Out & About is a print newsletter that offers "essential information for Gay & Lesbian travelers." Inside you'll find info on gay owned-and-operated bed and breakfasts, lesbian and gay cruises, special information for HIV+ travelers, and even tips on dealing with the culture clash of visiting Guatemala. But that's the dead tree version. The Web site features a few articles from each newsletter and links to related online information, but it seems primarily to be just a tease to get you to subscribe. Still, the Out & About calendar will give you a where and when of events that shouldn't be missed when flying the queer-friendly skies. - David Pescovitz
High Adventure Fare Builder allows visitors to get price information and quotes on "long-haul" airfare to all sorts of exotic destinations. Long-haul fares are trips that involve more than one leg or destination, such as flying from San Francisco to London, then continuing on to Singapore, and finally continuing on to Australia. Fare Builder is designed to give an approximate price for your trip, so it's great for planning purposes--for the real purchase, the site advises you to speak to one of its agents to make sure you've covered all of your bases. In the planning stages, though, this is a nice service for would-be long-haulers. - Rachel Saidman
CNN has capitalized on its extensive resources to create this comprehensive source of travel information. City Guides, one of the site's most impressive sections, features useful information for dozens of cities in the U.S. There are maps (including a Shockwave map that you can zoom in and out of to locate specific streets) and sites related to that particular city. You can access ski conditions in 300 ski resorts across the country, the latest weather across the country, up-to-the-minute news affecting travel around the world, and so on. While not exactly overflowing with personality, this is an excellent resource for those traveling domestically and/or frequently. - Rachel Saidman
Sometimes a site contains so much useful stuff it's almost overwhelming--that's the story here at Pathfinder Travel. Unlike wimpy sites that only cover one subject or country, this site covers it all. Everything even remotely related to travel is here: maps; current weather information; colorful travelogs; a language translator (even includes Esperanto!); and Travel & Leisure, the upscale-and-darned-proud-of-it white-bread travel mag. It's a tough choice, but I think the highlight is Planet Profiles, which features well-written mini-articles that thoroughly cover the attractions, history, geography, and more of over "10,000 destinations" worldwide. Don't take off without stopping here first. - Dorrit Tulane Walsh
This lush and comprehensive site goes island by island to provide you with an exhaustive menu of vacation options. Start with a tour or go straight to detailed information on accommodations, maps, a calendar of events, entertainment, transportation, food, and activities--everything from planning a wedding to finding resources for your body and mind. Feature articles describe local cuisine, festivals, wildlife, shopping, history, and more. And it's all presented in the vivid colors of the islands, with crisp text and photographs that will have you on a plane before you can say "Mahalo." - Emily Soares
These travel guides, written by Berkeley students who brave the routes themselves, are famous for expert advice on cheap, "on the loose" travel. The online version of the guides covers the U.K., Eastern and Western Europe, Central America, Mexico, and the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. If you become a member (it's free), you can use the Travel Planner service, which lets you save pertinent portions of the guides into your own planner. Before you leave on your trip you can print out these portions, which will prove much lighter than lugging around an entire guidebook. The Berkeley Guides also links to related sites and home pages from the country you're interested in visiting. Who knew so many Bulgarians were wired? - Emily Soares
In addition to dispensing encyclopedia-style sketches on the country's history, geography, government, and the like, this hub for all things Malaysian on the Web lets you access all sorts of information, including newspapers in Malay and English, Malaysian political parties and state government servers, and events calendars that list everything from conferences to the Sabah Dragon Boat Race. The site's own sections sometimes suffer from an ill-advised eclecticism--under Tourism, for example, you'll find recipes and sports, but not accommodations--but that's no problem, because the collection of Malaysian Web pages links you to more than 80 travel-related sites, hundreds of personal home pages, and an equally impressive array of resources in other categories. - Sandra Stewart
Gorgeous photography makes this site a joy to look at, but a combination of light type and busy backgrounds renders some sections nearly impossible to read. That's too bad, because Orbit's guides to the Pacific Islands, Australia, and Asia (Sweden and New Zealand guides were under construction at last look) provide lively descriptions of some exotic destinations not often covered by travel sites. The site emphasizes active, adventurous, and nature-oriented trips, such as scuba diving in the Andaman Sea, sea canoeing in the Solomon Islands, and self-driving tours of Western Australia. The tone is sometimes a tad promotional, but usually not annoyingly so, and the travelers' warnings and recommendations accompanying each section are a nice extra. - Sandra Stewart
Biztravel.com clearly knows its audience--the design is corporate-report slick, and the bizTraveler zine section helpfully lists approximate reading times (almost always less than 10 minutes) for each article--but technically, the site needs some work. The bizCityInfo section contains only brief city profiles, and the promised navigation bars leading to hotel, restaurant, and other information never appears. The airline reservations screen shows only flights falling within minutes of the departure time requested, so you don't get a full sense of your options. There are some handy features here, though--you can request door-to-door driving directions in major cities, and bizMiles lets you track accounts with several frequent-traveler programs at once. With some attention, this could be an excellent resource. - Sandra Stewart
Site of the month!!
Wanderlust, the new travel section of Salon magazine -- arguably the most successful 'zine on the Web -- looked promising from word one. The inaugural issue this March hosted a lineup that any armchair traveler could instantly recognize as all-star quality: Jan Morris, Isabelle Allende, Peter Mayle, and Pico Iyer all contributed. Add to the first-string writing the steady influx of material (theirs a new issue of Wanderlust every week) and Salon's trademark design, and you had yourself an instant winner. Now in it's fourth issue, Wanderlust is going strong. In addition to the stories, there are threaded discussions patterned after Salon's Table Talk, a Travel Marketplace which currently offers books (from Borders) and up-to-date travel info (from Outtahere). Which is not to say that Wanderlust or Salon are perfect. No, in fact, I've taken my pot shots at Salon in the past, writing somewhere that it sounded "as if it were written by the cast of Thirtysomething." But my beef had more to do with attitude and tone (i.e. an overall self-consciousness and the compulsion to be both "mature" and sassy at the same time) than the quality of the material. It may be a little bourgeois, but it's never bush league. And when it comes right down to it, I read it -- I actually read it. I'm reading it even more regularly since the addition of Wanderlust, which -- praise Allah -- eschews the kind of writing that so often characterizes the Sunday travel supplements of the big city dailies, pieces that invariably start out with saccharine passages about the sun going down over the plaza, (or the bazaar, the ginza, the Ghanges, ... wherever) then gloss over all the attendant hassles and horrors: the poverty, the delays, the GI distress, the chloroquin nightmares. The tone of Wanderlust so far is generally upbeat (and perhaps a little upscale as well), but it's always intelligent and ultimately less concerned with the tourist brochure angle than it is with getting at the essence of travel's unique allure. Wanderlust doesn't waste bandwidth on photography or technological flair; it's just all about good writing and the compulsion to uproot oneself, to get lost, to give `em the slip. It's a site for people who know, in their bones, the meaning of the title. And for my money that makes it. - Patrick Joseph