are two (that I know of) free social software websites that help you to start developing the social relationships for such a journey online.

Triporama.com
- According to the webiste: "Plan a Group Trip -- Create your trip, then use our tools to:
* store and share travel research; * manage invites; * conduct polls; * coordinate travel; ...and more."

TripHub.com
- According to the website, you can "Easily plan and organize your trip for free! -- Create a Trip Home Page; Invite people to join the trip; Send Invitations; and Discuss & Share Plans"

Triporama currently appears to have a few more features, but TripHub may be easier to use. I suspect that competition will drive them to each add more tools to one-up the other. Both provide tips and ideas for group travel.

From my own experience, making group travel arrangements is not the easiest thing in the world to do in a smooth and painless way. So if you are given that responsibility, you might want to check these two sites out for tips and help to ease your planning efforts.

Latitudes Magazine - Travel Attitudes Magazine for Broadband

2006-06-07T19:30:00.000-07:00

Latitudes Magazine - Travel Attitudes Magazine for Broadband

This is National Geographic 2.0 -- a gorgeous online travel photo magazine with Italian flare and built for online viewing. A broadband connection is necessary and the latest issue (#14) is 181 pages of sharp full color photos and animations.

Issue #14 covers Columbia, Myanmar, The Berkshire Hills (Massachusetts), Mt. Etna, Berlin, Croatia, Tuscany and Salina (Italy). Look for animations (some hidden) in some of the photos. Basic Travel information and links are provided at the end of each photo essay.

The magazine comes in Italian and English versions. You can subscribe to their newsletter to get announcement of each new issue. The have a discussion forum, but with no moderators it is almost entirely filled with spam! They must be graphic artists first, and web masters last.

Very cool! - Check it by clicking on the title above.

Online Travel Maps - a mini review

2006-06-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

Online Travel Maps - a mini review

The folks over at TechCrunch (a new media blog site) have been comparing the different map search engines, including maps.Google.com, maps.Yahoo.com, Microsoft (local.live.com), maps.Ask.com and Mapquest.com. The competition is heated and new feature rollouts make comparisons a moving target. Their "winner" (in April 2006) was maps.Yahoo.com, which includes detailed traffic information for major cities and an easy to use interface that includes listing of services, restaurants and other places of potential interest to travelers.

Click Here to see the full TechCrunch assessment, which includes a table that compares the major features that are offered (and not) by each map.

Taking a quick look at all of the different sites listed above, I agree that the maps.Yahoo.com interface has the best combination of usefulness and usability. However, I found that maps.Ask.com has the nicest looking color aerial images of Flagstaff, AZ, which made finding my house much easier on their website than any other. And that oldie but goodie Mapquest.com, which still has a very Web 1.0 static map, had the most accurate street maps of Flagstaff.

To compete, Microsoft has added live traffic indicators to its maps, though it listed far fewer road incidents in Phoenix, AZ, than did the Yahoo map viewed at the same time. And Microsoft has a preview site of for Streetside (at http://preview.local.live.com/; also reviewed at TechCrunch). This site shows front and side photo views of streets in downtown San Francisco and Seattle. Pretty cool, especially if you are familiar with one of those two places (I found my old apartment in SFO!), though the interface is a bit clunky, kind of like playing a very old vide car driving game.

Personally, I think any of them will do a good job in getting you from point A to point B, but these new toys can be fun!

p.s. - This review also appears on my Geography for Travelers blog.

Tags: maps, mapping, travel, tourism, geography, aerial images, comparisons, maps.yahoo.com, maps.ask.com, mapquest, streetside, techcrunch

iAudioguide.com & Other Podcast Walking Tours

2006-05-26T21:29:00.000-07:00

I recently received an email from Torsten Peters at iAudioguide.com with updated information about their free downloadable audio walking tours, which currently cover London, Barcelona, and Paris. Interestingly, he included a couple of competitor urls and told me that if I wanted more he would send them. I said yes, and boy was I surprised at the number of links he sent me. At some point, when I have some free time (ha!), I will write a review article on this topic, possibly for my journal, Tourism Geographies. But in the meantime, I wanted to share the links with all of you. Torsten noted that iAudioguide.com is free, while most of the others charge a fee for their downloads. If you know of any others that I should add to this list, send them to me (travelgeographer@gmail.com) and I will add them to this list.

