   
TRIPIT
You know those old clichés you get what you paid for and nothing worth anything is ever free? Well, that isn’t always true. I recently found this totally free service, and yes its totally free, that organizes all my travel itineraries and even includes automatic extras.
TripIt.com is a free service, and after 1 month I have not received any spam of any kind at any of my registered email addresses. I am not required to sign up or register with anyone else either. It is simple to use and even integrates with my blackberry.
After you sign up and register your email address, you basically just make your travel arrangements. When you receive your confirmation email, you forward it to the designated address, and that’s it. You will receive an email confirmation that your trip is ready only moments later. When you log on to trip it and use the my trips tab, they are neatly organized by dates. Clicking on a specific trip will provide you with the details of that trip. It includes all of your detailed flight information. It has easy links to check in online, check the flight status, etc for your flight. It shows your hotel information including hotel address and phone number. It will even throw in a google map showing the location of your hotel from the airport without having to do anything more than forward your confirmation. It even includes the day by day weather stats for the city you are traveling in for each day of your trip.
The service accepts itineraries from most online travel makers such as Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline, Expedia, etc. It also accepts them from most big chain hotels, car rental agencies and airlines. I am sure that as this service grows so will its features and its list of readable travel forwarding formats.
You can add your own maps, have the information imported into your own calendar, print it out with all needed reservation information, including the maps. You can even have the information sent to your mobile device by simply sending an email to the designated email address and in the message typing a simple command like get trip xx/xx/08. It can send all trip info, or you can just say get hotel or get flight for just that info to be sent to you. It won’t send the maps to your mobile device, but if that’s the only downside, then I would say this is one great service.
You can also add a friends list so you can share travel itineraries with them upon your choosing, and check your calendars against your friends list to see if any of you will be in the same place at the same time. Sounds like dinner plans to me. You can also add dinner reservations through Open Table and eventful information that provides information on events happening in the city you are visiting. Try it yourself at www.tripit.com. It’s a great travel organizational tool that all road warriors need, and best of all, it really is FREE!!!!
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