• Thomas Cook redesign: Has it improved usability? from Econsultancy
• Coverage of updated social travel site tripwolf at Techcrunch and Travolution
• Should Links Open In New Windows? from Smashing Magazine

• Came across online travel site TravelMuse today via a positive review on Techcrunch. From their about page – “TravelMuse combines original editorial content and destination city guides with powerful planning tools.” Try out their Inspiration Finder and read their stance on user generated content over professional content.
• The Tourism Society has set up a Facebook group for discussion/networking.
• The most inaccurate weather forecast in history
• Cities in 3D Program spreads to Europe via Techcrunch UK – This programme now moves to Europe and invites local governments to share 3D data with the public by adding a model of their city to Google Earth. Be interesting to see how well this is taken up, plenty of tourism potential – skip to 2 min 45 secs to view an example of Hamburg and research possibilities for a visitor.

The Tourism Society are hosting an event in Cardiff on the 18th April. Titled ‘What is Digital Marketing?‘ three guest speakers will discuss digital marketing from the tourism practitioner’s perspective and its role in tourism. More details at the Tourism Society event calendar.

Nomao allows you to share your favourite places on a customised map (e.g. best restaurants, holiday spots) and for each you can add pictures/videos along with a widget to your blog.

A freelance journalist at the Guardian is spending the next three months putting a number of travel networking sites put to the test. She also includes a list of these sites towards the end of her article. I’ve included these below:

For meeting a local

couchsurfing.com
hospitalityclub.org
yoursafeplanet.co.uk
globalfreeloaders.com
stay4free.com
bewelcome.org
joomla.servas.org
lghei.org (gay and lesbian)

For meeting other travellers

wayn.com
addictedtotravel.com
doyoutravel.com
thelmaandlouise.com (female only)

For upmarket networking

asmallworld.net
yacht6.com
quintessentially.com

For tip sharing and advice

Ivebeenthere.co.uk
tripadvisor.com
43places.com
virtualtourist.com
lonelyplanet.com/thorntree

For older travellers

sagazone.co.uk

For meeting someone on a flight

Flight-club.org
triplife.com

For getting a date

Travelhotties.com

For practising languages

friendsabroad.com
voxswap.com

For letting people know where you are

twitter.com
facebook.com
dopplr.com

For community blogging

bootsnall.com
travelpod.com
globenotes.com
travelblog.com
realtravel.com
mytripjournal.com

For special interest

warmshowers.org (cyclists)
tejo.org (Esperanto speakers)

For creating your own social network

ning.com
crowdvine.com

Great blog about blogging to promote your business. The author, Mark White ( aka The Blog Coach), is running a three part mini-series looking at the planning phase of setting up and starting your business blog.

First up is ‘What you do want to do with your blog?‘ – a great primer before diving in and creating a blog because you feel you have to. Along with the more marketing focused efforts where businesses push their services and products Mark includes the following handy little diagram to suggest a range of other blogging uses.

(Hat tip to Social Media good guys Nixon McInnes)

Talking of blogs, here are the shortlisted ‘BEST CONSUMER BLOG AWARD’ category from Travolution.

* Travel Rants (Darren Cronian)
* TravelMail Blog (various authors)
* Viator Blog (various authors)
* Everything-Everywhere (Gary Arndt)
* Select World Travel (Lee Harrison)

Exciting news over at Wordpress – earlier today they posted a sneak peak at the upcoming version of Wordpress – looks great!

Enjoy England have launched a new microsite to support the year-long Culture 08 campaign. This celebrates England’s best cultural attractions.

Travelmole reports online travel experiences company Isango has attracted $8M funding

Stephen Joyce’s Top 5 Travel & Tourism Technology Trends for 2008

Enjoyed this Texas Designer’s Map of the World from Pentagram