Thanks to Torsten!

BTW - What should we be calling these? Auidoguides? Audiotours? Podguides? Podtours? ??

www.iAudioguide.com
www.soundtrek.org/ - Bangkok
www.podguides.net
www.parisaudioguides.com
www.bluebrolly.co.uk
www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk/static/cs/uk/11/travel/podcast.html
www.visitscotland.com/sitewide/edinburghpodcast
www.talkingstreet.com/
www.footnotesaudiowalks.co.uk/
www.audiocitytour.com/
www.ijourneys.com/
www.ricksteves.com/news/travelnews/0602/audiotour.htm
NEW: Passport Guides for the PSP: http://psppassport.com/

related articles
www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/resources/st_travelswithipod0604/ipod.html
technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,16559,1681516,00.html
www.nytimes.com/2005/05/28/arts/design/28podc.html?ex=1274932800&en=db1ced6873dcc4b6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
www.macnewsworld.com/story/50096.html
www.csmonitor.com/2006/0412/p13s01-litr.html
www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,65945,00.html
tech.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1089780.php/Portable_tourist_guides_now_in_service

DIY Free Passport (and Visa) Photos at ePassportPhoto.com

2006-05-24T00:21:00.000-07:00

Save your money! Don't spend the outrageous fees at Kinkos for passport and visa photos. This websites helps you create your own.

I especially like this list of 10 Do's and don'ts for passport photos -- The MANY Sample Photos are both informative and humorous!

Check it out at: ePassportPhoto.com

From the webiste:

ePassportPhoto is the Internet passport photos booth - empowering people around the world to make free and valid passport photos.

Schmap - Never Buy Another Guidebook?

2006-05-19T06:22:00.000-07:00

Online destination information has long been available in Web 1.0 format. These websites were rather limited in the past (fear of competing with print guidebooks, I think), though they seems to be getting more comprehensive.

More recently, online audio guidebooks have started to proliferate in the podosphere (podcasts and videocasts/vodcasts), replacing the never-really-that-popular cassette tape guides (examples include www.iAudio.com, PodGuides.net and www.Vidocity.com). While helpful tools for general background information on a destination and site-specific walking tours, audio and video guides will never be able to replace the diversity and quick lookup capabilities of printed guidebooks. (I will be writing a broader review of audio guides in a forthcoming blog.)

www.Schmap.com takes a different approach -- and one that is directly aimed at the printed guidebook. The Schmap Player installs on Windows PCs (not Macs, yet) and then works with downloaded destination information (Schmap Guides). Once is a downloaded, the Schmap Guide enables (from the website):

Dynamic Browsing - The Schmap Player dynamically integrates maps, photos, reviews and online content, giving you complete freedom to explore.
Trip Planning - When you're browsing, searching or playing a virtual tour, simply bookmark places of interest to tailor a trip itinerary.
City Search - Search the city, a neighborhood, or within a radius of your hotel - find sights of interest, restaurants to match your taste...
Custom Guide Printing - Take your bookmarked places or any other selection of guide content, then custom print a full-color guide, with maps, photos, reviews...
Virtual Tours - Play, pause and fast-forward your way through one of our suggested tours, or your own custom selection of places of interest. (The photos used are from Flickr.com with creative commons copyrights.)
Tools - Email a favorite place, explore with our cool map tools, click online for user reviews, web search, and driving directions...

Perhaps the most popular feature is the maps, which highlights attractions and services as the cursor passes over their locations. This is helpful for trip planning and preparation, though it also requires that you take your computer with you and possibly a printer if you want to print out a revised hardcopy itinerary and reference. If there were a way to save the information for viewing on a PDA, cell phone or mp3 player, that would be cool.

