Feb 2007

Not all of us would trust a person we meet on the internet enough to let them stay the night at our place on their round-the-world backpacking trip. But increasingly, online communities are growing around exactly this type of hospitality.

Couchsurfing.com is one such community, where over 165 000 members world-wide are making their homes and couches available to each other. For a broke backpacker, sleeping on an internet-buddy's couch beats sleeping under a bridge. According to the site, it's not just about saving pennies; it's about creating a better world by opening homes, hearts and lives. In an age of organised tours and package deals where you're rarely forced to mingle with a local, the chance to hang out with one for a day or two can really enrich the experience of travelling.

Another site worth checking out is GlobalFreeloaders.com. Though it doesn't boast quite as many members as Couchsurfing, it still has over 14 000 members in the United States and two from Turkmenistan. You may even get a whole room to yourself, not just a couch.

Of course, with any of these sites it's important to remember it's a two-way relationship. At GlobalFreeloaders, the expectation is that you'll give back as much as you've received: so if you visited four members while you backpacked around Europe, you're expected to accommodate four members when you can.

There's plenty of other services such as these showing up around the web, so we've decided to add a short list of some of the best we've come across.

Yesterday in Melbourne, the MX featured a story about how modern travellers are using the net to share their stories and photos through things like blogs. We were pleased to see that Travellerspoint earned quite the mention, with a particular focus on our mapping service

To read what the MX had to say about us, you can read the scanned in version here.

Thanks to those members that met up with the reporter last Wednesday!

If you ever notice a mention of Travellerspoint in your local paper, please let us know... It's always cool to know we're in the news!

Going travelling and want to let everyone know where to find your blog/diary/photos et al?!

Enter Travel Cards, the latest TP feature to be included under that all encompassing personal login area we call 'My Control Panel' (yes, you have to be logged in to view these areas).

Travel Cards is a simple concept aimed at those of you that want to let others know how they can keep in touch with you, while you are travelling. They work just like business cards, except contain information that is relevant to your travels like your blog domain or where someone could find your personal photo gallery. You could hand these out before you leave to your friends and family - or anyone else that otherwise might forget about you - or after meeting people on your trip that you'd like to keep in touch with.

The system works the same as the personal Luggage Tags you can create on Travellerspoint, in that you generate a PDF with all the information you want to include embedded on a background image.

So, when you visit your Travel Cards area, you will find a form with different default fields that you can include. Think things like name, email address, phone number, blog domain, photo gallery etc. Some of these will be pre-filled in if we have the information available, but you can of course change them if you prefer to use other details. This is a screenshot of how it would look:

You then choose whatever you want to include by ticking the little checkbox in front of that text field:

Now, select a background color:

And hit the Create button. Your computer will notify you a PDF has been created and ask you if you want to save it or preview it. You could then print this yourself on some kind of thickish paper or of course have it printed at one of the many business card print shops around. The printing is one side only so you can write notes on the back.

Oh, and for those of you that this doesn't work for or who want something different, you can also just download a blank background and print these and write on them... not as cool, but hey

Hope you enjoy the feature, it's down at the bottom of your Control Panel if you're wondering. Of course you can also use the 'Promote' feature just to send the different links to your photo gallery and profile/blog etc. to friends and family as well, if you don't feel like printing them.

Thanks to Rolf Potts' Vagablogging, I found Idealist.org this morning, a site by Action Without Borders that "connects people, organizations, and resources to help build a world where all people can live free and dignified lives."

Idealistic indeed, but this week the site is launching a global initiative to unite people with similair interests and desires across the face of the planet. From February 5-11, there will be 273 meetings worldwide.

The premise for these meetings is the belief that there are many people in the world who share similair desires and visions of change. By providing the opportunity for these people to connect with each other and work together, be it through the internet or in person, "the world would be a different place."

Cynical? Maybe you should take a look at the organisations in your neighbourhood that are trying to achieve positive change.

For you internet buffs, this is an interesting feature started by the people over at Technorati. Technorati is like a search engine for blogs: instead of finding matches for your search term in the whole of the internet, Technorati only searches through blogs.

With WTF (which stands for Where's the Fire?), you can write about why certain search phrases are popular at the moment. You might be wondering why people are talking about Nutella... Well, if you search for Nutella in Technorati, you'll discover it's because World Nutella Day is coming up on February 6th!

Or if you're wondering what the latest news is about Travellerspoint, just search for Travellerspoint and read the WTF at the top of the page. Heck, if you feel like it you can even write what you think is the most notable thing about Travellerspoint at the moment!