Two Useful Services for Travelers: Tripit and PageOnce

Do you travel a lot?  Spend more than a few weeks away from home in hotels and motels?  If you do, you probably already understand the importance of good logistics when traveling.

Knowing the latest on your plane status, your hotel reservation, and your rental car normally involves a pile of paper, or searching through the phone for confirmation emails.

Add to this the travelers need for current information on their own personal and financial accounts, and you basically have a road warrior that is extremely data-hungry.  But the data-hunger is normal, all we're talking about here is the ability to:

• Organize all trips by destination and collect your airfare, hotel, rental car and other information together
• Pin all of your reservation information to your calendar
  
• Check on your personal financial accounts, traveler points accounts, and other accounts

do all of this from your mobile phone (blackberry, iphone, etc)


First, check out PageOnce:  http://www.pageonce.com

Free to try, $10 yearly service.
Collect all your accounts in one place, and check them from your phone!
Banking, Investing, Utilities, Cell Phone, Shopping, etc

Then, check out TripIt:  http://www.tripit.com

Free
Collect all your travel information in one place, access it from your phone!
Airfare, Hotel, Rental Car, and other information...just email it to TripIt

**Hint**
To sync TripIt with your Google Calendar (and your Outlook, and your Blackberry), add the Tripit Calendar RSS Feed to your Google Calendar.  Instructions here:  http://www.tripit.com/uhp/calendarInfo


Your new road warrior now has all of his/her personal/financial/travel information at their finger tips!  All their travel and banking information available on their phone, and on their calendar.  Share your trips with your colleagues.  Check your credit card accounts from the road.  View your hotel reservations easily for multiple trips.  Check your online shopping accounts from your phone...and much more!!

Blackberry with BIS Calendar Sync

Struggling with a personal Blackberry and the calendar? Without the BES "backbone" many personal Blackberry users miss out on the wireless sync of their calendars.

Don't believe me? Try it on your Blackberry, go to Calendar and see if you can activate Wireless sync...you won't be able to!

Never fear, you can still sync your Blackberry calendar with your Outlook 03/07, Gmail, or other similar calendar. This post will specifically tackle sync'ing:

Blackberry Calendar
Outlook 2003/2007 Calendar
Google Gmail

On the computer with Outlook, install the Google Calendar Sync application:
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=89955

With a Blackberry on BIS, and a computer with Outlook you can setup wireless sync with your calendar! Create appointments in Outlook and they will sync with the Blackberry.

Create them on the Blackberry and they will sync with the Outlook calendar.
Google Mobile Sync: http://www.google.com/mobile/products/sync.html#p=default
(On your BB: http://m.google.com/sync)

This solution works beautifully on a Blackberry to keep the calendar in-sync with an existing Outlook calendar. This solution will allow wireless sync for a Outlook calendar, a Google Calendar, and a Blackberry Calendar.