Only a few guides for the US and Europe are currently available, though forthcoming guides and their availability months are listed. Their dependence on local partners may result in considerable variability in quality and content, and may cause some guides to be delayed or not regularly updated. By late 2006, the site will have couple hundred city and destination guides, including Canada. They hope to cover the rest of the world with time and expanded participation from local partners located in the destinations who can update the Schmap Guides on a 3 to 6 month basis. All of this currently seem to be free and without advertising, though I wonder it that might changed someday. In the meantime, Schmap appears to be a valuable Web 2.0 Travel Tool worth checking out for your next trip.

My Life of Travel - Travel Journals/Blogs, Reviews, Photos, + Maps

2006-05-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

I think I may have found my preferred travel blog site.
My Life of Travel bills itself as "The fun, easy and powerful way to publish travel stories, upload photos and grow travel maps online."

One thing that this side does that is different from other travel blog sites is that it allows you to create a "Travel Route Map" - which is essentially a line map that connects the places you have visited with straight lines that mark your travels over time. A sliding bar is used to move back and forward in time. This is a significant improvement over the simple dot maps that most other travel blog sites are now adopting.

Really cool! Check it out.

VirtualTourist.com - Largest Social Travel Site?

2006-04-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

VirtualTourist.com - Travel Guides, Maps, Photos, Forums, Deals, more:

"Worldwide Travel Guide. Tips, Reviews & Photos plus Hotels, Restaurants, Activities & More"

VirtualTourist.com may be the largest travel social website today, with over 700,000 members. In the previous 24 hours prior to this posting there were: 1,075 new travel tips posted; 2,034 new forum postings; 1,175 new page comments; 76 new travel deals; and 432 new members!

=======
TripAdvisor.com is also a much visited social-like website (19 million visit per month), though with a much more narrow focus on accommodation reviews -- over 4 million user reviews, so far.

PAGUNA - Hotel Bookings in AJAX

2006-04-06T22:04:00.000-07:00

PAGUNA.com

This is probably the slickest hotel booking site yet! I do not know if they have the best prices, but I do know that it is fun to use!

I received this note from the developers:

By utilizing AJAX, we were able to design the website so that the customer can complete the entire booking process on one HTML page.

From our point of view, the utilization of AJAX in a hotel booking website increases usability greatly. By fitting the entire booking process onto one page, Paguna enables the user the always know which step of the booking he currently is in, and the search and booking processes is easier and more efficient. If you compare using Paguna with “traditional” hotel reservation websites, you will notice how much more quickly you can make changes, read hotel information, and look at pictures of the hotel when using Paguna.

As far as we know, Paguna is the first commercial application of its kind which uses AJAX intensively in order to realize a new usability concept.

=======

Another apparently Ajax-based hotel (and hostel) booking site is TripMojo. It is very basic, however, in comparison to Paguna, and seems to rely on any casual viewer (including hotels, themselves) to add information and links to the accommodations that are included.

Eventful: Demands -- Create Your Own Real Event!

2006-03-30T13:13:00.000-08:00

Not exactly travel, but related in a leisure/recreation sort of way...

Eventful: Hottest Demands:

Eventful Demand - A new service giving you tools to make dream events come true.

How It Works (learn more)
1. Start a demand
2. Join and promote demand
3. Reach critical mass
4. Contact performer
5. Performer agrees
6. Schedule event
7. Eventful sends you an email

I Love Travel Stories

2006-03-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

The subtitle for this webpage is: The best new travel writing on the web? You choose. You decide. -- which, of course, is what makes it Web 2.0!

I am personally not that into traditional travel writing and reading. (Travel blogging is another story -- though I am not quite sure what the difference is!) But, for those of you who love travel writing, the I Love Travel Stories website (still in beta) looks like a cool site where you can both submit and vote on the best articles available on the web.

If you are a Travel Writer, you should check out:

Written Road - the inside scoop to the travel publishing world

Based on the large number of links on this site, I would guess that travel writing is a very popular activity these days!

