ReadWriteWeb

In January of this year, mobile travel management app TripIt was acquired for up to $120 million by Concur, a company founded in 1993 that provides "integrated expense and travel management solutions." TripIt, founded in late 2006, was one of my favorite 'web 2.0' apps. At the end of 2007, ReadWriteWeb named it one of 10 Semantic Apps to Watch. From the early days, TripIt had managed to pair its sophisticated technology with an easy to use interface. The back end was technological fairy dust, but for the user it was almost deceptively simple. As I described the app in 2007: "you forward incoming bookings to plans@tripit.com and the system manages the rest."

Last month in Seattle I met up with TripIt co-founder Scott Hintz and Concur co-founder Michael Hilton (currently Executive VP, Worldwide Marketing). I was most interested to find out how a trendy consumer-focused travel app found its way into the more rigid, paperwork ridden world of corporate travel management - and how it's faring.

The cloud fundamentally changes the way enterprise applications function. Increasingly we are seeing traditional enterprise applications emerge in the cloud and partner with other Web-based services that have consumer appeal.

In turn, we are seeing cloud-based consumer type services transform into enterprise grade offerings that provide customers with the same experience they get in their work as they do at home.

Once upon a time, you had to bring travel guides, maps and paper tickets on every trip. Today, you can just take your smartphone and get access to all of this information without having to lug a couple of books and magazines around with you. Today, according to a new study by analytics firm Compete, 38% of smartphone users conduct travel research on their devices and 28% use their phones to book at least some of their trips and travel activities.

It's almost a rite of passage for North Americans to go abroad in search of themselves. I believe the rest of you call us "ugly Americans." We are the smelly people on your crowded subways, the drunk people in your religious festivals and often, the slack-jawed map readers blocking you during morning rush hour. Duffel offers us a chance to change that. In July, ReadWriteWeb covered a list of travel trends including group planning, mapping tools and recommendation engines. Duffel combines all three in one easy-to-use dashboard.

There's only so much we can learn from the comfort of our computer screens. At some point, we've got to venture into the unknown, embark on something new and explore the world around us. Whether you're traveling for business or pleasure, below are a few different tools to aid you in your journeys:

1. What He's Having: There are moments in life when the stars align and you find yourself in Thailand during a full moon festival, Italy during an olive harvest, or Fiji for the biggest surf waves of the year. You could take your chances, or you could consult Joobili. Joobili is an event-based travel recommendation system where users enter their desired travel dates, country of travel and interests. From here the Joobili community suggests a variety of events with a map view of the results. Rather than planning your trip blindly, you can hit (or miss) every major festival, sporting event or concert tour on your travel route. TripSay and I Want to Go There also offer crowd sourced tips on favorite travel spots. Meanwhile, NextStop members entice your inner-adventurer using pictures and short 140-character descriptions.

The latest episode of RWW Live, today at 3.30pm PST, will be focused on online travel applications. We have executives from 4 great travel startups on the call: TripIt, Yapta, Dopplr and PlanetEye. In the show we'll be discussing how the Web is changing the way people travel for work and fun. It promises to be a fascinating discussion, so we hope you tune in to the show LIVE at 3.30pm PST Monday (6.30pm EST) on Calliflower or Facebook. You can also ask questions during the podcast, using the chat function.

An interesting note came across our inboxes just now - the source of yesterday's FriendFeed spam has been revealed. If you've been using the social aggregator FriendFeed, then you may have noticed some odd-looking discussions yesterday where the same comment was repeated over and over by numerous different users. The source of this spam has now been identified, but this problem highlights a larger issue that could affect any company providing an open write API for developers to use - it only takes one developer's mistake to greatly impact a service.