SimplyBookMe is a free to use web service that helps you set up an online booking page for your business. Setting up the page is extremely simple: you pick out a username and enter the details for your business. Next you start sharing the public URL of the booking page with your friends. Visitors to the URL can select a date and time for the booking and leave their name and phone number. Available and unavailable slots are already indicated when somebody is booking an appointment.

Your SimplyBookMe dashboard shows all the bookings that have been made along with the booker’s details.

Features:

• A user-friendly web service.
• Creates an online booking page for your business.
• Lets you include details of your business on your page.
• Indicated available and unavailable slots on the booking page.
• Lets people leave their details while booking.
• Similar tools: Salonmonster, AcuityScheduling, Apptoto, Youcanbook.me, GooSync, Twittercal, FuseCal and RemiMe.
• Also read related articles:
  iCalendar Lite- A Free Transparent Desktop Calendar (Windows)
  4 Online Calendars To Help You Get Organized

Check out SimplyBookMe @ www.simplybook.me (By Umar from TechCityInc)

To use Wanderfly, go to its homepage and enter the necessary parameters for the search. You can even specify a range for your budget and as for the date, you can choose a vague part of a month (early, mid, or late) and specify the number of days.

As for the place that you want to explore, you can specify a certain country or you can just leave it at “˜anywhere’ if you are feeling adventurous. Then you can choose from casino, eco, food, culture, outdoors, romance, shopping, spa, party, beach, entertainment, and luxury, so Wanderfly can also suggest the activities that you can do within a place.

Features:

• Holiday recommendation engine.
• Plan a vacation on a random place in the world.
• Specify your budget, date of vacation, place (optional), and interests within a place.
• Suggest places, as well as flights, hotel, and activities based on the parameters you’ve input.
• Provides information about the place suggested.
• Can suggest multiple trip ideas.
• Similar Tools: Gowaza, BudgetYourTrip, IgoUgo, and GlobeTrooper.

Check out Wanderfly @ www.wanderfly.com

Built-in Google Maps features make it all the more easier to locate hotels in a specific part of the city or country. You can also use the ‘Near By’ feature to locate hotels that are closest to your current geographical location. The app also offers lots of deals and doesn’t charge any booking or cancellation fee.

You can save your bookings to view them later and sort results based on price or guest ratings. You can also search the hotel listings by specifying the hotel name or just a hotel brand like ‘Sheraton’. Detailed information and pictures make it easy for you to judge each hotel and see if it would suit your requirements.

ToucHotel supports multiple languages including Danish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. The app has an encrypted processing so your credit card information is safe as it can get.

Features:

• Make hotel reservations on-the-go using your iPhone.
• Over 90,000 accommodations worldwide.
• Includes 1-5 star hotels, motels, B&Bs and even apartments.
• View properties on Google Maps along with prices.
• View pictures and ratings before making a decision.
• Sort results by price or customer ratings.
• No reservation or cancellation fees.

Download ToucHotel from iTunes

Skylight is a collection of online tools that provides a venue for project and resource managers with features that enhances better communication between team members, recruitment for new talents, a booking system, and keeping files and documents.

Sign up first to use Skylight then add in the name of the business you want to manage. On the Dashboard section, you can choose what you want to appear by checking them on the Customize menu.

Simply click the Add tabs on each box to add information. To view options on each section, simply click the drop-down arrow beside the name to choose. By clicking on the name itself, you will see all the details about it.

There are a lot of tools available in the dashboard. The project management tool provides the usual activity feeds, milestones setup, task assignment, file storage, and more. The Resource Scheduling tool lets you book resources with a drag and drop interface while checking for conflicts in the process. The Tasks and Time Logging tool logs priority dates and measures time invested on each task. Other tools include invoice and quotes, reports, and file annotation.

Skylight offers a complete set of tools to simplify one’s business life. Accounting, invoicing tools, and custom reports will also soon be included in their service.

Features:

• Free and easy to sign up.
• Project management tool.
• Resource scheduling tool.
• Timeline views.
• People and companies.
• Tasks and Time logs.
• Invoices and quotes.
• Reports.
• File Annotation.
• Similar Tools: Collabtive, Scrumy, Scrumy, and BusyLissy.

Check out Skylightit @ www.skylightit.com

To use BookWhen, register and activate your account from your email. For starters, complete all the tasks from the “Steps to get going“ box. To create an event, go to the “Schedule“ section, click the “Create event“ and fill in the details. Here, you can also change the URL to your public page by clicking the “Edit header“ option.

Anyone who sees your public page will see your upcoming events. They can easily view the details of the events on your page and even book themselves. You can then confirm or deny their bookings. To monitor all your bookings, go to the “Bookings“ tab. You can also take payments from your attendees by clicking on the “Payment“ tab which is integrated with Paypal.