Flagr.com Goes Live! - map your trips

2006-03-06T13:56:00.000-08:00

Flagr.com went live today. The idea is to place google map type pins on a map, with comments, to show friends and others where you have been (or where you will be). Locations can be very specific (many of the eraly pins are restaurant reviews) or more general (such as a city). Comments and thumbnail photos can also be included. Pins can be placed either through a cell phone or logging into your Falgr.com account. Updates can be emailed to friends.

To see My Flagr Page, which is under construction, click here. This is fun! Click the title above to get your own Flagr account.

** JumpClaimerer.com - offers a similar travel tracking and mapping service, but based solely on SMS/text messaging. It seems more basic, and less of a social networking site than Flagr, but I could be wrong about that. Check it out for yourself.

LicketyTrip.com

2006-02-28T20:03:00.000-08:00

This site uses a Google Map to display Last Minute Vacation Rentals, which they define as rentals that available in the coming two-week period (sounds appropriate to me). Last minute rentals are not necessarily a Web 2.0 phenomenon, but the use of Google Maps is. All you do is click on the Map Pin to get an instant pop up of the property -- incredibly fast, fun and easy to use! They don't have a lot of properties up at the moment, probably because they are so new.

I think we will soon be seeing more of these kinds of mapping applications beyond the last minute travel realm.

MBA & Ph.D. in eTourism

2006-02-28T09:33:00.000-08:00

A Web 2.0 Tool? Possibly. In any event, there is nothing like a good dose of higher education to help that salary and career along...

-----Original Message-----
From: Frew, Andrew [AFrew@QMUC.ac.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 7:52 AM
To: TRINET-L@HAWAII.EDU
Subject: Ph.D. scholarships

There are opportunities to study for a Ph.D. in the field of eTourism:

If you are interested in any of these topics just get in touch or perhaps post on relevant notice boards.

By the way our MBA (eTourism) survey is still open if you are interested.

Kind regards, Andy

Andrew J Frew, Ph.D.
Professor/Chair of IT and Tourism; Director, SITI
School of Business and Enterprise, Queen Margaret University College
33 Clerwood Terrace, Corstorphine, Edinburgh, EH8 12TS, UK
Tel +44 131 317 3596; Fax +44 131 317 3777

Queen Margaret University College has been named Britain’s top higher education college in The Sunday Times University Guide 2005
- Editor-in-Chief; Information Technology and Hospitality
- President, Hospitality IT Association, HITA;
- President, International Federation of IT in Travel & Tourism, (IFITT)
Advisory Board, HITEC

Podbop.org - Local bands podcast

2006-02-16T22:50:00.000-08:00

Podbop is more entertainment than travel, but since so much of travel is recreation and entertainment, I think it probably fits here. This is a cool website/tool. Type in the name of a US city (unfortunately it is not yet available for the rest of the world) and you will be giving a list of upcoming live concerts and events, with links to some other event sites. The cool part is that you also get an RSS feed that will feed songs from the bands that are coming to your town. I am assuming that it works, as I have just subscribed for my town and have yet to download anything.

VCarious.com Travel

2006-02-09T09:52:00.000-08:00

Another social website worth checking out.

From the website:

VCarious is a community-based travel site. You can use VCarious to explore the world through dynamic travel guides and photos, meet other travelers, and share your experiences with family and friends.

Start by using GeoExplorer to browse content from all over the map. To find something specific try a Search. Want to meet friends? Try the User Search. Contribute to VCarious by editing any of the guides or listings. Or share your trip by adding your own journal and photos. Happy Travels!

Is Podcasting "The death of the guidebook? "

2006-02-06T21:59:00.000-08:00

I saw this posted on the Amateur Traveler podcast shownotes (thanks Chris2!). I tend to agree with the conclusions to the article that guidebooks will not go away (I'll take a paper map over one on my PDA anytime!) -- and that destination podcasts will only grow in popularity. Most people want to learn as much as they can about the places that they visit and podcasts make a great supplement to guidebooks -- unless maybe if you are into Experimental Tourism!

