www.bing.com/travel

The travel section of Bing (www.bing.com/travel) is one of the major upsides to Microsoft's new search engine. What's hot: Bing Travel combines Farecast flight and hotel information with Microsoft editorial content. You don't have to be within Bing Travel to access handy travel information. From the main Bing search area (www.bing.com), type in the airport codes of your departure and destination airports and watch as reservation numbers pop up along with a sample price and links to a 30-day outlook...

Airbnb.com

Airbnb.com lets travelers find a spare room for two or three nights by renting spare rooms, cots, couches and airbeds in the apartments of residents in 831 U.S. cities, sometimes for as little as $20 a night.

JunctionBus.Com

JunctionBus.Com helps travelers find cheap buses between cities in the northeast of the United States, the Midwest and (to a lesser extent) the Southeast.

Voyij.com

Voyij.com seduces your inner accountant with travel deals that are ready to be taken advantage of this weekend. What's Hot: Typing in your departure airport and getting a bucket-load of travel deals that are good right away or three months from now. The deals are broken down into airfare, hotel and vacation. When you click on a search result, it gives you the weather forecast and Yelp reviews too. It's as if Voyij knows you've got your credit card out and are packing your bags while the next page...

Raveable.com

Keep your eye on Raveable.com, a new hotel review collection website that considers itself the ``Cliffs-Notes for hotel reviews.''

WholeTravel.com and VroomVroomVroon.com

Companies are popping up left and right to help travelers looking for ways to reduce their environmental impact. Two brand-new sites are WholeTravel.com, which lists and ranks ''green'' hotels and activity outfitters (e.g. horseback riding, white-water rafting) and VroomVroomVroom.com, a rental car booking site boasting both low prices and low guilt factor: The company donates carbon offsets for every rental. These sites join RezHub.com, which launched last fall and helps travelers find environmentally-friendly...

DiscoverAmerica.com

A new website has been launched to help Americans explore their own country: DiscoverAmerica.com. The site includes an interactive map that gives mileage from city to city, an activity finder listing more than 3,000 experiences, attractions and events, including museums, gardens, ski slopes, festivals and parks; and links to travel booking sites like Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia and Priceline. The site also offers links to tourism information for all 50 states, as well as for more than 100 cities...

CodySmart.com/hitchhike

Cody Smart wanted to feel something, and so with $430 in the bank, an aversion to ''popular society'' and a thirst for the open road, he set off to hitchhike from New York to Alaska. He was robbed and nearly killed, just as the naysayers said he would be. He then put together a magnetic ''photologue'' on CodySmart.com/hitchhike to remember and share his story.

BoardingArea.com

BoardingArea.com is a virtual briefcase for business travelers. It's a portal for handpicked travel blogs from the media, industry insiders and other business travelers.

SpottedbyLocals.com

Ever wish you knew a local who could offer advice before your European trip? SpottedbyLocals.com has handpicked bloggers on the ground in 20 cities updating its city blogs with their favorite spots around town.

Twitter.com

There's a budding travel trend on Twitter.com. The micro-blogging tool on which users send short messages, or ''tweets,'' has become a hot networking tool for the Web-savvy travel community. Airlines and hotels reach out to their customers and offer personal service and tips, while travel bloggers befriend and keep tabs on colleagues. But what about the average consumer? Bargain-hunters can cash in on travel giveaways and sales. We recently found @fairmonthotels running Twitter-only contests and...

Travelsavvymom.com

Travelsavvymom.com offers personal recommendations for family-friendly hotels and travel gear from parents you can trust. What's hot: The quality. The moms who contribute regularly have written for Smithsonian, New York Times, Washington Post, Parenting, Utne Reader, Christian Science Monitor and others. The hotel reviews are written by moms who stayed somewhere family friendly and liked it enough to write an unsolicited review. The TravelSavvy partners then vet the reviews to make sure they're legitimate...

