Russ Lemelin has been an advisor to TravelMuse for more than six months. As CFO, he brings a wealth of experience in the online travel space to the company. He was one of the earliest employees at SideStep, Inc., where he held the role of CFO and interim CEO. Russ spent six years at SideStep, during which time he oversaw the company’s revenue grow from $0 to $30 million per year. SideStep was acquired by Kayak in December 2007 for approximately $200 million. Prior to SideStep, Russ led corporate development at Komag, Inc.

Russ lives with his wife and three girls in Danville, Calif. He enjoys traveling to Hawaii, spending time with the family and watching classic western movies. Russ is a self-proclaimed, die-hard Oakland Raiders fan and was born and raised in Northern California.

Coastal Cleanup Day is this Saturday, Sept 20th. People across the country will volunteer to pick up trash along coastal waterways from 9 a.m.-noon. 

Here at TravelMuse, we all love to travel and know you do too. The Beach Vacations tag on our Inspiration Finder is constantly the top selection that our customers click. To that end, we feel it’s our responsibility to help keep our beaches and waterways clean and encourage you to do so too!

Team TravelMuse will be helping on a project to clean up Permanente Creek, at Rock Street Bridge in Mountain View, Calif. Come and join us, or find a project near you.

This will be the 24th Annual California Coastal Cleanup Day, and it’s the premier volunteer event focused on the marine environment in the country. In 2007, more than 60,000 volunteers worked together to collect more than 900,000 pounds of trash and recyclables from our beaches, lakes, and waterways. To find out more visit: www.coastal.ca.gov.

Be part of the solution to marine pollution! 

Did you know that 20 percent of travelers report spending more than 10 hours to plan a trip? (source: TIA.org)

Think about the last time you planned a big vacation. How was the planning experience for you, and how long did it take?

Since we started thinking about what we’d like TravelMuse to be, we consistently came back to the amount of pain involved in planning trips and how we wanted to enable people to easily research, plan and book a trip, regardless of how complex the itinerary is.

Today, we’re excited and proud to announce Social Trip Planning within the TravelMuse Planner. Planning is really at the heart of what we do, so we are just thrilled to share it with you. Read full release

With Social Trip Planning you can plan trips with friends and family, and reuse the travel research of people you trust. Let’s face it, who would you rather get advice from—your best friend whom you’ve known all your life, or “crazy4cabo” whose comments you read on advice sites.

Here’s a list of just some of the many new things that this release enables you to now do on TravelMuse.com:

• Create a day-by-day schedule of your planned activities,, restaurants you’re eating at and places you’re staying from our repository of more than 100,000 points of interest and 90,000 hotels spanning hundreds of destinations globally. Or you can add any page you find on the Web.

• Invite people you’re traveling with to collaborate on the plans. Everyone can add research and modify the schedule, and everyone gets notified immediately of changes to the itinerary.

• Network with people whose travel advice you trust. View your friends’ trip plans and repurpose their research.

• Keep apprised of the trips your friends are planning (if they choose to let you see them) and give them the benefit of your experiences.

• Combine research you find on the Web with reference information and travel articles on TravelMuse, and easily drag and drop these items into a scheduler. You can even move entire days around when the need arises!

The net result: You can now plan trips the way you’ve always wanted to, with great content and easy-to-use tools, plus with a little help from your friends.

So stop e-mailing links back and forth and abandon the manila folder—try the new TravelMuse Planner for yourself today!

Finally, we have to extend our deepest thanks to the entire TravelMuse team and their understanding families who pulled out all the stops to make this release possible.

Happy planning!

Kevin and Eric

In just under two weeks, Team TravelMuse (Kevin, Eric and I) will head to San Diego to take part in our version of the Olympics—[DEMOfall '08|http://www.demo.com/DF8PTR], a launchpad for emerging technology. Although we haven’t been working on this for four years, it’s certainly taken a huge amount of planning and practice to get ready for this prestigious event. 

At DEMO we will launch our latest product, the most complex release our product and engineering teams have tackled so far. With no challenge too small, they have worked diligently towards the deadline of Sept. 7. As we approach the final lock-down stage, Bugzilla has certainly been getting quite a workout! We’re really excited to show off our new product and let you try it out for yourself. 

Kevin and Eric (TravelMuse Co-Founders) are our demonstrators at DEMO. We joke with our PR team about how many times we can get the word DEMO into a sentence. We’re going to give you a demo of our demo for DEMO. Anyway, Kevin and Eric are doing well with learning their scripts and can be seen listening to iPods (are they getting in the Michael Phelps zone?), clutching cue cards and muttering away to themselves. Coach Nathan has them on a regular practice schedule, and Eric, every now and again, gives me impromptu recitals.

