Taking off Travel blog

Today, I’m reviewing trip planning site, Duffel, testing it with a planned trip to Las Vegas next year. Here’s what its creators say:

Duffel is not only a place where you can collaboratively store, organize and archive all these travel ideas and trips, but you can also use them to compile your own itineraries that go hand-in-hand with your favorite travel guidebook.

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No matter where you go in the world, you can see people tapping away on a Blackberry. It’s fair to say it’s taken the business world by storm (yes, the pun IS intended). In the past we have looked at iPhone applications for travelers. Now it’s the turn of the Blackberry. Here are the best free Blackberry apps for travelers.

10. Flight and Hotel Travel Search by Kayak

Search Kayak.com for deals on hotels and flights.  You can also check flight status, useful if you’re on the move.

9. Tube Buddy

Traveling in London? Tube Buddy gives live departure boards for tube lines and Underground and DLR service updates.

8. SimulTravel GPS

This is a quick way to find a hotel while you’re traveling. You can even find out if the hotel down the street is a better deal than the one you are staying in.

7. OpenTable

Make free restaurant reservations at over 10,000 restaurants in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom, and earn reward points while you do it. Read more »

I’ve recently discovered a great business travel tool and I didn’t have to spend a dime to get it. When you’re on a business trip to a new city, you need to be able to find your way around very quickly so that you don’t waste valuable time. Ovi Maps (formerly Nokia Maps) helps you to do just that. If you have one of the recent touchscreen Nokia phones, then this mapping program comes as part of the package. I recently put it to the test, using my Nokia 5800 Xpress Music.

Getting Started

In order to use the maps program on your phone you will need to download some maps. There’s no need to worry about the often prohibitive cost of data downloads. The bundled Nokia software also includes a desktop maps program, so fire it up and download the maps to your computer. That can take a while on slow connections, but once it’s done, you can sync the maps you need to your phone.

The maps are divided by continent and then by major area. For the UK, you can load maps for either England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales, but not (as far as I could tell) for specific regions such as London. Similarly, the US maps allow you to load maps for each state. I loaded up New York and New Jersey in preparation for my trip and set my phone to use the program offline to avoid roaming charges. Read more »

Last month I asked whether business travelers dared to unplug when taking a trip. If your answer was no, then you’ve probably got a list of items that are essential whenever you travel. As a location independent writer, I like to think I’ve got managing my business on the road down to a fine art. Here’s how I do it.

In The Cloud

One of my main strategies is to be able to access as much stuff as possible from the cloud. That means having a good online backup system which also has editing facilities. My choice for that is Syncplicity. Anywhere I go I can get to the latest backup from my home computer and get the files I need. As a backup, I occasionally email things to myself (I use Gmail) so that I can open things in Google Documents. With word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, Google Documents is a pretty nifty MS Office replacement. Read more »

GoPlanit offers instant trip planning. Just type in your destination and you get a selection of activities, dining, lodging and flight options that you  can choose from and add to your itinerary. It’s a great way to get a snapshot of what’s available in a particular area, though some areas are better represented than others. For example, I plugged in Hollywood, Florida as a destination and got a handful of activity suggestions, a couple of dining options and not much else.

Creating An Itinerary

Create an itinerary for a major city (San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, Seattle, Boston, Atlanta or San Diego) and GoPlanit really comes into its own. Start by putting in the start and end dates for your trip, hit the Plan It button and you get an instant itinerary with a range of well spaced activities for each day. You can fill in the gaps if you wish with other activities you want to do. Read more »