NEW: Digital options lighten load for tourists - By Reuters February 18, 2006, 1:59 PM PST

TravelPod - The Web's Original Travel Blog

2006-02-03T19:27:00.000-08:00

(click on title above to go to webpage)

TravelPod.com is devoted exclusively to travel blogs, aka online "travel journals" and "travelogues." Started in 1997, it probably was the first website to offer this service. Membership (which is free) allows you to submit blog entries about your trip, upload photographs, and even upload video and audio files (travel podcasts). You can create an address book of people who will be notified each time you make a blog entry of file upload. And, TravelPod will track your entries on a world map for others to see. Pretty cool!

Members also have access to personal guest books (blog visitors), budget travel resources, email accountes, newsletters, and discussion forums.

I started my blogging life this past year when my daughter recommended that I do a blog for a trip that I was taking the Golden Triangle region of Southeast Asia. I spent many a late evening writing up blog entires on my laptop, which I later uploaded to blogger/blogspot.com. For my next trip blog, I will probably be using TravelPod!

Podcasts about Tourism and Travel

2006-02-01T09:03:00.000-08:00

(click the title above to access this website)

Some say that blogging was the birth of Web 2.0. Podcasting is essentially audio blogging and there has been a gradually growing number of podcasts related to travel. Travel and tourism podcasts tend to be of three types (with considerable overlap among individual podcasts):

Destination Podcasts (describing and selling destinations)
Travel Experience Podcasts (including sound-seeing tours)
Travel/Tourism Industry and Education Podcasts (including news and opinion)

This website (which I maintain) focusses on #3 in this list, though it also includes links to podcasts directories that include destination and experience podcasts.

Mark Peacock of the Travel Commons podcast suggested that travel podcasts can also be divided into those that are Original (specifically for podcasting) and those that are Repurposed (originally broadcast as traditional radio programs, for example).

Here is a recent article on Travel Podcasts:
Digital options lighten load for tourists - By Reuters February 18, 2006, 1:59 PM PST

NEW and Under Construction: Travelcasts - Travel and Tourism Podcasts Blog

TripAdvisor.com

2006-02-01T08:02:00.000-08:00

TripAdvisor.com is the largest travel review site around, though its focus is mostly on selling hotel rooms. I heard that it was purchased by Expedia in 2005 to add some Web 2.0 to the Expedia website, though other than listing TripAdvisor as a "partner," there is no sign of this on eiter website.

TripAdvisor is far from the community comment tool that Yelp.com and 43Places.com are, but I would guess that they are looking at those sites for future development of their own.

From their website:

The largest site for unbiased travel reviews gives you the real story about hotels, attractions and restaurants around the world. Stories, secrets and special places from people just like you. Search, travel, then share your own experiences.

3,000,000+ unbiased reviews and opinions you can trust
Updated every minute, every day by real travelers
"Been there, done that" inside information
The best deals for your travel dates

Virtual Malaysia - Malaysia Tourism Portal

2006-01-31T19:41:00.000-08:00

I was preparing a talk last year on Tourism Implications of Longtail Economics when I stumbled on the Virtual Malaysia website. Wow! -- they were doing almost everything that I was going to talk about.

Their website is highly interactive, allowing traveler tales and photo sharing; they provide a wide variety of live tools and tips for travelers; they have a section on mobile pocket travel; and they have even created a separate photography community site within their tourism portal. They have videos, music, and a beautiful 360 degree photo gallery! (Though they do not yet have a podcast.)

From the Community section of VirtualMalaysia.com:

Welcome to VM Community page, a place where valued users such as you get to take part in our many interesting features that we have installed especially for you. Share your travel experiences, memorable photos, or send personalised E-cards to friends and family. Join our membership programme and enjoy great discount on hotel stay and special discounted rates off VM merchandise! Tell us about your experiences or send us opinions about our portal in our Guestbook. just a little gesture from all of us as a way to say 'Thank You', we sincerely hope that you each and every visit to our website.