I think we have compared this experience to a mix of memorizing your lines for a school play, to practicing the tricky sections of your piano recital, to being in a competitive race. Basically, you have to know your game plan and practice, practice, practice. 

Meanwhile, I’ve been taking care of the logistics with the DEMO team, writing product marketing copy and finalizing press kits and give-aways.

Later this week Kevin and Eric will have a live audience with our company—definitely the toughest crowd yet! Everyone has been working hard to produce their piece of the puzzle and is counting on them to show it off at its best—which I’m confident they will.

Team TravelMuse DEMO schedule:

Saturday, Sept. 6: Arrive in San Diego and rehearse in the evening.

Sunday, Sept. 7: Demonstrators’ meeting and set up booth #24.

Monday, Sept. 8: Watch other demos and give demos at booth #24.

Tuesday, Sept. 9: Team TravelMuse presents at 8:52 a.m. and gives demos at booth #24.

If you’re attending DEMO, we’ll see you there, otherwise you can follow us on Twitter @[TravelMuse|http://twitter.com/TravelMuse], and we’ll post more to the TravelMuse Company Blog soon.

Most travelers visit numerous Web sites when planning a trip, but they lack a simple way to organize their findings or share research efficiently. TravelMuse can help solve that problem. Today we released the TravelMuse Plan-It! widget for site publishers.    (Click to read the full press release.)

Visitors to sites that feature the Plan-It! social bookmarking widget can simply click the Plan-It! button on any page and save content directly into the TravelMuse Planner—a centralized place to collect, organize and share travel research. Content publishers can download and install Plan-It! by visiting the Plan-It! page on TravelMuse.com. 

This widget is perfect for travel content Web sites such as CVBs, DMOs, B&Bs, travel blogs— any quality travel site that wants to empower its readers with the ability to more easily plan trips.

Three TravelMuse partners—which all provide great trip planning content—have already deployed Plan-It!: Uptake.com, CiaoBambino.com and CompulsiveTraveler.tv.

• Uptake aggregates and organizes reviews from thousands of different sites so that you can get a complete picture of a hotel, restaurant or attraction before you arrive. (You can read about how UpTake is using Plan-It! on the UpTake blog.)

• CiaoBambino provides very rich and detailed reviews of high-end family travel destinations and properties.

• CompulsiveTraveler has beautiful, engrossing travel videos organized by activity and destination.

If you’re a traveler, explore these sites and try out the Plan-It! widget. Click on a page featuring the widget, and that content is automatically stored inside of a TravelMuse trip plan. 

If you’re a publisher, visit our partner page to learn more. Plan-It! is free to download and use, and gives your site visitors the power to more efficiently plan trips. We hope you find this tool as cool and useful as we do. 

[ |http://www.travelmuse.com/about/plan-it.htm] 

TravelMuse launched its TravelMuse Beta on Monday June 9th—alongside another minor (Apple!) announcement—call us crazy or foolhardy! Anyhow, it’s not every day that you can say you contributed to bringing down the TechCrunch site. We are delighted with all the positive coverage we’ve received to date, and a big thanks to everyone who wrote about us—we appreciate it!

CNET’s Rafe Needleman over at WebWare broke the news at 9 p.m. PDT on Sunday and wrote about the Inspiration Finder, saying “The idea could be a very positive contributor to domestic harmony” and “…it could become a very robust vacation planning tool."

TechCrunch followed with the headline, “TravelMuse May Be the Undecided Traveler’s Dream Come True!” Jason Kincaid went on to say, “At this point TravelMuse seems like a good place to start when you’re beginning to plan a trip … and as a hybrid travel magazine/suggestion site, TravelMuse may well find a place in the crowded travel space."

Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land said, “…the Inspiration Finder … does something unique and interesting in combining the directional power of search with the serendipity of discovery."

I’ve not yet seen one that considers the multiple dimensions that TravelMuse looks at, including budget, travelers’ ages, maximum hours in flying time, and preferred vacation activities,” wrote Diane Clarkson of Jupiter Research. “Definitely worth checking out."

"Already I love the travel magazine feel of the website versus the webby social networking feel of most other new travel sites and the fact that a lot of its editorial content (written by 50 freelancers) is fresh,” commented Jen Leo at the LA Times.

