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"So we\u2019re creeping along toward summer here in the northern hemisphere, and people are planning getaways of all kinds. Road trips. Flight travel. Maybe some leather tramping (see: Into the Wild) for some intrepid for some folk. The age-old question on many minds these days: Where to go?\nA number of sources on the Web offer a wealth of suggestions. There\u2019s TripAdvisor, a compendium of ratings and recommendations offered by casual and extreme terra-trackers alike. There\u2019s Lonely Planet, a place whose guides are as elaborate in their descriptions of destinations as any to work the business of travel writing. (Some even to the point of fraudulent excess, according to the confessions of Thomas Kohnstamm, author of Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, a storyline many consider as entertaining as it is enlightening.) And there are hordes of other sites of various strengths, weaknesses, and specialities.\nIs there room for another? Perhaps. Enter, Uptake, the invention of former general manager of Yahoo Travel, Yen Lee.\nHaving previously carried the name \u201CKango,\u201D in its private beta days (circa, December 2007), UpTake is a site that purports to offer a collection of \u201Cthe travel industry\u2019s largest database of hotels and attractions,\u201D plus an analysis of \u201Cmore than 20 million online opinions.\u201D All of it intended to carry out the industry promise of helping travelers \u201Cmake better decisions.\u201D\n\nVisitors to the site may like it\u2019s fairly simple construction. The homepage is headlined by a relatively intuitive search menu, with categories of data laid below, from theme park picks to various family-oriented hotels to various travel tips. Now, using pre-existing travel sites as general yardsticks, one might have to be forgiven for thinking UpTake to be something of a hybrid between a legitimate travel engine and a stale resource of vague, algorithmic recommendations. It\u2019s not useless, mind you. It\u2019s just not outstanding. Which it might eventually have to prove itself to be to make any real quality impact on prospective users.\nCompounding its somewhat bland exterior, UpTake adds to impression that its powers are limited by providing data only for globe trekkers interested in going about the US exclusively. This may be excused, given UpTake\u2019s relative youth compared to more veteran options, but because it purports to act more as a search engine with hundreds of thousands of attractions ready to be found, sans any great quantity of original material, it\u2019s somewhat difficult to grasp why its scope has not been widened since its initial limited launch.\nBut okay, leaving aside the fact that UpTake\u2019s provisions more or less span 50 American states, the place does operate rather well. Scouring the databases of sources like Yahoo Travel to Orbitz to TripAdvisor to VirtualTourist, it\u2019s quick to get you where you want to go, and offers plenty of search refinement options. It\u2019s inclusion of simple links for \u201Cthinks to do\u201D and a convenient embed of a Google Map to help you visualize your search can beneficial, particularly if you\u2019re planning to venture out to a large city many states away whose wealth of amentities and attractions can be rather voluminous and disorienting.\n\nStill, UpTake\u2019s search engine is pretty much its best feature. If you venture over to the grand database of Things To Do, you\u2019ll note that the archive of towns and cities screams dull discovery. It almost seems as though you\u2019ve mistakenly come across a generic placemark page pilfering ad clicks from misguided Web users - except for the fact that most links are legitimate gateways. In short, it either needs some heavy re-decoration or the Things To Do catalogue needs to be infused better with the rest of the site.\nAll in all, UpTake leaves me feeling inclined to default to TripAdvisor or Lonely Planet or some other service to browse for travel destinations. Of course, it\u2019s not the worst I\u2019ve seen of travel engines on the Web. There are plenty which rank lower. Much lower. But it nonetheless requires much work before it really starts to sparkle and shine. And time is of the essence. Though travelers are expected to cut back on their time away from home this summer, the season is still open for business. UpTake would do well to start off on strong footing."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/05/14/uptake/>