DemoGirl

TripTracker is a mapping service that helps you share your travel experiences, day to day, with friends and family.  Each trip you create has its own journal, a place for photos, and a map.  You can place all of your photos and journal entries on the map with a time stamp, so everyone will always know where you are or where you’ve been.  If you have a GPS device, you can also upload your files to TripTracker and all of your locations will be placed on your map.  Within the TripTracker community, you can view other peoples trips, make friends, and comment on their trips.  Here’s my screencast tour of TripTracker:

Flash Demo4m25s

MapSkip gives you a place to share stories and photos from places you’ve been.  You can also browse the map and read stories that other members have left and add your own if you’ve experienced something in the same location.  Members can comment on and rate stories and photos which is used to rank them and make the best ones easier to find.  MapSkip could be used to describe where you went on your honeymoon, got your first apartment, or where you took a really great photo.  Here’s my screencast tour of MapSkip:

Flash Demo2m33s

TripCart is a travel guide that can help you find things to do on your next vacation.  After selecting your desired destination, you’ll be brought to a guide for your location.  Here, you’ll find a map where you can quickly find hotels, beaches, hiking trails, etc.  You can add all of the activities and locations to your trip and even browse through other members trips and copy them.  Each of your trips has its own itinerary where you can add dates and notes.  Your itinerary can be easily printed and shared with friends and family via email.  Here’s my screencast tour of TripCart:

Flash Demo3m41s

GlobalMotion is a location Wiki that wants to collect all of the most interesting places in the world.  All of the content is geotagged with geographical coordinates so adding photos and places nearby is easy.  Anyone can edit the content and you can add your own place in just minutes.  You can add markers, draw lines and shapes, and put a map on your website or blog.  It’s actually pretty interesting and really easy to use.  Here’s my screencast tour of GlobalMotion:

Flash Demo3m28s

TripIt gives you a great way to organize your travel plans in a neat little package.  There are a few ways you can use TripIt.  You can simply email your itinerary to plans@tripit.com and TripIt will automatically organize your flights, hotels, car rentals, etc.  It will even include weather forecasts and maps for your destination.  You can also enter the information in manually and add activities, maps, and notes on specific days.  If you don’t have a trip planned yet you can use TripIt to search for flights, hotels, and car rentals and save your searches for future reference.  They also have a handy dandy “TripClipper” that you can add to your bookmarks toolbar to instantly save stuff you find on the web to your TripIt account.  When you’re ready to go you can print out your itinerary easily and be on your way.

TripIt is currently in private beta but I have 5 invites for the first 5 emails I get in the comments.  Here’s my screencast tour of TripIt:

Flash Demo5m5s

(note:  TripIt made their own screencast demo that points out some features not mentioned in mine.  Check it out here!) 

Where I’ve Been is a facebook application that lets you create an interactive map for your facebook profile showing the places you’ve visited, lived, and would like to go. It’s only available to facebook members now but their website shows they have plans to allow you to create maps for MySpace and your own website or blog in the future.

(I want to apologize in advance if I sound weird. I’ve been trying to shake off a cold all week and it got the best of me yesterday and today. I know I sounded weird before… but today I sound even weirder )

Flash Demo2m26s

VibeAgent is a hotel recommendation site that wants to help you find a great place to stay based on features that are important to you and reviews written by the VibeAgent community.  Once you sign up for an account you’ll officially be an agent and be able to write hotel reviews, join groups, read other reviews, and make new friends with that whole social networking thingy.  All of your reviews, your friends reviews, and group reviews are shown on your very own map on your profile page.  VibeAgent is currently in private beta but I have 10 invites to give out to the first 10 people who drop me their email in the comments.  Here’s my screencast tour of VibeAgent:

Flash Demo4m53s

Tripbase is a travel site that gives you ideas on where to take your next vacation based on your interests. You decide how important nightlife, shopping, dining, nature, and tourist attractions are to you and Tripbase will spit out some ideas.

You can also do a more filtered search to include your budget, time of year you want to travel, and the weather you’d expect during your stay. Here’s my screencast tour of Tripbase:

Flash Demo 3m8s

Whether you travel internationally on a weekly basis or if you just took your first passport photo, vayama is a really useful site. It focuses only on international flights and allows you to search for one or many international destinations. Vayama also provides city and airport maps, transportation information, and information about the city itself. Here’s my screencast tour of vayama:

Flash Demo 3m33s

I love traveling and although I’ve never been to Europe, I’ve been everywhere in between. I’ve driven cross country 4 times and it would’ve been fun to have had a site like Wayki along the way. Wayki is a service that lets you post markers with messages and photos anywhere on a map. Each marker has it’s own URL which you can share with friends or family. It’s very easy to jump to different parts of the world to view other markers and could actually be informative if you’re lucky enough to find useful information about a place you may be traveling to. Here’s my quick screencast tour of Wayki:

Flash Demo 3m28s

Found on: KillerStartups