Prior to getting into consulting and technology development, I spent about a decade in the travel industry. I quickly moved into a technology role within travel so I became quickly interested in any new travel related technologies. To this day I still enjoy keeping tabs on some of the travel tools that are now available online.

The Dopplr website is a very interesting travel tool that doesn’t serve as a reservations assisting application, but is used more for sharing and interacting with your reservation after they’re booked. In addition, it also lets you share your travel plans easily with your …read more

I ran across the Future Expats Forum site recently and thought it was a very interesting read. Many people threaten to leave the United States and go live somewhere else about every election cycle. I don’t really take them seriously. However, some people makes plans to move and live overseas at some point in their lives and this website is loaded with the information they may find important.

The website came about by someone that was interested in living overseas, but couldn’t find much information about the "human side" of what it meant to make this jump in your life. She …read more

I’ll be honest. I normally don’t go the speed limit on most highways. I usually try to stick with traffic or a little faster. Even with that admittance of guilt though, I also accept the fact that I’m speeding and if I get pulled over I deserve the ticket. I don’t use a radar detector.

That doesn’t mean I’m not aware of certain streets and areas where there’s normally a bit of extra police presence on the streets.
The Njection website provides a nice little speedtrap mashup map for cities all over the United States.
Red light cameras and speed traps are …read more

It’s summertime. Has been now for a few weeks I guess but it’s finally kicking in that the kids are out of school for awhile and it’s time to start thinking about some weekend camping trips out of the city.

I came across the NationalParksOnline.net blog awhile back and have been enjoying the casual atmosphere of how Michael and Gabrielle share their experiences as they travel and enjoy America’s National parks systems.
Their journey was an amazing one and you can read their stories.
It seemed like a good time to become reacquainted with our country – its people, its history and its …read more

I spend quite a bit of time on my couch. Not necessarily a couch potato, but hanging out with the kids, getting computer work done, client work done, catching up on our favorite shows. With all that, to think I could have been using my couch for more  helpful activities for others with CouchSurfing.org.

The CouchSurfing website gives you the opportunity to both see the country and help others see the country as well, without spending a fortune on lodging along the way.
As a community we strive to do our individual and collective parts to make the world a better …read more

Following in my recent pattern of covering websites that are resources or may interest travelers. The Chokti website provides another social network type site to get more people excited about travelling and sharing their stories with others when they get back home.
There’s an interesting bit of information to all of this that makes the Chokti website unique from it’s counterparts.
Most sites related to travel seem to focus too much on the process of travelling itself.
If you think about it, that’s the purpose of most sites, but that’s not really the main purpose of the Chokti website. Here are some of …read more

I spent around seven years in the travel industry as a corporate travel agent and somewhat quickly moved into being a technology manager for travel services. One of my responsibilities over those years was to design and manage internal travel websites for our corporate clients. The website shared information about preferred vendors for air, car rental and hotel information as well as travel policy and the other normal stuff.
One thing I quickly realized in my experience with travel was that I didn’t have any desire to do leisure travel (although I always did dream or planning and organizing independent travel …read more

I spent a number of years in the travel industry and focused most of that time on researching, implementing and managing a variety of online booking tools that were used by corporate clients. I’ve now been out for a while but still hold a little bit of a special place for travel technology and related activities.

When I came across the Tripit website, my initial thought was that they were just another one in the plethora of travel related sites that all did just about the same thing.
The difference with Tripit though is they are not a travel booking site. Their …read more

Yapta is a website that lets you search for flights to take your next trip, and track them for future price changes before you confirm and purchase them. You don’t purchase the flights through Yapta, but they link you back to the airline’s or other seller’s website for the actual purchase.
Now they’re also having a contest through the end of the month for tracking flights and you can get up to 10 entries.
Yapta is proud to announce the “Track-A-Flight” Sweepstakes where you can win one of 20 prizes, including a $500 gift card to Marriott, a 1-year Clear Pass, …read more

Here’s an interesting website I just uncovered that might alleviate some of the $4/gallon gas pains everyone is having.
It’s called PickupPal and it connects drivers with passengers and packages. I’ve seen sites for carpooling and ride-sharing before but this is a bit of a new twist.
PickupPal’s core service is providing a venue for either passengers or packages to find or be matched to a driver—typically already travelling in a certain direction or destination—for a small commission. This intelligent matching is performed via our own proprietary set of software algorithms that dynamically and in real time compare routing, frequency, locational, …read more