If you're planning for summer travel, you might want to check out Packwhiz before you leave. It helps you generate thorough packing lists that will make sure you don't leave anything behind on your trip. Just check off some quick boxes about how you're traveling, what kind of weather you expect, and whether you're camping or staying in a hotel, and PackWhiz does the rest.

PackWhiz's lists aren't written in stone. If you need to add some kind of unusual item, or if you don't need to bring some the things it suggests, you can just make the changes manually. Packwhiz also lets you specify whether men or women will be going on the trip, which seems trivial, but it saves you the time of adding and removing gender-specific toiletries from your list. Sign-in is done with Google Accounts, so if you already have gmail, you can get started right away.

Planning a road trip in the near future? Cost To Drive is a web application that can help you figure out how much cash to take out of the ATM before you hit the road. Sure, you could certainly get a rough estimate by dividing the number of miles you have to drive by your car's average mileage and then multiplying that figure by the average price of gas. But where's the fun in that?

Cost To Drive lets you select from a long list of automobile makes and models dating back to 1999. Just select your car from the list, plug in the locations for the start and end of your trip, and the web site will spit out an estimate of how much gas money you'll burn through. The figure is obtained by looking at the mpg for your car and the average price of gas in various spots along your route.

[via TechnoSpot]

TripSay is hard to explain. It combines travel information, social networking, maps and reviews of places. As someone who enjoys traveling, I think it has potential.

Basically, you log in to TripSay and build your world by entering places you have traveled. Each place you enter can get a rating from a smiley face to a butt (really!) and a short tip or comment for which you can, thankfully use more than 140 characters. You can join groups with similar travel interests like a particular place or type of travel.

Based on your rating of places you will get recommendations on the map that match what you have indicated you enjoy. Most of my recent vacation have been to beaches, so the majority of my recommendations were for beachy places. Tripsay uses a recommendation engine to generate your results.

If you want to look for something different, you can click on different icons on the main map to see mountains, shopping, cities, etc. that have been rated by other users.

TripSay calls itself an intelligent social network (that) delivers highly targeted travel information, recommendations and tips based on one's unique preferences and social network.

I think if TripSay gains a large user base and lots of information it could be really useful to find interesting restaurants and out of the way places that guidebooks don't cover. But, it will really depend on the amount of users the site attracts.

It is now in free public beta.

We haven't written much about Dopplr, a social network for travelers, since we talked about its launch last year. If you're a jetsetter, or even someone who travels a couple of times a year and has a lot of friends, we'd like to direct your attention to the new features in Dopplr's "Copenhagen" release, which has been out for less than a month. The key improvements include the ability to add trips by e-mail, Twitter and SMS, and the introduction of public profiles.

These new methods of adding trips are a followup to the iCal and Google Calendar support that Dopplr added earlier this year. Now you can either automatically update your Dopplr by updating your calendar, or you can send in your trips in almost any way you could wish for, short of mental telepathy. Public profiles mean you can show your trips to anybody, not just your Dopplr contacts, and choose how much information you want to share. At this point, we're basically looking for excuses to travel, just so we can use Dopplr.

PlanetEye is a new travel site that uses Microsoft technology and partnerships with third party services like OpenTable and Travelocity to provide a ton of information about in one place. Just enter a destination and PlanetEye will bring up a map with a bunch of dots representing points of interest. Click on a dot to see shared pictures from that location.

You can also click on the hotels, restaurants, or attractions buttons in the sidebar to switch from the picture view to something a bit more useful. Or you can turn off the map and click on the City Guide to bring up a list of places to eat, sleep, and visit.

If you've registered for a free account, you can save information you find on the site to a "travel pack" which you can share with other users or just use as a tool for planning your own vacation.

[via AppScout]

Planning a vacation always starts with one thing... where to go. You could always ask a friend or a family member for their suggestions but then you would be only limited to where they've been. Tripwolf hopes to change that with there social travel website.

There are different ways you can use the site, if you already have an idea of where you would like to go enter it in the search box and Tripwolf will display the location along with places of interest, photos, videos and reviews by members of the site.

