Our latest feature for the traveling folks is the Travel Taste tool. We’ve found the tool to be a lot of fun, and were happy to read the Travel Taste preview on the Los Angeles Times.

Travel Taste lets you compare your taste with friends and gives you ideas of places to go and – take careful note – places to avoid! The lists of places are personalized just for you. Under the hood, the feature basically taps the collective wisdom of traveling crowd. The list of recommendations is calculated in real time, based on the the user’s ratings in the context of “taste clusters“. The more places a user rates, the more accurate the resulting list will be. Works for us!

Seems that it worked for the time-honored L.A. Times as well. They write:

TripSay.com is a fun tool that lets you rate destinations around the world, then offers trip suggestions based on the places that like-minded travelers enjoyed.

Well said. The full story is here.

Travel Taste gets even more interesting when you compare your taste and ratings with your friends. There will be surprising likeness and disagreements! Try it out at TripSay!

Webmania is the longest running technology segment in Canada. The tech segment is aired in all of Canada’s top media markets including Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal so this was a great opportunity for us to spread the word and encourage Canadians to join and contribute to TripSay. The Canadian people were very fun and they share the same passion for travel that we do. In fact many of the travel industry people I met in Vancouver were on their way to Berlin for the big ITB event that TripSay also attended.

In addition to Webmania, I met also Jee Yun Lee who is the host of another interesting tech show, Homepage on City Pulse 24. The live interview is embedded below.

To my new Canadian friends; Good luck hosting the Winter Olympics next year and I’ll see you on TripSay.

It is always fun to get acknowledged. We are happy to see that TripSay was featured on New York Times. In the paper’s travel section reporter Hilary Howard writes about two new web tools that help in trip planning. She suggests two user-friendly travel sites: TripSay and Fly.com The article goes on:

Tripsay.com, a free social travel network, lets users share their likes and dislikes on destinations and link up with other travelers according to mutual interests. Members are asked to describe their vacation preferences, mention previous trips, and list dream destinations. A recommendation engine will then match them with travelers who have similar tastes and preferences.

Read the full article here.

This media interest further strengthens the trend we wrote about in a previous post. The time is getting right for the next generation of online travel services!

We got nominated in three categories:

• The Best Infodesign. A category for websites that are designed with a special focus on user experience, intuitive user interface, and clear and logical layout.
• The Best Startup. For Finland-based Internet startups. The category is managed in co-operation with ArcticStartup, a blog writing about internet and mobile startups in the Nordic and Baltic countries.
• The Best B2C Service. A category for consumer sites, applies for e.g. web media, brand and company sites, and online shops.

Grand One is an annual contest for the Finnish digital media companies. The jury has selected the finalists among a number of websites and services. The main rule is that “most of the design and implementation work must be done in Finland”. This applies well to TripSay, as our roots are in Helsinki, Finland. That’s where the magic happens.

Lights … Camera … Action … The first story to come out was a live Homepage show on CityPulse24 (CTV). And there’s more to come! Hopefully we’ll get the stories on Youtube as well!

Media’s interest and our growing userbase tell the same story: The time to go mass market with the next generation of online travel service is now! The advent of social media and travel business’s transition to online mean that people go to web to look for travel info. People appreciate the value of getting personalized travel tips from friends and likeminded travelers.

TripSay is constantly developing, both in terms of features (more about that in the near future) and userbase. The more members we have, the better we are able to distill the best travel tips and destinations from our huge database. We are glad to say that we have members from around the world already. Way to go!

If you’re looking for a unique way to explore the region, we have a suggestion for you: tour Abruzzo behind the wheel of a vintage Fiat 500, the classic Cinquecento. With the earliest versions now more than 50 years old, the 500 is the car that a little more than 10 years after the end of the Second World War truly put Italy on wheels.

The post at Automotive Traveler contains loving descriptions of great food and relaxing lifestyle. It certainly makes you want to visit the area and enjoy the beautful views and taste the delicious food by yourself.

Another great story at AutomotiveTraveler is Richard’s compilation of his 10 best road trips. Pretty awesome routes there.

It will be interesting to see what Tripsayers will be saying about the places mentioned in the AT’s articles. I collected the places in the “Touring in Italy” story to a dedicated group for easy access. You can find the group at http://www.tripsay.com/groups/Touring Abruzzo

I met with Erick from TechCrunch as he was moderating the Next Web conference in Amsterdam and got the opportunity to demo our site in between all the hassle. He asked some good questions and had some good comments and obviously knew the scene pretty well. It’s always a pleasure to demo to someone who knows about your business. Very cool that he did a post on us! He starts with the title “TripSay Lets You Discover The World With A Little Help From Your Friends”, which we think is quite well suited. See the TechCrunch post for more (tech-savvy) comments and discussion. We’ll be at the Web 2.0 Expo in SF next week. If you’re going there and want to meet, drop me a line at leo@[youknow].