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When you have internationally traveling friends, sometimes all you want to do is to figure out where they are and where they are going. Or if you travel a lot for business or pleasure, you’d possibly want a central location and generate a RSS feed so your friend can compulsively know your whereabouts. DOPPLR.com tries to fill this niche market: however its usefulness depends entirely on your friends’ willingness to have another social network added…

With DOPPLR, you can list what trips you are going to take. Interface is incredibly simple as you type in your destination, DOPPLR will try to make the best effort to guess the exact location. For example, when I typed “Toronto”, it guessed that I meant “Toronto, Canada”, although when I typed “Turks and Caicos”, it thought I wanted to go to Khujand, Tajikistan (and I really don’t want to go there). You specify the dates of your travel, the method to get there and all those details will be saved.

The next step is to invite your friends to use DOPPLR so they can see your trips, and this is where things will be very tough for this website. It is already tough to survive in the world of social networking in the face of Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. It doesn’t look like the usefulness of DOPPLR will be lost to many. There is also a travel guide component, where users can submit what to do when you get to a destination, but the quality of submissions is limiting, and the available information is lacking. You will be better off getting travel information from other dedicated websites.

In the end, DOPPLR presents us with a solution that not too many people care about. If you really want to find out where your friends are traveling to, there are easier ways to find out (Facebook, e-mail even phone calls). And if you absolutely want to show off how much you travel the instant you update your travel plans, I have a feeling your friends won’t be so interested in you afterwards.

As if paying for 2nd piece of luggage wasn’t bad enough, American Airlines decided to start charging for every piece of checked bags as a way to boost revenue in the face of record fuel prices starting June 15, 2008. First bag will be $15, second bag will be $25 and additional bags will cost a lot, a lot more. American Airlines will also slash jobs and flights in order to control costs.

[Read full story at MSNBC]

This year, you can watch free movies outdoors at Yonge-Dundas Square starting June 24th until August 26th. The theme is "Romantic Reels", with a selection of new and old love stories.

The airline industry continues to make headlines this week as Delta and Northwest announced it will finally merge as both boards of directors authorized it. The new airline to be called Delta will be the world’s biggest airline based in Atlanta with a combined annual revenue of $31.7 billion, much bigger than American Airlines.

This long rumored merger won’t be without hitch, as Northwest pilots union already voiced concern and announced they will try to stop the deal. That may be too little too late as the soaring fuel price is what ultimately pushed for this deal. Expect to see more airline mergers to be announced in the next few weeks.

[Read full story at New York Times]

As if flying wasn’t unnecessarily complicated enough, United Airlines announced it will start charging for you to check in more than 1 bags. Previously, you were allowed to check in 2 bags: from May 5, 2008, that second bag will cost you $25, unless you’re a Premier United Mileage Plus program, or Silver Star Alliance member.

Unless other carriers follow this plan, make sure you avoid using United: this rule starts applying to tickets purchased since yesterday.