But the strongest feature of the site are the Trip Gurus. The trip gurus are self-proclaimed experts in their chosen areas of travel. Simply ask them a question and most will respond back with helpful suggestions.

So if you're thinking of planing a trip you might want to see what Tripwolf has to offer.

Just over a month after paying $115 million for travel planning site Farecast, Microsoft has relaunched the site. And after spending countless hours integrating the site into Microsoft's Live Search suite of web applications, the result is... basically identical to the old site. The biggest difference we can find is the Live Search label appended to the Farecast logo.

Microsoft has folded Farecast user accounts into the Windows Live suite, which means you can login using your Windows Live ID.

You won't find Farecast results from the main Live Search page. You'll have to click the More tab, and then select "See All" to find Farecast. But eventually we wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft started bringing up Farecast results for regular travel-related search terms. That clearly hasn't happened yet. When we entered the search query: "New York to Philadelphia flight" the top search result was a link to TripAdvisor.

[via Mashable]

The "social networking" space is chock-full of applications, plug-ins and other bits and pieces designed to hopefully enhance the user's experience online and potentially in their real lives as well. Unfortunately, some of these applications or plug-ins are often uninspired and do little, if anything, to accomplish this goal.

Sometimes, however, an application or plug-in is able to provide user's with useful services and a forum to express themselves. Case in point, "Where I've Been," an application and a stand-alone website which can actually enhance the user's experience by providing useful tools such as travel-related tips, interactive maps and a forum to showcase and discuss where they've traveled to.

At the helm of "Where I've Been" is CEO Michael Dalesandro who, in a short time, has managed to transform "Where I've Been" from its humble beginnings into a very successful application in use by millions of users each day. Recently, I sat down with with him to discuss "Where I've Been," what it does and where its going.

CHRIS ULLRICH: Michael, thanks for taking the time to talk with me.

MICHAEL DALESANDRO: Not a problem.

CU: How and when did you first get involved with "Where I've been"?

MD: Craig Ulliott was working for Blueye.com as a developer when he brought me the concept for "Where I've Been." He wrote the application and then it launched on Facebook first. That's where it all started.

CU: For someone unfamiliar with "Where I've been", can you describe it?

MD: "Where I've Been" is a simple way for people to connect and express themselves primarily through their travel experiences. It allows the user to highlight their travels graphically and show what places, cities, countries they've been to.

The can share where they have been, where have lived and where they want to go with friends, family and others.

CU: How does "Where I've been" benefit the user? Why should someone use it?

Microsoft has purchased Farecast, a travel pricing/comparison/booking service that competes with similar web services like Travelocity, Orbitz, and Kayak. What sets Farecast apart from other services is the site's focus on predictions. Based on trends over time, Farecast can help users predict whether prices will go up or down in the future.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer says Microsoft paid $115 million for the company. In a blog post, Farecast says very little about the acquisition other than that it "created tremendous opportunities." Farecast is already prominently featured on Microsoft's MSN Travel site. It's not clear if and how Microsoft will utilize Farecast and its technology beyond the travel site.

[via Profy]

InsideTrip rates flights on its TripQuality scale, which includes your choice of 12 different factors. Sick of flights being late? Check the "on-time stats" box. Is sitting in the middle seat one of your pet peeves? InsideTrip has a box for that, too: you can search by historical load factor.

We conducted a few test searches to see how much more you could be paying for these amenities, but it turns out that it's not that expensive. InsideTrip just lets you narrow down the same cheap results the other sites offer, based on what's most important to you. If you'll gladly endure a few hours of wait time or some lost bags to save money, skip it. If you're concerned about everything from security wait times to the age of your plane, you might want to give it a look.

[Via TechCrunch]

We're fairly certain that one day there will only be two or three sites on the web. We're not saying the web will look like it did in 1994, but that two or three companies will have a stake in every site you ever visit. We're probably exaggerating, but every time we see a major acquisition/consolidation of competing services, we start to wonder.