On my last visit to Kuala Lumpur I happened to meet the owner of the Virtual Malaysia, and learned that they have received numerous travel industry awards for online innovations. They clearly represent a likely model for a Web 2.0 destination portal, and I expect that many others will be copying them as time goes by. (VirtualMalaysia.com is not associated with any of the government tourism authorities in Malaysia.)

World 66 Guide (and Map Tool)

2006-01-31T10:03:00.000-08:00

Wolrd 66 is another wiki travel guide, which allows users to freely edit and add text information (see Wikitravel). Unlike Wikitravel, however, World 66 does not feel like Wikipedia at all, and appears to be pre-loaded with text (Wikitravel has quite a few empty pages). World 66 also includes a useful Accommodation search facility.

The MyWorld66 tab takes you to a Travel Tools list that includes the cool Visited Countries map making tool that I previously blogged on my Geography for Travelers site. In addition to world countries, however, the tools allow you to make maps of US states and Canadian provinces.

Registering with the World66 website gives you "a homepage for your maps and for the other travel tools and your name will appear with the articles you write."

There is also a mobile phone version of the website (world66.com/alt/xhtml) and destination guides are available as .pdf files and in the repligo mobile phone format.

Wikitravel.org

2006-01-31T09:54:00.000-08:00

This is a Worldwide travel guide that looks and feels like Wikipedia (the popular user editable encyclopedia). According to the main page:

Wikitravel is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide. So far we have 6931 destination guides and other articles written and edited by Wikitravellers from around the globe.

You can register and create a My Page, track certain articles, and track your own contributions.

Yelp.com

2006-01-28T20:52:00.000-08:00

(click on the title above to go to the website)

From the website: "Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what's great - and not so great - in your neighborhood and beyond. You already know that asking friends is the best way to find restaurants, dentists, hairstylists, and anything local. Now, Yelp makes it fast and easy to make and receive real reviews from real people." - It covers the SF Bay Area best, but is expanding to other US cities. Hopefully the rest of the world will come next.

Note that CitySearch.com has many more reviews for more places than Yelp, including its own Editorial Profiles. However, it has more of a Web 1.0 interface (feels like the Yellow Pages) and lacks social networking and community building tools.

43Places.com

2006-01-28T20:50:00.000-08:00

(click on the title above to go to the website)

43Places is a highly interactive social website where people list and discuss both places they want to go to and places where they have been. Quite fascinating, with a lot of travel tips and place descriptions.

43Places also creates a map of the places that you have visited, which can be made accessible on your personal homepage. The process is a bit slower than the Visited Countries mapping tool that is found on World66.com, and it requires registration with the 43Places.com website, which World66.com does not.

BONUS SITE: When you register for 43Places.com you also join the 43Things.com website, where people answer the question: "What do you want to do with your life?" At the time of this posting, "Travel" was he most common tag (at 4278), and the most frequently listed goal that was tagged with Travel was to "Take More Pictures." See the top 15 Travel tagged goals list here.

A third tool that comes with membership in 43Places.com is 43People, where members list the people they have met and would like to meet.

Web 2.0 Travel Tools - Goals

2006-01-28T20:30:00.000-08:00

This blog is devoted to creating a list of web 2.0 websites and webtools that are, in some way, related to Travel and Tourism.

What is Web 2.0? I suggest these websites to answer that question:

* Web 2.0 : the 24 Minute Documentary (video on TechCruch)
* Web 2.0 Videos and Powerpoint Presentations - If you are a visual learner, this is great
* Wikipedia - "Web 2.0"
* You know you're Web 2.0 when... (Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog)
* What is Web 2.0 (Tim O'Reilly)
* What Web 2.0 means to you
* Go2Web20.net - The complete Web 2.0 directory - not really very complete as it only contains a handful of travel sites
* Virtual Karma - Complete List of Web 2.0 Applications - a bit more complete because readers can add their own selections in the comments area