What do a cork board, sticky notes, note cards, and an Apple style interface have in common? Travel planning of course.  Start-up DuffelUp.com is trying carve out their niche in the crowded online trip planning space by offering something a little different, an interface that is simple and familiar.  When you plan a trip with Duffel, you create a “Duffel” (presumably like a duffle bag) and collect things to do, accommodations, and...

Google released their latest labs project called “City Tours” last week.  I was quick to jump on the bandwagon and take a look, but I resisted from posting right away because I wanted to think a little more deeply about the implications of the application.  Let’s not forget that Google is a powerhouse and, if they wanted to, develop and release ANY travel application they want in any vertical.  With a single mouse click they...

Scott Woodhouse, CMO of Travellr.com contacted me in early March to invite me and my readers to participate in a private beta test of Travellr.com, a new website he has launched.  What I really liked was the fact that Scott was proactive and created a beta code “t4blog” before he contacted me.  For all you other Web 2.0 marketing types out there, this is a great example of how to engage with a blogger effectively. I released the...

Frankly I’ve always enjoyed travel guides especially the well written version by Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, or Columbus Guides.  Since the growth in popularity of user generated sites like Wikitravel and World66 I’ve cast off the shackles of paper and gone digital for my guides preferring the advice and recommendations of average travelers.  The BBC recently reported that a Lonely Planet author admitted that he hadn’t even...

I recently came across a new website called TravelBookmarking.com. I found it quite by accident while using Stumbleupon to look for travel related sites. TravelBookmarking.com is a sister site to SoMuchWorld.com which is a free web based travel guide similar in nature to Wikitravel.org or World66.com but written by a set of professional travel writers. The reason why I like TravelBookmarking.com is because it gives travelers the ability to...