ReadWriteWeb

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.

Muxtape, an online mix tape-making service, has been a big hit with music fans on the social web. The site lets you upload mp3s to create a playlist you can share with anyone. Now, a new service called Muxfind lets you to search through the muxtapes created by others in order to discover new artists, songs, and muxtapes that you might enjoy.