travel websites

Thousands of planes travel the world every day, and if you've ever wondered what it's like to watch those flights all at once, take a look at Plane Finder, an interactive website that shows you who's high in the sky and where they're headed. Plane Finder lets you see inside the world of air traffic control with live flight tracking, detailed aircraft information, and the altitude, speed, or airline of the jets.

If braving the seas is more your style, check out Plane Finder's nautical counterpart, Ship Finder and find out which flags the ships in your local harbor are flying.

It's a good idea to start planning your trips for the year now, so you can keep your eye out for the best deals and you won't have to resort to paying expensive last-minute prices. If you already have several destinations in mind, check out travel flash sale sites, which can save you hundreds of dollars! Here are a couple to browse through:

Groupon Getaways

Groupon partnered up with Expedia to launch a travel deals vector that features new deals every Tuesday. The deals stay live for seven days or until they run out. The site offers a good mix of national and international travel deals.

Hot recent deal: $39 for $100 toward a round-trip Virgin America flight from San Francisco to Chicago. The deal has already sold out, and over 5,000 Grouponers bought this deal.

Jetsetter

A luxury travel site that offers deals up to 50 percent off only the most luxurious and exotic hotels around the globe. Each sale lasts about five to seven days. You can pay 10 percent of the trip price to "hold" a trip for three days to decide whether to book it. If you decide not to purchase, the 10 percent becomes Jetsetter credit that never expires.

Hot recent deal: A hotel in Rome, Italy, that's going for $130 a night. This compares with the regular nightly rate of $220.

Read on for more sites.

Google's latest search product Google Flight Search offers another option for finding the best deals in the fast-moving world of online travel sources. Search airline ticket prices by entering the travel query in the main toolbar and clicking "flights" on the results page or access Flight Search directly.

Results based on departing city show up in near instantaneous speeds with plenty of customization available. Use the tool's calendar function to show a bar graph of pricing options to a destination of choice over the next several months. Additionally, explore travel by price tag before choosing a destination by selecting departure city and viewing the Google Map results of flight pricing to major airports. If you were choosing between a weekend getaway to New York or Chicago from Nashville, this function immediately displays which city fits in your price range. The search parameters are currently limited to a number of US cities and round-trip, economy-class flights.

See Google Flight Search in action in the official video after the break.

There's nothing worse than being pumped for a vacation, then arriving to find your digs/guided tour/planned activities aren't as awesome as advertised. Unfortunately for some, this could totally shatter your dreams of an ideal vacay. So next time, do some extra research on a site like Ruba.

Similar to Trazzler (which I love) Ruba offers a much more personal and behind-the-scenes look at places around the globe so you can make an informed decision on where to travel next. It's a positive website, where people write about the hotels, restaurants, and landmarks they love and the things that made their trip worthwhile, so you know you're getting good advice.

Going a step farther than Trazzler though, Ruba offers city guides, tours and things to do in a particular city for the amount of time you're spending there. Have two days in Sydney? Ruba has you covered.

Have an interesting website you want to share? To learn how to post your favorite websites to our Website of the Day group, read more

Another day, another travel website, except this one not only helps you search for the best hotel, flight, and car rental deals across the web, but it also allows you to share your travel plans with Facebook friends via Facebook Connect.

Making its official launch today, Tripeedo aggregates the best of the best in terms of travel sites (like Kayak, Expedia, and even brand new Bing), and equips you with one giant travel search engine to help you find the best fares.

You can also post your travel info on Facebook to let friends know about your trip, or view your friends' upcoming trips . . . all by some simple one click Facebook Connect action.

To learn how to post your favorite websites to our Website of the Day group, read more

Are you getting tired of travel guide websites yet? Yeah, me neither. Especially when they do something useful and somewhat new, as is the case with Next Stop.

Created by a batch of former Googlers, Next Stop aims to help you find interesting things to do at your destination rather than just offer a deluge of reviews like Yelp, good and bad.

Next Stop takes all your good recommendations of cool places and amasses them on a map, but then the social networking link kicks in, and suddenly you're following people, making friends, starting lists, and uploading stuff to your Twitter. The best part is that Next Stop has all this stuff seamlessly built in, so it just happens effortlessly. And when all is said and done, you'll know exactly where to get the best hot dog in Chicago.

Have you found a cool website? Share it. To learn how to post your favorite websites to our Website of the Day group, read more