Although most of you probably have a pretty good idea of where you like to go on vacation, you may occasionally run out of ideas … fortunately, if you're in that boat, a new website can help” said Ed Perkins of Smarter Travel “I'd say that TravelMuse is off to a decent start … it's an innovative approach to travel planning."

Elisabeth Osmeloski at Search Engine Watch concluded “Is this the new face of online travel planning? Maybe too soon to tell, but I like the way it's looking! Keep making it easier for travelers to engage online and this mature industry will find a way to keep growing."

We had articles as far afield as Italy and France with great posts from Geekissimo, FredCavazza and Blogit—how’s your French or Italian?

Mashable had my favorite article of the week where Paul Glazowski got straight to the point “It’s a Beta, and I have to say I like it.” … “You can take TravelMuse just for its reviews, its trip planner, or its ‘Book Travel’ annex. Any single segment seems able to stand on its own. Taken all together, it is even more impressive."

For the full news roundup, visit the TravelMuse Press and Media page. Thanks for your support and stay tuned—we’ve got lots more great stuff to tell you about soon. But for now … we’re catching our breath, drinking a beer (or scotch) and enjoying some social time at a team BBQ over at Eric’s place!

I can’t believe we’re at 10 issues published already!  It seems like just a couple weeks ago I was scrambling to find interns to help input all the foundation content into our CMS; yet, here we are, five months later, at weekly issues.

Mexico’s Riviera Maya is our focus this week. I haven’t been there, but it's been on my wish list for some time. (Problem is I have about 100 destinations on my wish list, but so little time to get out and travel these days. I know at least some of you can relate.)  White sand beaches, historic ruins, warm weather, great resorts. It’s also easy to get to via Cancún, yet it’s far enough removed from that destination’s crowds to be peaceful and relaxing. What’s not to love?

Other features: we've separated our Travel News deals into its own weekly column, Travel Deals (creative title, huh?); Chicago is hosting the first Kids Restaurant Week (I wonder if foie gras will be on the menu, now that it's legal again to serve it in its restaurants...); and who knew family camps were so popular?!

Read more about and link to our coverage in my Editor’s Take, or just check out the TravelMuse home page. Enjoy!

It will come as no surprise to many readers that surveys, as far back as 2001, have been chronicling the precipitous drop of passive television viewing due to the lure of the Internet's interactive immediacy. For example, the results of one recent study, released in August 2007 by IBM, revealed that the Internet now rivals television as the primary medium of choice for people around the world.

For many, the Internet represents a form of entertainment and relaxation- playing video games with team members and opponents located around the world or joining the growing trend of watching television programs originating in foreign countries are just two examples. Others are captivated by the ability to connect and instantly communicate with friends that they've come to know but have never physically met- being part of people's daily life on another continent can be an extremely compelling and rewarding experience. But, certainly one facet of the online experience that transcends all others is the Internet's ability to present vast quantities of relevant information, pictures, music and videos regarding any subject through the use of search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

Without leaving the comfort of a familiar chair, you can peruse what is rapidly becoming the sum total of human knowledge-a capability that would have exceeded the most unbridled imagination of science fiction writers only a few decades earlier. Need information about tomorrow's weather? Want to know the distance from Earth to the Moon? Curious about the latest financial news? Answers to all of these questions and an infinite variety of other topics are as close as the distance from your fingertips to a keyboard. More saliently, the Internet's search capabilities have also shrunk the space that separates you from journeying to any place on the globe!

To the delight of many and the chagrin of some, the Web has enabled (or based on your perspective, compelled) every traveler to become their own travel agent and forced each of us to be proficient at finding information that's relevant to the trip we want or need to plan. Given the Internet's ever-growing amount of information, searching for reliable, relevant facts and advice can be daunting. Of course, it should not go unmentioned that, while their population is steadily dropping, travel agents offering traditional assistance still abound. However, instead of being a free service, travel agents charge a fee for their activities. These fees are, far more often than not, worth every penny they cost. Making use of their experience can be a remarkable resource.

Of course, for simple travel requirements, dozens of nearly ubiquitous airline booking systems exist. These are fine if you are traveling on business, are returning to a previously visited destination or are making a quick trip. However, for those who want the journey to be remembered as a milestone that is regaled over time with family and friends, organizing travel by leveraging the Web's warehouse of knowledge can be similar to taking a sip from an open fire hydrant.

This is why TravelMuse was created. Our team of writers offers information based on firsthand experience and unbiased opinion combined with research that has been independently vetted. TravelMuse also provides unique tools that enable the collection and organization of information sourced from within the TravelMuse library or from any Web site. In essence, TravelMuse makes you a better personal travel agent in this electronic age!