Tripfilms.com

If your travel budget is getting the life squeezed out of it by a big metal vice clamp, it might be time to do a little armchair traveling. Tripfilms.com can take you all over the world, and it doesn't cost more than your Internet connection.

GeckoGo.com

A helpful travel community is forming at GeckoGo.com. It tells you the best times (and the not-so-great ones) for travel tailored to your specific interests.

Costtodrive.com

Planning a summer road trip? Costtodrive.com calculates the cost of gasoline in seconds. What's hot: Punch in your starting point and destination, add the year, make and model of the car you're driving, then click the little red gas pump and find out how much it will cost you to get there. Travelers will appreciate the side-by-side information from Kayak that tells you how much it would cost to fly instead. Need directions? It has a Google map of your route, plus a link to directions from Mapquest...

Triporati.com

Triporati.com is loaded with travel inspiration and trip recommendations from expert travel writers willing to share the best of their favorite global playgrounds.

GoGalavanting.com

GoGalavanting.com encourages women's travel. Don't expect expensive resorts or ''the world's perfect facial.'' Instead, find tips for women on realistic budgets.

EvoGear.com

EvoGear.com is a collection of snowboard, ski, skateboard and wakeboard gear from a company with a conscience. What's hot: Visiting the website, I was drawn to its EvoTrip section, which lists international snowboard, ski and surf trips. This winter, there have been trips to Japan, Switzerland and Bali. An upcoming 14-day excursion to South America combines skiing and boarding with surfing and includes a stay in the Mission Impossible Lodge in Chile.

Radio-Locator.com

If you've ever been stuck with preset radio stations in a rental car or you're on the road and searching -- desperately -- for a channel you like,

HappyMedian.com

The map-centric HappyMedian.com plots destinations for friends in various locations to meet, whether they're angling for a restaurant, coffeehouse, movie theater or other venue.

Dealbase.com

Is it possible to travel during a recession? Absolutely. Finding a deal just becomes a greater necessity. Dealbase.com puts a fresh spin on hotel bargains. Not only do you discover hotel rates with added value and discounts but you also save the time you would have spent digging them up yourself.

ExpertFlyer.com

Got miles? ExpertFlyer.com gives frequent fliers the behind-the-flight know-how to get even better award flights and upgrades than they hoped for.

TripIt.com

On the heels of partnering with professional networking group LinkedIn (which has more than 30 million members worldwide), TripIt.com has solidified itself as a leading trip management tool.

WholeTravel.com

If eco-trips make you feel like a more responsible traveler, wait until you try sustainable travel. WholeTravel.com, still in beta, expands on the notion of caring about the environment and wildlife by listing accommodations that also interact with nearby communities, support the local culture and make efforts to educate customers about sustainability.

HomeAway.com

Look out, Rentalo. HomeAway.com is taking over the online vacation home rental market. A new round of $250 million in financing and the acquisition of 11 vacation rental websites make it a serious competitor.

2itch.com

Jet lag. Insomnia. The stress of a high-powered business trip. Sometimes a traveler wants to step beyond the doors of a hotel room -- let alone the fitness room or hotel lobby bar. 2itch.com maps out restaurants, stores and essential services that are open all night.

MetroTwin.com

MetroTwin.com pairs two great travel hubs, New York and London. Whether you're traveling to one of them for the first or fourth time, you'll find new things to do and restaurants to try offered by local experts who know their turf.

MapMyRun.com

MapMyRun.com is an essential tool for travelers who wouldn't dream of skipping their run while they're away from home. What's hot: Finding a running route, with maps and ratings, might be the most obvious thing you can do on the site -- but MapMyRun is useful for nonrunners as well. I was surprised to find such options as biking, dog walking, hiking, skating, mountain biking and kayaking.

BirdPost.com

Birders rejoice. BirdPost.com is a new website that unites birders the world over. Keep track of birds you've spotted and view Google satellite maps to discover what types of birds you might see on your next trip.

Travel Websites

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