Features:

• Provides a public page for anyone to list their upcoming schedule of events or availability.
• Prevents flooding of emails.
• Keeps your attendees organized.
• Prevents overbooking.
• Can be integrated with an external calendar such as Google or Yahoo.
• Similar Tools: BookingCalendar, Doodle, Congregar, and MeetWithMe.

Check out Bookwhen @ www.bookwhen.com

On the other hand, there are online calendars that are specialized to make specific tasks easier. BookingCalendar is one such app. This simple online tool lets you create free embeddable calendars to track your available bookings and also display them on your website or personal webpage.

You can start by creating a calendar. Then you can set a booking start date and end date for each calendar. You can modify your bookings anytime and the easy embedding lets you post your calendar to your website.

For example, if you own a small hotel, you can create one calendar for each room so that you can track which ones are available for booking. Of course, your customers can also see what rooms are available. This also works if you have a car rental company, party bookings, or just about anything that requires knowing the availability of your resources.

BookingCalendar.info is also very useful for web designers who need a simple booking calendar for their business clients. The seamless interface makes this calendar very easy to use.

Features:

• Free; easy to set up.
• Alter the calendar as you see fit.
• Run multiple calendars.
• Keep track of your ads with media control.
• Embed your calendar into your website.
• Similar Tools:  Calendar Creator, ePrintableCalendars and ePrintable.

Check out Booking Calendar @  www.bookingcalendar.info

To search simply type in the location, select number of days and guests and then hit the Enter tush. HotelCalculator will bring list of results that can be narrowed down by price, type, hotel star rating (1 to 5) and amenities (Internet access, swimming pool, air-conditioning… etc).

You can also view hotels on a Goolge Map, see its distance from the city center and hotels in nearby towns. To book the hotel, just follow the link and complete the order at the provider’s website.

Furthermore you can add the hotels you liked to a “shortlist”. Shortlist lets you filter and compare hotels from the overall list.  You can save the shortlist and access it later through a provided link

Features:

• Compare hotel prices in over 13,000 cities all over the world.
• Data aggregated from multiple hotel and travel info providers including ActiveHotels.com, Agoda.com, AlphaRooms.com, Booking.com, HotelClub.com, OctopusTravel.com and others.
• View hotel listings, narrow results by price, hotel star rating (1 to 5) and amenities (Internet, swimming pool, air conditioning etc).
• View hotel location on a Google Map.
• Add hotels to a shortlist and access them later via provided link (link valid 7 days).
• Easy to use interface and no registration.
• Similar sites: HostelBookers, iStopOver and SeeYourHotel.

Check out HotelCalculator @ www.hotelcalculator.com

To find a hostel, drill down starting from the destination country and then to the city you are planning to visit. Once you have located the city, you will be able to see all available accommodations in as a list mode or view them on the map (Google maps).

Features:

• Find a cheap place to stay on your backpacking trip.
• Search for hostels or browse them by countries.
• Sort hostels by price or ratings.
• View result as a list or map view.
• Lists over 2,500 destinations worldwide.
• Check out ratings and reviews for each budget hostel.
• No booking fees or registration required.
• Also see: SeeYourHotel – Find A Hotel Close To Any Address.

Check out Hostelbookers @ www.hostelbookers.com

How doe it work?

1. Launch the TaxiMagic app on your iPhone.

2. Your iPhone determines your location and presents a list of nearby cab services. While some listings are only phone numbers, others fully support Taxi Magic’s ordering system.

3. Choose one of the supported cab companies and enter your exact street address.

4. TaxiMagic then takes you to a status screen that will alert you as soon as your cab is dispatched and show you the driver’s name.

5. Track the cab location and how far away it is on the status screen.

TaxiMagic’s “˜Magic Booking’ is available in over 25 major US cities (and tap to call options are available in over 4000 US cities).

Features:

• Book taxi cab from your iPhone.
• Magic self booking available for 25 major US cities.
• Tap to call options are available in over 4000 US cities.
• See the driver’s name and cab location on the status screen.
• Free and easy to use.
• US only.
• Similar sites: Google Ride Finder.

Check out TaxiMagic @ www.taximagic.com (via Techcrunch)

As they mention, “Using the power and ease of Google Maps technology, you can now find a hotel, then view actual pictures of the rooms and facilities, compare with other hotels nearby and then make your reservations all from one convenient site.”

I’d say they are doing a good job leveraging Google Maps technology to fetch hotels in the US and Canada region. You can also filter hotels by price and standard or use their toll free numbers given at the top right of the page, to get in touch with them.

Check out SeeYourHotel @ www.seeyourhotel.com ( Contributed by Abhijeet from Jeet Blog )