The Business Travel Series is supported by Philips ChargeOn, a wire-free mobile phone charging system that gives you up to 4 hours of additional talk time when you’re on the go. To learn more about Philips ChargeOn, visit its website here.  There are quite a lot of resources on the web for researching and planning vacations. Many of the tools focus on helping users uncover relevant insider tips and deals.  Within the past year, though, websites and apps for sharing travel plans with potential travel mates, whether they be friends or strangers, have become a bit more commonplace, and frankly, useful. Early on, these sites suffered from a lack of network effect — with only a few of your friends sharing their travel plans, the services don’t exactly provide much value.  Within my own network, I’ve noticed an increasing adoption of travel sharing sites, like TripIt and Dopplr, and these services have definitely become more useful for me as more of my friends start using them. It’s important to note that many of these sites have other handy features that make them useful whether your network is fully engrossed or not.  Check out the four online resources for sharing travel plans outlined below, and let us know which ones you’d add to the list in the comments.  TripIt is a great way to organize and share your travel plans. Its biggest advantage over many other services is the ability to pull in travel data and organize it in a way that’s easy to understand, plotting out important trip details, such as flight, hotel and car rental information. Even more impressive, it shows you the information in the order that you need it — departing flight time, arrival time, car rental details, hotel location and so on, throwing in other useful resources, such as local maps.  TripIt added a new feature a few months ago that automatically imports travel, hotel and airline confirmation e-mails from a user’s Gmail or Google Apps account to the service’s web and mobile apps. This automation makes managing and sharing trip itineraries easier than it’s ever been. In the past, users only needed to forward travel confirmation e-mails to TripIt (plans@tripit.com) and it would parse the information into its system — now, even that step is unnecessary. Oh, the joys of technology!  You can set TripIt to automatically share your travel plans to your TripIt network, LinkedIn, Facebook or via a badge that you can embed on your blog. If automatic sharing isn’t your idea of fun, manual sharing is also available, and you can change between those settings on a per-trip basis if necessary. In either case, the shared details of a trip are limited to the city you’ll be in and when — more specific details are kept private.  Through the network tab on the website — or via the iPhone, Android or BlackBerry apps — users can see where their contacts are.  Dopplr is a service that enables members to share travel plans with their networks and exchange tips on places to stay, eat and explore.  There are multiple ways to input your travel data into Dopplr, but none of them are as simple as TripIt’s automation feature. You can direct message @dopplr on Twitter, forward flight and hotel confirmation e-mails to trips@dopplr.com, or import trips from Google Calendar, Apple iCal or Yahoo Upcoming.  Dopplr automatically shares your travel plans (only location and dates) with the network that you cultivate on the service — you can find friends through all the major social networks and e-mail services. Connecting to Facebook, XING and FriendFeed, or embedding the Dopplr blog badge, also allows you to share travel plans among other networks.  Dopplr differentiates itself with its tips system, where users can recommend restaurants, hotels and attractions in cities across the world. From the website or the iPhone app — though no longer available for download — users can access these tips to enhance their traveling experiences. Because each trip has a landing page, users can easily scroll through other Dopplr members’ recommendations and plan accordingly.  A user’s network appears in the “fellow travellers” tab on the website, where your networks’ travel data can be visualized via Google Maps or a simple reverse chronological list of your friends’ current whereabouts.  Bumped.in is an online travel service that believes “traveling doesn’t have to be lonely.” It focuses on social media serendipity, connecting travelers on the same path. Rather than sharing your travel details with friends and family, you’re sharing your itinerary with complete strangers. So why not get to know a fellow commuter or traveler?  After signing up and creating a profile, you can add plane and train trips to get started. Trips can be entered as one-time trips or recurring commutes. Bumped.in then tells you which other users are traveling your route or in close proximity. From there, you can browse their profiles and connect through messaging.  Cultivating a network helps out. You can begin by connecting to Facebook to find friends already using the service. The Facebook connection also allows you to share travel logs on your Facebook wall to let your friends know what you’re up to next.  The big idea behind Bumped.in is to make travel time more bearable by enabling users to connect with fellow travelers who may have similar interests.  For the adventurous travelers out there, Globetrooper is a traveling site worth checking out.  Like Bumped.in, Globetrooper focuses on connecting strangers with similar interests, but in this case, the service is specific to traveling interests. It enables users to create and post trips in search of ideal travel partners, organizing trips into broader categories — including backpacking, mountaineering, bicycle touring and food/wine touring.  When creating a trip, users can enter information about the dates and costs and get more specific in the description field. The creator also rates the trip on difficulty, culture shock, remoteness and risk factors and has the option to add a photo. All of these details help prospective traveling mates determine if the trip is a good fit. Each trip appears on its own trip page with all of the details, which also include a comment section for travelers to chat and connect.  For those interested in traveling but without specific plans, there is also the option of browsing existing trips, such as those pictured above. Users can browse by category, country or period of travel.  The Business Travel Series is supported by Philips ChargeOn, a wire-free mobile phone charging system that gives you up to 4 hours of additional talk time when you’re on the go. To learn more about Philips ChargeOn, visit its website here.  - 7 Ways Mobile Apps are Enriching Historical Tourism - 10 Social Media Travel Resources You May Have Missed - How the Resort Industry is Using Social Media - 5 Ways Airlines and Hotels Can Drive Revenue with Social Media - HOW TO: Plan a Vacation Using Social Media  Image courtesy of Flickr, deeleea
TripIt, Dopplr, Bumped.in and Globetrooper can help you share your travel plans with your friends, family and even potential travel mates.