Planning on leaving town for a while and don’t have a place for the dog to stay? Or going to a strange city for a long period of time and don’t know any baby sitters. Just need to find someone to help take care of your aging loved one? All this and more can be found at Care.com a site oriented for people who need find caregivers in all kinds of situations. Once you sign up for the site, you can then browse through the profiles of people who have posted up their services that range from child care to pet care in the area you need it. Have these services to offer to other people you can sign up as a provider just as easy.

I really like this site and think it has some great potential. The only problem with it is that right now there were a lot of areas in the country that had no one offering their services. However as this site gains recognition and popularity I am sure that more and more areas will start to have members who join. Really that is all that needs to be said, so if you are looking for a caregiver for about any situation check out Care.com here.

Have you ever been on a trip and wish there was something more to do than sit in the hotel bar and get drunk? I know I have (mainly because I don’t get drunk), and Placely aims to be a place where you can do that. Part social Networking, part travel planner Placely is a unique site that hopes to be the social networking site of those who travel frequently. Have a trip planned to L.A., simply plug in the information on the Placely travel calendar and if anyone else who uses Placely is going to be there at the same time they will let you know. Pretty neat I guess, at least it is if you are cool with complete strangers knowing when you are planning to be out of town.

While I am not sure if I could ever really find a use for this site myself, I do see some advantages. You could use the sight to see if a realative or friend is going to be in your area any time soon. While I know a phone call can pretty much do this as well, it doesn’t come with a website! But on the serious side I do think the site has potential if enough people use it. After all I do like to meet new people and the only information people get on Placely is things you allow them to see. So if you are a frequent traveler, or planning a trip soon, go over and check out Placely you might find a new friend.

Jensen has just announced the NVX300PC “Anywhere” UPMC which features GPS navigation, a 7-inch touch screen (800×480,) 30GB hard drive, and 256MB of RAM. This UPMC comes with a car mount kit, remote control, and a ton more features making this the first UPMC in the US to specifically target the automobile market.

There’s not an awful lot of information about this device yet (even the Jensen website fails to provide any,) but rumors suggest a price point around $1500, which seems like a high price to pay for this sort of specification. It seems to be a solid looking piece of kit, but that’s a lot of money.

Most UMPCs are designed to be hand held devices, but this one is aimed at the car driver. If it’s as intricate and difficult to use as some of the other Jensen models, I see a few law suits in the offing. It’s bad enough getting advice from the back seat without getting it from the dashboard at the same time. As soon as a definite release date is confirmed, we will be covering this one in more detail. For now, what little information there is, is available here.

You heard it here first.

With social networking becoming such a large part of web 2.0 it should come as no surprise to anyone that there are a few sites out there that actually act as event planning services. These sites are primarily designed for you to send out invitations to your friends for parties, meetings, or any other kind of event you may desire to host. While there was a time when normal mail and phone calls served the same purpose, these event sites allow us to organize events much quicker.

One of the newer additions to this offering is the site madeit.com. While they don’t really do anything all that innovative (it’s pretty much just a prettier email list,) the site is easy to use. So, even those most technologically-impaired can, at the very least, let the hosts who have invited them know that they are planning on attending the event. After signing up you are brought to the main page where you have a view of the events you have sent invitations for, the friends you have invited to madeit.com, and a place to host pictures. To begin inviting people to an event simply click on the link and either design your own invitation or use one of the previously designed ones. After you have selected your invitation, you then get to fill in the details such as time, place, what to bring, etc. Once this is done you get to preview your work – and then, finally, send an invitation to all your friends. All in all it’s pretty simple.

Once your event has happened you can visit madeit.com and upload pictures and stuff from the event. Then you and your friends can leave comments and messages about the party, and those can live forever on the internet. Signing up for madeit.com is free and you can do so here. So, next time you are in the mood to throw a party, plan a camping trip, or even organize a wine tasting trip through northern California, swing on over to madeit.com and give it a try.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFRzBfIRMtg[/youtube]

I have to travel a lot. I won’t go into the why of it, but I do travel fairly often. One of the things that has always annoyed me about traveling is keeping track of travel details; flight departures, layovers, arrivals, the car I was renting, and the hotel I was going to stay in. It can be a bit overwhelming at times. Also, more often than not, I have spare time (and sitting in the hotel bar gets boring pretty quickly.)

Needless to say, I have always wanted some way to keep track of all the information in one simple place, with a page that is easy to view and modify. Well, it looks like my wish is granted with Tripit (Beta.) This handy little web service allows me to upload information on my flights, car rentals, and hotels, and then it creates an easy to view itenerary that I can view from any internet connection. Now I don’t have to worry about forgetting what time my flight checks in or about who I rented the car from. This little application will save me a lot of stress.

However, Tripit is more than just itenerary information. It also offers a host of services such as google maps, hotel booking services and other things designed to make planning a trip easier. If you are a frequent traveler, Tripit is very much worth the time it takes to set everything up. Once the set up is done, it’s smooth sailing from there on out.

You can check out Tripit here .