SINGAPORE (Team Geared Up) - At present it may be U.S. resorts only, but Liftopia.com is attempting to get cheap ski-tickets to snow sports enthusiasts.

Liftopia partners with leading resorts across the nation in an effort to get people like you to their slopes more often. We work directly with our Resort Partners to identify opportunities for discounts and promotions that give downhill adventurers more opportunities to ski and snowboard for less. Liftopia is the best place to find great lift ticket deals at mountain resorts nationwide.

From what I make of this, ski-resorts will post up cheap tickets on Utopia for low-days where not enough are forecast to be sold. It doesn’t cost them any extra to have a skier on the slope once the lifts are running. Better to have some money than none. I guess this is not far off the RyanAir / Budget Airline model of once the plane is flying you may as well fill it.

It’ll be interesting to see if this is a success and transitions to Europe.

-Robin-

SINGAPORE (Team Geared Up) - Today myself and Eoin are launching FindMeAPack.com, a site enabling you to find your perfect rucksack. Eoin has now added 177 packs to the searchable database. Good man!

This site joins the FMA family now consisting of FindMeATent.com, FindMeACamper.com New Zealand, FindMeACamper.com Australia, FindMeACamper.com South Africa and FindMeAGPS.com. By providing a searchable database of structured products, ability to post experiences & ratings, ask questions, work out the market leaders and do comparison filtering.

If anyone would like to contribute to or suggest another product-line such as FindMeATrailShoe.com, just shout.

Visit: FindMeAPack.com - Find Your Perfect Rucksack

-Robin-

DUBLIN, IRELAND (Team Geared Up) The new look Connemara Website has been launched. Alan has been on to let us know that it’s one of the first steps towards the biggest Connemarathon yet!

There’s plenty of news, information, photos, and even a few videos.
Information on the old site was a bit scattered, so we’ve tried to organise it a bit better, and more importantly, it will be easier to add information as we go on.
It looks at this stage that we’ll be sold out at about the same time as last year, if not a few weeks sooner.

It’s about the right time to start planning any big spring events for yourself so I can highly recommend this one. There aren’t many marathons where the race director virtually greets every runner who crosses the line or starts each race (3 in all) on a motorbike?! The new site looks great and the forum area is very, very active so find out everything you need to know there!

Connemarathon has three events runs together: the half marathon, the full marathon and the ultra (39.3 miles). Having ran the ultra 3 times (and the half once!) and genuinely loved every minute of every mile I can testify to the sheer pleasure people seem to really get from their Connemara experience. It’s also the reason I ended up at Team Geared Up! :-)

Well done to Race Director Ray who’s probably done God knows how many marathons this year! All good training for the Marathon Des Sables 2009!!

-Aisling-

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - Rick! Thanks for the email to let us know about your new features on Northern Irish TrailBadger.com which now allows the biking public to put up
Mountain Biking reviews and ratings.

where 1=rubbish thumbs down and 5=badger-tastic

We reviewed TrailBadger’s launch back in July, and the content is premium. Go check it out.

-Robin-

NEWBRIDGE, IRELAND (Team Geared Up) - MomentumVM have gone live with their new site and a ton of video footage to keep you entertained. Unfortunately, you can’t subscribe, and you can’t embed movies (doh!).

Still though, some great footage for getting you motivated for the next climbing trip!

Image Credit: James Litz on possible new V15, courtesy of MomentumVM.com

- Neal :) -

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - The brilliant SummitPost.org have launched MBPost.com, a version of their site for collecting and commenting on Mountain Biking trails around the world. Eoin announced in March that SummitPost had launched SPv2, and obviously this is part of the MB launch. They say:

Already we have hundreds of biking photos and information on over 100 mountain biking trails and areas. It is a fun site, and it definitely has the potential to be one of the best mountain biking sites on the web.

SP is a fantastic site for mountaineering, I’ve planned many routes from using beta from text & photos on the site about the peak we’re trying. Laminated SP print-outs always seem to make my pack lid pocket in the Alps!

Thanks to SummitPost.org for emailing this announcement to TGU!

-Robin-

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - Irish mountainbiker? MTBIreland.com is for you. Their forum has 36361 Posts in 3624 Topics, not bad!

Also see the really busy EPICmtb forum. 13339 Posts in 1515 Topics must mean they are doing something right!

The Irish MTB community is alive and well and it seems, certainly vocal.

-Robin-

CORCAIGH, IRELAND (Geared Up Blog) - I’ve been quite busy this summer. I admit I have been a terrible team member here at Team Geared Up. I really didn’t have time to sit down and give any post a good think through. Plus I’m a very lazy man when it comes to some things! That is why I’m telling you about TripIt.

The Good: Just forward your confirmation email to plans@tripit.com and they will set you up with an account. Your hotel reservations (if your luck enough to be staying in a hotel), car rentals and flight details are all added to a master itinerary. It will then add information to your itinerary from Google maps and directions, Weather, Wikipedia - city information, Eventful - current events, Flickr - city photos and SeatGuru - airplane seat advice. You can then add travelers and tell everyone about your trip.

The Bad: The only bad thing I can say about this website is that it doesn’t accept bookings made with rail. When you are traveling in Europe, rail is the only way to go, so it is a shame that isn’t catered for. You have to add it in as a note yourself.

My Experiences: I used this a lot this summer and thought it was excellent to have all your travel information, confirmation details and times all in one place. It is especially good for when you are taking more than one flight a day, like I have to do from down here in Cork and fly to either to Dublin or London in order to be able to get to a proper destination in Europe!

During the summer I was checking in with Ryanair in Dublin. The check-in woman was a little bit grumpy and asked me for my correct confirmation number where I pointed to the number on the TripIt itinerary that I handed to her. She then told me she was not looking for the number from the travel agent but from Ryanair. She was quite surprised to see it not hidden in an ugly email print off and when she looked again apologised!

• TripIt Website

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - Joglog was created in the “Rails Rumble” competition last weekend in only 48hrs.

What is the RailsRumble?

Its a programming competition where teams of up to 4 people will have 48 hours to build the ultimate web application in Ruby on Rails. After the 48 hours are over, we’ll open the polls up for the public to rate the various entries on Completeness, User Interface, Originality and Usefulness.

What is Joglog?

Joglog is a site, which is dedicated to Joggers all around the world that enjoy tackling their daily progress as they rack up hours of enjoyable and healthy exercise.

Try it!, also don’t forget Traineo.com.

-Robin-

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - BBC Presenter Kate Humble has launched StuffYourRucksack.com.

“How many times have you been travelling and visited a school or community or local charity that you would love to help? The school needs books, or a map or pencils; an orphanage needs children’s clothes or toys. All things that, if only you’d known, you could’ve stuffed in your rucksack. But once you get home you forget, or you’ve lost the address, or worry that whatever you send will be stolen before it even gets there…”

That’s why we’ve set up StuffYourRucksack.com - Kate Humble

The idea of the site is simple, exchanging information between organisations & travellers to what is helpful to be brought into a region by a backpacker rather than giving out sweets & pens. This is a great idea… I remember from travelling in Peru we were requested not to hand out any food as ‘western’ artificial sugars would rot their teeth with not dental care available, and cash encouraged begging.

-Robin-