Find Your Next Adventure At AvidTrips.com

Adventure travelers are always looking for new ideas and new ways to book their next escape, and a new website called AvidTrips.com has been designed from the ground up to assist in that process. The site allows you to search by a variety of categories, including destinations, activities, price, level of difficulty and so on. With that criteria set, AvidTrips will present a list of tour operators that can provide you the experience you are looking for in some of the best locations on the planet.

The interface on the site is slick and easy to use, offering up quite a bit of customization at your fingertips. There are also quite a few tour operators in the system already too, which means you'l have some good options when you decide on your next destination. The database that the site draws from is still being populated with more options and countries however, so if you have your heart set on a specific place, there is a chance it might not be available just yet.

AvidTrips has also launched a nice blog as well, with some great stories on exotic destinations from around the globe, each of which they offer access to. The editors of the site have also asked me to contribute some gear reviews and you'll find some of my own writing appearing there as well. The team behind the site is dedicated to improving it and providing more information for readers, and it looks like AvidTrips will be a great all-around tool for adventure travelers both now and into the future. I'm happy to play a small role in adding some content to the site.

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Want To Become An Eco Hero?

A new web/social networking site called Eco Heroes is nearing completion and will launch soon, that asks us each to do our part to help the environment on a daily basis, while sharing our experiences with other, in hopes that we'll inspire one another to be more eco-friendly and conscious of our impact on the world around us.

Spearheaded by Eco Hero Roz Savage, the site will be equal parts social networking and environmental initiative, wrapped up in a fun, colorful wrapper that even has some game elements attached. Each day, members of the site will sign in and share their good environmental deed, which can in turn be linked to Twitter so you can let all your friends and followers know as well. Your "Green Deeds" can be submitted to the site via your Twitter account, by e-mail, or by logging in directly. The creators of Eco Heroes are also promising a dedicated iPhone app in the near future as well, allowing you to boast of your deeds while on the go.

Once submitted to the site, other members can give your actions a thumbs up or thumbs down, indicating how much they like your actions, but more importantly you can earn points based on your Green Deeds, which will unlock special merit badges that you can use to show off your commitment towards protecting the environment and the actions you've done to stand behind that commitment. The site will also recognize Eco Heroes of the Week and award prizes as well.

Right now, if you go to the Eco Heroes website, there isn't much to see. You can sign up for an account, but after that you'll have to wait for notification that the site has officially opened. The launch is expected sometime around April 17th, which not-so-coninsidently is the projected start date of Roz's final leg of her trans-Pacific Row. This time out, she'll be departing from Tarawa and rowing the remaining distance to Australia. it's going to be one last epic leg of what has already been an amazing journey.

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Website Delivers Armchair Adventure For Everyone

One of the great things about writing this blog, and using the Internet, is that I have the opportunity to connect with others who share my passion for adventure in all of its forms. Sometimes I get to chat with climbers who have gone up Everest, sometimes it's polar explorers who have been to the South Pole. But I also get to interact with average, everyday adventurers who simply enjoy reading stories about exploration, often from the comfort of their easy chair.

That's where the website Armchair Adventurista comes in. The site was founded by Amy Wilson Maroney, who finds herself drawn to true adventure stories, like Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. Throw in a little frostbite, starvation, or an attack by a grizzly bear, and she's a happy reader.

To channel this self described obsession with adventure stories, Amy launched this site to post book reviews, share news on the what's going on in the world of adventure, and to link to adventurers who are out there exploring right now. She hopes to feature the best of true adventure stories, seek out and spotlight women adventurers, and promote the connection between adventure and sustainability.

Armchair Adventurista launched back in January, and has plenty of good content already in place. It seems that it is already turning into another place for fans of adventure, both armchair and otherwise, to get their fix. Welcome to the neighborhood Amy, and keep up the great work. :)

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ExWeb Is Back With A Spiffy New Look!

We talked about it a bit last week, but Explorers Web is now back online, with a site redesign, and some new features that will help keep us all up to date on current events in the adventure world.

The first thing you'll notice when visiting ExWeb is that it has a nice, clean design that puts a lot of information right at your fingertips. There is a "latest news" section that gives you the most recent headlines across the entire site, whether it's dealing with big mountains, polar expeditions, sailing the oceans, or what ever. The top story is prominently displayed on the page, with a larger photo than we've typically seen in the past, and the whole thing feels more well organized and laid out.

ExWeb publishers are promising more coverage of the stories we enjoy, offering stories on adventure travel, medicine, politics that effect adventurers, as well as opinion pieces, on top of the regular climbing, sailing and exploration coverage. Additionally, all the images on the site come with geo tags, which means you'll be able to clicking a Google Maps link and see where the image was taken right in the map itself. We've also been promised refined search options, and the ability to share stories through Facebook, Twitter, and other types of social media. There are also new links for us to submit and contribute stories to the site as well.

The site went live yesterday, marking the 10th Anniversary of ExWeb, and it is the culmination of more than 400 programming hours to put all of this new design online. So far, I think it looks great and I like the new look. I'm sure it'll make keeping up with all the stories much easier. I also like that they did away with some elements that were handled in Flash before, so the site looks good on my iPhone, and future iPad, as well. Thumbs up from me.

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New ExWeb Launching Soon!

If you've wandered by Explorersweb today you may have noticed that it is not open for business. Instead, there is a simple note saying that "explorersweb 3.0 will launch soon", with no further indication of when we can expect the site to relaunch nor what new additions we will see once it does.

Regular readers of my blog already know that I'm a big fan of ExWeb and frequently link to their stories and news from adventurers doing crazy things and visiting remote places all over the planet. While I don't always agree with their stance on certain issues, I do think they do a good job of keeping us all abreast on a variety of topics that we all love, such as mountaineers taking on big peaks, polar explorers heading to the top and bottom of the world, and a whole lot more.

With that in mind, I'm very much interested in seeing what they have in store for us once the site relaunches. Will it be more interactive? Will it allow us to leave comments on stories? How about forums to discuss the latest news and events from the adventure world? Will it include some *gasp* social media elements which have become so popular over the past few years? I guess only time will tell.

So, what would you like to see in a redesigned and relaunched Explorersweb? The old design was functional and worked well, but was starting to look a little dated. Still, I was generally on the site for the content, and not for the design. They always managed to pack quite a bit of info in the space they had, and I suspect that will remain the case in the new design as well. How fancy they get with flash, video, and other features will be interesting to see. Hope they're back up and going again soon.

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