ShareTrip: Share Your Trip in 3 Minutes

Ever had one of those incredible vacays where you came home after and all you wanted to do was yap your face off about it, but everyone's eyes just glazed over and started to avoid you like the plague? Or have you ever booted up iPhoto at a dinner party and shouted, "check out my holiday pics" to a suddenly empty room? Yeah. I have. But now there's a place to share your trips with people who actually want to know! Sharetrip.com allows you to post your photos, videos and trips and get feedback, all for free and all in minutes.

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Get Your Passport Photo Done Online

idphoto4you.com lets you create your own passport photo online free. The site has built-in standards for 63 countries and automatic face detection for your uploaded photos. This is an awesome idea. A couple of years ago while living in Mexico, I lost my passport and my wallet. Getting a passport from the Canadian Government can be pretty painful when you're in Canada, let alone another country. One of the hardest parts was getting the passport photo right, with all the Canadian passport specs, while communicating in a language I wasn't yet good at. Not to mention the fact that the place the Canadian Consulate recommended for taking passport photos was in Cancun and I was living in Playa Del Carmen. That's an hour bus ride each way just for a couple of little photos. Irritating. This site would have saved me a lot of time and headache.

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Ruba: Discover Your Next Perfect Trip

Ruba.com is a travel site with a touch of social networking, using crowdsourcing to collect reviews and amazing photos of tours, restaurants, sports events, camping, hotels and a lot more. It is an absolutely stunning web site and an unbelievably easy-to-use tool for travelers. Definitely worth bookmarking.

Also, follow Ruba.com on Tiwtter: @rubatravel

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Theme Park Maps

I'm in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico for the holidays right now, but for those of you who have decided to head to a theme park for your festivities, here's a totally "d'oh!" web site, as in "d'oh, I should have thought of that!". Theme Park Maps is just that, a database of maps of theme parks.

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Australia to Relax Bans on Objects in Flight

Australia makes the first step to normalcy in the air:

Australia's aviation authority has announced a return to sanity, allowing nail files, umbrellas and metal cutlery on its planes, saying that it will focus instead on "real risks."

The changes will see passengers again allowed to carry some sharp implements, such as nail files and clippers, umbrellas, crochet and knitting needles on board aircraft from July next year.

Metal cutlery will return to return to cabin meals and airport restaurants following Government recognition that security arrangements must be targeted at 'real risks'.

Read the Rest: Australian fliers will get their cutlery and knitting needles back Boing Boing

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A Year of Free Travel From JetBlue

Here's a chance to in a year of free travel from JetBlue:

being a fan of the brand on Facebook could net you either free round-trip tickets, comped airfare and a vacation for you and three friends for five days and four nights, or even unlimited free travel on JetBlue for a year.

Social Media Consulting » Excellent use of social media by JetBlue

Technorati Tags: jetblue, travel, flight, contest, sweepstakes, win, free travel

What Kijubi Doing?

Great startup review from Mashable's Spark of Genius series:

Name: Kijubi

Quick Pitch: Kijubi is a new type of travel planning site that helps you discover “What Kijubi Doing” on your next vacation.

Genius Idea: Thanks to the Internet, planning trips online has become much, much easier. Not only can you book your flight, hotel and car rentals online, you can compare prices and features.

The one aspect of trip planning that hasn’t come completely online though is that of local activities. Plenty of places have online sites, but coagulating that information during the planning stages of your trip still isn’t as easy as it could be. That’s what Kijubi aims to do — help you find and plan the stuff you want to while you are on vacation.

Right now, Kijubi covers California, Florida and Nevada and catalogs more than 80 different types of activities from snorkeling, to water-skiing, to hot-air ballooning (if you want to have a “Balloon Boy” adventure of your own — you know, minus the huge media hoax).

You can search by price, whether or not children are allowed (or encouraged), and check for user reviews and booking coupons.

Read the rest: Kijubi Helps Find “What Could You Be Doing” on Vacation

Technorati Tags: kijubi, startup, mashable, web site, travel, trip, holiday

Skyscanner - Find Cheap Flights

Skyscanner is a really great site to search for flights on. The speed of the search is amazing and it returns your results to you in a two-paned window, one for your departure flight and one for your return:

It also offers a myriad of helpful filters displayed in a very unique way. I absolutely love searching for flights with Skyscanner.

Technorati Tags: skyscanner, cheap flights, flight search, travel, flights, fly, booking