Today's big acquisition? Travel site Kayak is reportedly paying $200 million for SideStep. Both companies have web sites that do pretty much the same thing: let you find cheap airline tickets by searching multiple airlines for deals.

VentureBeat reports that Kayak will maintain two separate sites at Kayak.com and SideStep.com, but that SideStep will begin to use Kayak's search technology. What does that mean for people looking for cheap plane tickets, hotels, or rental cars? We're not really sure. While we tend to check out several online travel sites each time we travel we're not really convinced that one has a better track record than another of providing the best deals.

What's your favorite online travel site, and why? Let us know in the comments.

As the weather slowly shifts from summer to fall, many of us are left thinking about traveling south for some sun. With plenty of trip planning websites out there, TripCart focuses on combining all attractions into a single convenient location.

When the time to getaway rolls around, check in with TripCart. This travel website focuses on attractions that would be interesting to hit up when traveling in the U.S. Select a destination and TripCart pulls up Google Map with pinpoints of places to check out, including hotels, places of interest, theme parks, shopping, golf, sporting events, nature/parks, zoos and aquariums. It certainly takes the hassle out of visiting multiple locations for vacation planning.

Even more useful are the in depth descriptions of cities and the locations around where you are searching. Great if you have never been to the area before.

[via profy]

In previous experiments, in-flight WiFi Internet access failed to capture much attention, either because consumers thought it was to expensive or because it wasn't ubiquitous. Ie. if it's not on every aircraft, it's hard to plan your travel time around being productive, sleeping, or watching a movie on your iPod. For those of us who typically only travel on business, in-flight WiFi is a huge productivity enhancer, if only because it saves us from suffering through the naked feeling of offline e-mail.

Virgin says they'll have the service deployed by mid-'08, and while they haven't talked much about pricing, we're guessing this will be a premium service, since the airline has invested a new in-flight portal called "Red" that will allow passengers to surf and chat even if they don't have their own laptops on board. Red will offer access to Skype and Google Talk, too. Very handy indeed.

But this stuff needs to become ubiquitous. Show us a major domestic airline that offers always-on, zero-premium WiFi access and we'll show you an airline that takes a bite out of business traveler market share.

Say on your last vacation you traveled abroad and found a candy, coffee creamer, or consumer electronic device that just wasn't available in your home. Sure, you could buy a plane ticket and fly halfway across the world to pick up some more chocolates. But even if they were really good chocolates, it's probably not worth it (unless you buy in bulk).

Bringsome is sort of like an international Craigslist. Just post what you're looking for, preferably with a photo, and what you'll offer in exchange. One person from Kuala Lumpur would really like some Greek Pepperonci and would be happy to buy someone a beer if they pick some up and bring it back to Malaysia on their next trip. Another user is willing to pay someone $270 to pick up a digital camera that's not available in Romania. Of course, that's only a few bucks over the sale price in the US, so you'd do this out of the goodness of your heart, not to make a quick buck.

Overall it's a pretty nice idea. But as with any online classified site, whether or not bringsome is successful will depend on its ability to build a user base. Right now there are only 60 active ads.

[via gHacks]

With the long weekend coming upon U.S. readers, many of whom will be driving somewhere to enjoy some rest and relaxation, let Yahoo Widgets save you some coin on gas.

The Gas Alert Savings widget built for Yahoo Widgets is a great tool to check on the latest gas prices right from your desktop. Plug in your zip code, mile radius, gas grade preference and sort by either price or location, and the widget will pump out the gas station locations as well as their current price.

Here's a list of the top 10 highest prices in the country:

1. Alaska - $3.07/gallon
2. North Dakota $3.05/gallon
3. Michigan - $2.95/gallon
4. Illinois - $2.95/gallon
5. Nebraska - $2.955/gallon
6. Wisconsin - $2.947/gallon
7. South Dakota - $2.946/gallon
8. New York - $2.923/gallon
9. Montana - $2.918/gallon
10. Minnesota - $2.910/gallon

With the AAA saying that gas prices are averaging $2.75 per gallon, every little cent can help. The gas savings widget was put together by Automotive.com.