What really pulled TripIt back into the lead however was the integration (or stub publishing if you want to split hairs) with Linkedin Apps. It’s a great feature and I’ve actually had success at trade shows to generate meetings that might not otherwise have happened.

By contrast, other event and travel planning services have performed with much less success. I’ve found Yahoo! to be unstable with the Upcoming service and increasingly empty. Also, Linkedin Events is so filled with random events and a poor filtering process (please steal Yahoo! Upcoming UI) that it is borderline useless.

The only grip I have is that I wish TripIt would do a better job of reaching into Linkedin Events (yes, rant worthy) for refining the presentation to accommodate degree of connection. As you can see in the linked blog entry above, there are always going to be parties wanting to expose more or less. The critical feature that makes TripIt useful is also the limitation of having only a relationship with TripIt vs. relationships with other TripIt users that cross social networks as union sets.

I’d wager that if Facebook Connect gets a leg up, Linkedin might have to get into that field even it is kicking and screaming all the way. In any event, TripIt is working well for now and I hope it improves over time or is consumed by another company that is complimentary to the use cases I enjoy.

I’ve been using tripit since last early last year using it for business and personal travel. I love the ease of just forwarding your flight, hotel, rental car information in an email and boom, out comes a nice itinerary in which, I can pull up from my blackberry and know where I need to go, including all my frequent flyer, visitor, renter information without having to print out multiple pieces of paper. Its like having a personal assistant to remember all the little details you can’t possibly retain in your head.