And the Award Goes To....

I looked at the Web 2.0 Awards and in particular the travel awards. Always a big interest of mine - and our patrons.

There was no definite winner for this category due to not enough nominations or a clear winner. I looked at all five honorable mentions and they were intriguing in different ways.

Kayak looks like all the other travel sites- at first glance. But there were some features that I found appealing as an online traveler. It automatically had my departure city as Seattle. I like that! It also made finding an airport code easy! It tries finishing your airport as you type, so it was only a few letters in to typing Houston that I had the correct lists of airports. I like. They do deals and buzz, which is the cheap tickets that only come up for half an hour or until they sell out.

Jumpclaimer has an interesting premise, but fizzled flat in my opinion. It's supposed to be the online version of travel postcards using your cellphone to send SMS (shore message service). You text your location to the site and it puts a "thumbtack" on your location. In theory, family and friends can track your trip. But you would need to look up the location codes online ahead of time. For example, if I wanted to say I went through Bellevue, I would send an SMS to +41 78 872 7679 with my location in the format of test#country_code#town_name#your_comment and put in the code for Bellevue: 47,61056,-122,19944. Too complicated for me! If I wanted to send my coworkers/family/friends postcards while I'm on vacation, I would. But you know what? I don't! I'm on vacation! I don't want to be thinking of them at all....you can all look at my photos when I get back.

TravBuddy can be my buddy. It links to travel blogs, photos, travel guides, people traveling to and living in the locale! Lots of interactive information. I looked at the Belize entries and it seemed on the mark from my own travel experience there.

Tripmojo needs to find its mojo. I don't know what it wanted to do. You put in hotel names and I was expecting to get reviews. In actuality, it only pulled up a list on nearby hotels and when you clicked on the hotlink for more information....it sent you to the corporate site. Totally useless.

Wayfaring has some neat possibilities. You open an account and can create personalized maps (using Google maps) that can be shared with friends and family. You can make a map of your day, where you go and where to park. This could be useful to patrons and KCLS since I believe I saw another suggestion in the memo that the directions to libraries need to be updated.

Of the five I think Wayfaring, Travbuddy and Kyak are the most useful of the bunch. Happy traveling!