GeoBeats.com is a great website for getting a sneak peak of travel destinations. You can search the website by Destination and by Topic which is pretty convienent. It’s also really good for the traveler who wants to know what are good activities to do in a particular destination. The videos are professional and give a good preview of each location. Some of the videos even have tips about the public transportation, restaurants and local etique. They even have videos that will teach you local phrases that can come in very handy.
Erica Fischer Travel, Travel Guide, Website Review geobeats.com, video travel guides
GoPlanit.com is a travel social network that assists you in planning your next trip. Your itinerary is completely personalized by taking into consideration important factors such as your preferences, budget, locations, hours of operation and friend’s recommendations to create the ultimate trip catered specifically to you. The recommendation engine suggests the most popular and highest rated items.
The extent of planning your trip can be simple or advanced (you choose this option in the beginning). The main difference between the two is that the Simple mode allows you to plan by day and the Advanced Mode allows you to plan by the hour. In the planning phase you choose the date and then you choose from several options to add activities, dining, lodging, your flight or you can add in your own custom item. Each activity, dining and lodging option has ratings for each choice that is presented to you to choose from which is pretty cool and useful. The flight feature allows you to enter your flight information which needs to be chosen by other means.
Once you are finished planning your trip you can export your itinerary into iCal/Outlook, a public URL or load into your Google Calendar.
Erica Fischer Hotels, Travel, Website Review GoPlanit, GoPlanit.com
Photosynth allows travelers to share their photos in a way we have never seen before. This innovative photo sharing solution takes images and transforms them into a cinematic quality, 3D tour of the location. Getting started using this service is fairly simple and they even offer a downloadable video that will walk you through how to take overlapping photos, how to load your images and how to create a synth.
Currently they have quite a few travel destinations that synths have already been created for. To view them all you need to do is download the free Photosynth program to view and create synths. Feel free to post any synths you create below.
Erica Fischer Travel, Website Review Photosynth
RTravel.com is a travel social network that allows users to share travel videos and travel photos. Currently the website is running a contest with a $300 prize for the best travel photo album and a $300 prize for the best travel video upload. Here are some features that I found to be pretty useful:
- You can see how many videos users have uploaded for each destination.
- To keep up with the newest photos and videos the website’s navigation offers you the option to view Features, Most Viewed, Top Ranked and New Uploads.
- The videos page there are channels that provides effortless browsing.
- Users can take videos of hotels for other users to view and even rate the hotels.
Overall this social network is very organized, provides easy navigation and offers some cool features.
Erica Fischer Travel, Website Review Rtravel.com
ZoomAndGo.com is a Travel Social Network that allows it’s users to share videos and pictures from destinations all over the world. The main page has a map of the world where you can click on a small icon for that region and watch a video or view pictures that a user uploaded to share. A gallery of these videos can also be found on the bottom of the map that you can scroll through with larger thumbnails. You can choose from the tabs what kind of videos or pictures you would like to choose from with the following categories: Spotlight (features a video of the day), Most Recent, Most Popular and Editor’s Picks. Other features include Zoom, Map View, Satellite View and Hybrid View.
Here is a screen shot of the home page:
LMT Clock Website Review travel social network, zoomandgo.com
While browsing the Internet I came across an interesting site I wanted to share with our readers, it’s called TripKick.com.
TripKick.com helps you find the hotel room that’s perfect for you. Their database has tons of hotels you can search for.
My favorite feature is the Advanced Search feature which enables you to find hotel rooms based on criteria that is most important to you. There are many choices from Business/Convention Hotel to Pet Friendly. You can even choose the type of view you from you room you would prefer. TripKick.com then displays a list of the best rooms available based on your chosen criteria.
Has anyone used it?
Erica Fischer Travel, Website Review TripKick.com
