Looks like Travel's been busy again, they've the one guy who's actually working on this has made a few nice changes to an already very impressive tool, Trip Builder.
First, a few quick notes:
1. It's a beta, and hasn't really gotten the kind of support and love it so richly deserves. That means it's not really tied into things like 360, the Address Book, Companion, Flickr, MySearch, or any of a number of similar things out there. Give the guy a break, all of those are on the product schedule, but he does enjoy the occasional moment away from a keyboard.
2. TheyHe's fixed a bunch of bugs, and added things like the ability to share your trips with someone, as in if you wanted to schedule a family vacation, all however many of you can add stuff. Very nice, that, although it does mean that your wife will probably delete the strip clubs you add to your Vegas getaway.
3. Let me point out why this is such a cool toy. My Honeymoon wasn't really the grand adventure it should have been. This is because we traveled to the mystical land of Coastal California (hey, we were young and living on the east coast), and managed to forget the carefully annotated tourbook that held our itineary. Anyone familiar with family weddings will simply nod in understanding. If we were to have our honeymoon now, we could solve that problem by listing the various hotels, restaurants, things to do, and other bits of interest, along with WHY we think they're interesting right here, and then if we forget it, a quick trip to Kinkos will solve that problem.
And i wouldn't be reminded that i hospitalized my wife every time i go through Monterey.
Which would be a big win, if i might say so.
i've already got several trips (and trip like things) done up. i should note that you're not limited to only stuff on Yahoo!, there's a bookmarklet that lets you add pages from anywhere.
And yeah, after playing around with it for a few minutes, you pretty much see how that laundry list of other properties practically SCREAM to be incorporated with this, but like i said, it's only one guy and he really needs to get away from the computer every now and then. Still, This is pretty unique and (dare i say it) innovative. i'm not familiar with anybody else doing anything like this.
Still, have at, and make sure you give him feedback about things you think they need. Please. It'll give him something he can beat some folks over the head with so that they can give him a few more folks to work on this.
