For example, you can view sample photos of how locals dress in London versus how tourists dress up. It tells you a list of Do’s and Don’ts for that particular city and even allows you to ask questions from the locals. The site also displays information on how to live in that city including pictures and room listings. It is a great site with tons of information but is very easy to skim through.

Features:

• Know how to appear like a local citizen in a foreign country.
• Get tips on Do’s and Dont’s.
• Ask questions from the locals.
• Similar tools: FastenSeatBelts and TravelEtiquette.

Visit HowNotToBeATourist @ www.hntbat.com

GuyHaus is a wonderful service that delivers the necessary bathroom items and miscellaneous items you need while sleeping over at somebody else’s place. All you have to do is visit the website, select the items you want included in your basket, and specify where you want them delivered. Payment to GuyHaus can be made through any one of the major credit cards: Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. You are charged for the items only – currently shipping is being offered for free.

Features:

• A user-friendly service.
• Delivers necessary supplies to men.
• Helpful for when you are staying a night at somebody else’s place.
• Accepts major credit cards.

Check out GuyHaus @ http://guyhaus.com (By Umar from AllThatIsApple)

With Travelstormer, you can create a travel plan for you and your friends. To add friends to a travel plan, just input their email address to send an invite link where they can place their RSVP. Once you have a travel plan set up, you and your friends can start brainstorming on the details of the trip.

One unique feature of Travelstormer is that you can crowdsource using Facebook or Twitter, so that you can get useful inputs from other people. Another useful feature of Travelstormer is the expense-tracker which splits the payments that have been made among the members of the trip.

Travelstormer is an invaluable tool that can make the planning phase of any group trip hassle-free.

Features:

• Plan group travels easily with your friends.
• Brainstorm about the different details of a group travel.
• Crowdsource brainstorms to Twitter and Facebook.
• Set the privacy settings of group travels.
• Send out group and private messages to members of a travel group.
• Manage payments easily with the expense-tracker.
• Add flight details of your travel plan.
• Assign trip task to the members a travel group.
• Add events to your group calendar regarding group-related decisions.
• Similar Tools: Twalaba, Plnnr, Stay, and ToursByLocals.

Check out Travelstorm @ www.travelstormer.com

The tool also stores your past and upcoming trips in an organized way, add trips automatically by forwarding your flight or hotel reservation email, list friends that are going with you on the trip and score deals related to your upcoming trips. It is a great tool to give your trip a social touch.

Features:

• Scans your Facebook to find friends who are familiar with your destination.
• Add and maintain trip information easily and in an organized way.
• Login with Facebook, no registration required.

Visit GTrot @ www.gtrot.com [Via HowToGeek]

Instead of the usual filters based on number of rooms, or price range, you can type in words like clean, safe, downtown, or close to a university to find the perfect hotel for you.

Find I Like does this by parsing not only the hotel descriptions as released by the hotel owners, but also focusing on indexing reviews for different hotels. These reviews are vital in providing a better picture of a hotel since it is the reviewers that can best describe their experience. You can also analyze related reviews or read a summary of reviews with a rates comparison to help you make an informed decision.

Find I Like saves hotel searchers a lot of time since it is not only enough to know the basic details of these hotels, as you also have to know what hotels match the qualities you are looking for as validated by hotel reviews. This tool is currently in beta so expect some bugs, but it does have a lot of potential as a laser-targeted hotel search engine.

Features:

• Find and analyze hotels based on personal preference.
• Compare rates and filter by price range.
• Choose priority for each preference to change search results.
• Filter preferences.
• Still in beta.
• Similar Tools: Gowaza, Kukunu, and RoomAtlas.

Check out Find I Like @ www.findilike.cs.illinois.edu

You should keep in mind that the FCO advisories are usually detailed with specific local safety warnings and the map may not portray correctly. The entire information is available for download though. From the table you can download the travel advice for each country.

Features:

• FCO travel advisories mapped using Google Maps and Fusion tables.
• Easy to use and navigate.
• Created by Guardian, UK’s premier news publication.
• The FCO advice for specific regions isn’t shown on the map.

Check out Guardian Travel Advice Map @ www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/mar/23/fco-travel-advice-map (by Abhijeet from Guiding Tech)

Sized at only 3.1 MB, Word Lens is an iOS application compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPod Touch; your device needs to be running iOS 4.0 or later. The app recognizes text in an image and then translates it for you. In other words, you can quickly take a snapshot of a foreign language sign and then have the app translate it for you (see images above and below). You can look up translations to specific words as well.

The app does not recognize handwritten or stylized fonts, however it works satisfactorily with most signs. In addition to translating text, the app also reverses words for you and erases them from pictures.

While the app itself is free, its language packs are not; in order to translate to a particular language you will first need to purchase its language pack. These packs are being offered at a 50% discount till December 31st.

Demo video:

Features:

• A user friendly iOS app.
• Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPod Touch.
• Instantly translate words and text in images using your iPhone camera.
• Lets you quickly translate signs in other languages.
• Reverse words and erases them in pictures.

Check out Word Lens @ itunes.apple.com/us/app/word-lens/id383463868# (by MOin from ThumbPress)

Start by browsing for tips on the homepage. Hover over the images to read the quick tips, or click a tip to get a more detailed explanation. You can sort the tips by country, theme, or type. You can also learn some short foreign words that you can use in your trips. In addition, you can learn the historical background of these customs, which is fascinating to learn and in contrast with your culture.

Fasten Seat Belts is a great tool for any culturally-sensitive traveler, as we all should be.

Features:

• Learn different cultural etiquette around the world before you travel.
• Learn short words.
• Sort by country, theme, and type.
• Only Asia and Europe currently available.
• Similar Tool: TravelEtiquette.

Check out Fasten Seat Belts  www.fastenseatbelts.eu

You can even add photographs and blog entries to your trips, adding new dimensions to your trip’s map. With your edits finished you can save the map and share it with your friends. TravellersPoint Travel Community is not only helpful in sharing your trip with friends but also in organizing your trip ““ one quick glance at the map will tell you where the next destination lies geographically.

Key Features:

• Lets you make a map of your trip with the path’s outline.
• Lets you add photos and blog entries.
• Maps can be saved and shared online.
• Similar tools: Travelmapgenerator and WhereIhaveBeen.

Check out TravellersPoint Travel Community @ www.travellerspoint.com/member_map.cfm (By Umar from TechCityInc)

Routefriend is a free to use website that shows you different ways to travel from one US city to another one. You enter your departure and destination cities, along with the date you want to travel on; the site then searches for bus and train routes from 21 different providers. Each search result shows the departure time, fare, number of stops, provider, and arrival time of the route. A booking link for each route is also provided. You can filter the results according to time slots and / or by choosing only bus or train routes. The site’s iOS app will helps iOS device owners get information on intercity bus and train routes on the go.

Features:

• A user friendly web service.
• Lets you find the bus and train routes between US cities.
• You can filter results by time slots.
• You can choose to view only bus or train routes.
• For each route, thorough information is provided.
• You can book a route with the provided links.
• iOS device owners can use the service’s iOS app.
• Similar tools: Route4Me, Route Planner, POIs Along A Route, UMapper and The Route Planner.

Check out Routefriend @ www.routefriend.com (by MOin from ThumbPress)