TripDiary.com (owned by the same parent company as the host of this blog and built using the same engine) is a new and very cool travel blog hosting service. In about 30 seconds (and that includes the time to register) you can create a "Trip Diary", and then post diary entries for all the cool stuff you did on your vacation.

You can include, of course, photos and even videos if you first upload them to YouTube, but the most interesting feature is the ability to specify on a road or satellite map the exact position of each diary entry. Then, at the top of the page, TripDiary automatically generates an interactive overview map showing all the locations you went to.

TripDiary has various other nice features too - you can "bookmark" other users as "friends", and then you get links to their diaries right from your personalized home page, plus send them instant messages and chat with them. You can also set your diaries (or even individual entries) so that only your "friends" can see them or comment on them.

So I'm trying out Google's new baby, web-based spreadsheets. It looks great, it works great, but aside from the obvious online collaboration aspect, it's got a long way to go before I'll be switching from Excel.