PatronManager

If you travel, even a little bit, you know that keeping track of all the various itineraries, confirmations, and directions can become complicated. I use Tripit, a clever service that seems like it performs magic.

Basically, it’s an itinerary builder, but the cool part is that it does most of this automatically. Once you sign up, any time you book a flight, car rental or hotel online, the confirmation e-mail that is sent to your inbox is automatically converted into a travel itinerary in your personal Tripit account. The service has a pretty sophisticated technology that grabs just the right information from the confirmation email and does all the organizing for you. You can then share these itineraries with friends and family, and best of all you never need to worry about forgetting a printed itinerary,  because all your information is available right on your mobile phone using a sleek Tripit app.

There are a lot of other features, including notifications of flight gate changes, maps, and weather all completely integrated into each itinerary. And like many services, there’s a free and a paid version.

Finally, for those of you that like to keep track of your travel over time, Tripit does that too.  I just checked, and my personal dashboard says “Eugene has traveled 8,391 mi to 47 cities.”  Wow.