If you think there is a lot to grouse about when it comes to the travel industry, and are frustrated that travel writers rarely focus on anything negative, The Titanic Awards is your website.  Their thinking is that while movies, restaurants and plays are regularly subjected to negative reviews, there isn’t a place for those kind of comments in travel coverage. The site depends heavily on opinions from the cybercrowd, so feel free to join in. Â

Much has been made recently of a video podcaster who used Twitter to broadcast his family vacation only to return home and find his house had been burglarized. Whether or not the robbers used social media to plan their break-in hasn’t been proven. But I think we might be missing the point in only focusing on whether or not tweeting your travel plans makes good sense in terms of protecting your home. A few weeks ago I interviewed Groundswell author Charlene Li and she brought up the very good point that tweeting your itinerary may be socially rude. “I travel to New York all the time for work and I have a lot of friends there who I can’t see every time,” she said. “So I don’t tweet about having lunch in Central Park.” According to Li,  when it comes to etiquette, social media is forcing us to think about how much transparency we really need and value.  What do you think? Is it rude to tweet your travel plans? Or do the pros of using Twitter to plan a vacation outweigh the potential hurt feelings?Â

In case you’ve been completely unplugged for the past week (and therefore not reading this blog) Microsoft has launched Bing, its much anticipated search engine. What surprised–and frankly delighted me–is that they’ve planted their flag pole firmly in the travel category. Each day showcases a panoramic photo of a different destination–Florence, the Great Barrier Reef, Las Vegas–with factoids that appear and disappear over different parts of the image as you move your cursor.  Video and image searches maximize social media so that you can see both professional (i.e. beautifully staged) and amateur (i.e. true to life) shots to help you make a more informed decision about whether or not this is a place you’d actually like to visit.  I also like their travel blog, which balances the newsy–swine flu, Ryanair’s decision to start charging passengers for the privilege to pee while aloft– with big picture questions posed by travel heavyweights such as Rick Steves and Pauline Frommer about the promises and perils of going places. I especially liked Frommer’s posting about traveling while your children are younger than two so you can save both save money and not have to amend your itinerary to suit their interests.

Can a vacation be an effective substitute for a shrink? Journalist Karen Schaler thinks the answer is yes. Her new book”Travel Therapy: Where do you need to go?” sells the idea that traveling can promote better mental health. We couldn’t agree more, but then again, we’re the Escape Artists.  On her blog, Schaler writes that Vice President Joe Biden — he of the dire swine flu warnings — needs her book. “I would recommend chapter two for the Vice President, called The Big Chill, featuring stress busting vacations,” she writes. “Or perhaps chapter five that’s all about reconnecting with people or even chapter nine that talks about how to re-invent yourself. “ Have you taken a vacation that’s helped your mental health?Â

If you travel with a laptop, or go to places that have computers, you might want to consider keeping a travel blog. Basically an online journal that you can enhance with photos and video, a blog is an easy way to record and share your journeys.  Travelblog.org allows you to publish a free blog and to keep tabs on where other bloggers are going. They also have a travel-related forum for people to share tips.

Have you kept a travel blog? Do you have suggestions for what works and what doesn’t? Any other advice?