For those who love to streamline the Internet. Okay, here’s the scoop. There are so many new travel sites out there now, it’s getting to be funny. This one comes from Hotwire.com co-founder Greg Brockway. TripIt.com is a service that allows you to get all your necessary (and sometimes unnecessary) travel information together all in one place. That includes hotel reservations, flight information, weather in that city, events in the city, maps, etc. Of course all those tools are already online or in your email box. So, what TripIt.com does is lets you send your email confirmations to one place, and they do the rest. Say you are flying to Denver and staying at a Drury Inn. You email your two booking confirmations to TripIt, and they use their “Itenerator” to extract all the necessary information. They put that information along with local weather and events all on one page. Not a bad idea I suppose.

Most people don’t realize hostelworld.com has an option for backpackers to add a travel jounral. While hostelworld.com is pretty much the site to book hostels with. I can’t say it’s the site to start a travel journal. Not as powerful as most, and no option for uploading videos. They do not assign an easy access URL, but instead have a member id that you pretty much have to create a link to gain access. It’s different than most as this is the only one that has an option to be the only one to see it. The also let you set it as private or by invite only. If you book a hostel through hostelworld.com it automatically updates the map which is a unique feature.

FuzzyTravel.com is good, solid travel journal site. The design is attractive, and gives you three options to choose from, and the site is one of the easiest for uploading and posting information. They offer unlimited photo and video updating, but don’t use Firefox as they use videoegg for uploading videos, which does not support Firefox. Nothing too complicated about the site is what your want in a travel journal. I like how they focus on just one thing….the travelogues. There is one section with a link to resources, but that is it. It is a free service with no option to go to a paid or premier account. That is good, it just means you are going to get Google Ads on your blog.

Mytripjournal.com is a disapointment for the travel community. The prices are ridiculous if you want a paid service, and their unique special IntelliMap system is a joke. I tried 5 minutes to try to get it to view a map or close up of Greece, and could not figure it out. The design is not great, and there were too many bugs and errors in their code. Plus, anytime you have trouble figuring out how to access the control panel, that is a red flag. That should be a no-brainer. One more thing that I though was a bit hack was the rating system they put on each individual journal. 1-5 stars, and anybody can rate it. They say it is to more or less differentiate good information from bad, but I know I don’t want somebody judging my journal entries online, I don’t really care about grammar and quality content when it is between friends/family.

Overall, traveljournals.net was not that great. I was frustrated with having to name or provide a description of my photo and then attach them to a journal entry location. They have no option for video, and no advanced features or applications. If I had to say one positive aspect of the site, it would definitely be the pictures. They do focus a lot of attention on providing quality photographs from around the globe.

At first I was thinking this was going to be a bad option.  Their site, travellerspoint.com at first glance appeared cold and unwelcoming.  Advertisements and all sorts of different links.  Basically, this site is more than just a travel journal site.  They attempt to do just about everything related to travel in fact.  Travel forums, travel helpers, travel advice, travel destinations etc.  But once you spend some time on the site and learning your blog/diary, you realize it is a very powerful site that can do most everything other travel journal sites can do and more.

One of the more popular travel journal sites in my opinion is travelpod.com. For having advertisements, this is a great site to use. It’s simple, easy to access, and not cluttered to much, but still provides you with everything you need. Plus, it is one of the few that offers unlimited photo and video updating for free. The network that you join is large and the options to add and share the information on social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace are good. One last good thing is the option to collect donations to fund your trip.

Bootsnall.com calls itself the “ultimate resource for the indepdent traveler.” They do not necessarily specialize in travel blogs. It seemed to be a second thought to them and seems like someone just slapped together a wordpress management system one afternoon. I did not spend a lot of time working on my blog, and was unable to see the picture I updated. Usually I get it right the first time. It is a bit overcomplicated and they sell advertisements both on their site and on your blog. Not the best option for blogs in my opinion.

Todays review is of getjealous.com. Some of the stronger points of this site is that they give you the ability to purchase prints from the photos you upload, cost is around $0.80 cents plus shipping. They also have the ability to plot your online map using GPS if you have a GPS device. But the weaknesses are really …weak. 40 photos is the max number you can publish to your site, so if you go on a round the world trip, and visit 20 countries, that’s only two per country. Not good. They do offer a paid service which allows more photos, but at $30 it seems steep and other sites still offer this for free.

So lets begin with Offexploring.com. This online journal service is a new one to me, and honestly I just came across it while searching for other sites. My first impression was a positive one, they don’t overwelm you with mass links to everywhere and ad placement, like so many other sites.

Unique Features: I like the fact that you can get your journal printed as a book at the end of the trip. The price depends on the number of blog entries. The cheapest it could be is 24.99 for a softcover, or 29.99 for hardcover (price is in Pounds). When making a post, they give you stock photography to choose from if you don’t have your own.