Trip Advisor's travel map in facebook

Ah, facebook...the distraction of it. TripAdvisor has created an addictive little application that you can install into your facebook profile, and lets you plot down to a city level, where you've been.

I like this version better than some of the earlier attempts, that would shade the entire country of Russia if you had only been to Moscow. This version lets you mark specific cities or states.

It tells me I'm up to 265 cities in 41 countries - I still reckon Scotland and Wales count as seperate countries, but this version does not. Anyway...as you can see, there's some vast empty areas on my map, which are yet to be explored, but are definitely on the list.

I've discovered facebook - the travel addiction continues

As if I needed another distraction...but anyway. Everyone's been talking about the social networking site, facebook.

I decided to take a peak and it's thrown me into very, VERY large networks of travellers and people with similar interests.

I'm finding it a useful place to store travel pics, cos it let's me arrange them easily in directories, that I can also let non-facebook friends and family see. I've been uploading pics by country - so far there are directories for Australia, Croatia, Slovenia and Iceland. I'll slowly build out the others - I wonder if I can create a directory for every letter of the alphabet...although not sure if there is a country starting with the letter X?

facebook also lets you join groups, and there are seemingly bwzillions about travel. I've joined the Explore the World and Addicted to Travelling groups (am loving the Explore the World logo over to the left).

In these groups, people share stuff like where they've been and where they want to go, and others use it as test-ground for travel related applications they've built, such as mapping features. There's lots of travel pics and recommendations, and a bunch of friendly people.

If you're addicted to travel, this is yet one more way to feed your addiction while you're not out there doing it!

A smattering of travel blogs

Time to do a quick scan of some of the funky travel blogs to see who's talking about what?

The Sydney Morning Herald's globe-trotting backpacker Ben Groundwater is discussing the backpacker's guide to being ripped off. His experiences remind me of having baby (dolls) chucked at me in Spain, as gypsies attempted to grab my bag, and a sneaky old english photographer in London who "volunteered" to take make photo outside Big Ben.

Mark Hayes over at the TimesOnline travel blog is discussing The Top 5 Cornish Pastries. Despite having spent last Christmas in Cornwall, and indeed, at the Lizard, where Mark is writing from, I am still yet to try an authentic Cornish pastry. It's on my to-do list!

The Guardian Unlimited's Katie Marsh is discussing her hilarious experience of Finland's Wife-Carrying World Championships. I also enjoyed Giulio Sica's post about Marrakech overtaking New York in Time Out's best selling city guide. I'm planning to be in Morocco this Christmas, so I might check it out.

And there's TravelBlog.org, which, with 371 updated blogs, 99 new bloggers, 3668 new photos and 38 forum posts in the past 24 hours....there's no shortage of new things to read.

Lonely Planet launches new city guide series

Lonely Planet recently launched a new range of city guides, called the Encounter Series.

The pocket-sized versions of their country guide counterparts aim to give an overview of 8 cities - Barcelona , Hong Kong , Istanbul , Las Vegas , London , New York , Paris and San Francisco.

They have organised the guides by neighbourhood, helping visitors to get to the "heart of the city".

Yahoo Travel is running a promotion where first prize is two Eurostar tickets from London to Paris, Lille or Brussels, and 10 runners up receive sets of the new Encounter Series.

I'm planning to visit Turkey next year, so I shall check out the Encounter Guide to Istanbul.

News.com.au's travel section

News.com.au's online travel section is one of my favourite travel resource sites. I like the way they incorporate "proper" travel articles, travel resources, and a travel blog, with all sorts of travelling tips and tricks.

I'm also loving the fact that they published two of my recent photos, one of the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia, and one of Split's Harbour in one of their Reader's Holiday Snaps galleries. My pics are #6 and #7 in this gallery. Well...I'm excited!

Visited Countries - create your own virtual maps!

A work colleague and fellow blogger, Daniela Barbosa, posted a cool resource that she'd found from another colleage - Visited Countries. You just need to click onto the list of countries you've visited, and it creates a map on fly.

Ok, there are slight limitations, in that if you click that you've been to the US, it shades the entire countrry, but it's a fab thing to play with, and has once again reminded me little I've really seen of the world.

Here's my Visited Countries map so far...South America and Africa, here I come!