Or you could use this handy Virtual Keyboard from Gate2Home.com

This site enables you to write in your language wherever you are in the world, with an online onscreen keyboard emulator. All you do is select your own language, and a familiar keyboard pops up onscreen for you to start typing your message.

After your done, you just highlight the text box and paste it in an email, blog entry, message home, or whatever. Fantastic.

Social travel community TravBuddy has come up with a pretty cool map building widget for those travel bloggers with their own websites. (Check out my own example above).

Basically you head over to their travel mapping page, and you check off all the countries you’ve visited so far. Afterwards, you’re presented with 3 different sizes of your travel map, which can be embedded on any other website to show the world just how much of the planet you’ve seen.

Of course, nothing is ever entirely free. In exchange for providing this cool feature, the highlighted countries on your map can be clicked, which takes you to Travbuddy’s travel blogs, photos, and members for that location.

It would be nice if they gave you the option of creating your own links from the highlighted countries, which would allow someone to navigate to your own online journals, instead of others’. Ah well. You can’t have it all, I suppose.

Technorati Tags: travel, world map, travbuddy, travel widget

Who Makes It?
A guy named Geoffrey P. Gaudreault

Why should you use it?
I’ve been on a mission to find the best free Flash slideshow generator, and I think my search may have finally reached its end. Slideroll.com is quite simply awesome. The entire software is web based, meaning you have nothing to download, and can quickly upload your photos in no time at all.

Powerful customization options allow you to add pans and zooms on your photos, apply a variety of transitions, alter the length each photo is displayed, and more. When you’re done, you have the option of publishing your slideshow in their community, or keeping it hidden and only copy + paste some code so it shows up on your website.

The photo movement is ultra-smooth, and the player is slick. Geoffrey was also kind enough of to create a free tool that let’s you convert your flash slideshows into movie files, in case you want to burn them to DVD and watch them on your TV.

What could be better?
Not much. The only feature that is a little confusing is when you want to add your own music. Currently, the software allows you to choose from approx 20 public domain music tracks (copyright free) but if you want to add your own music you have to download your slideshow and drop your own mp3 file into the folder, after labeling it soundtrack.mp3

Sound a bit confusing? Obviously, a much better solution would be to allow users to upload their music without downloading the file. I’m not sure, but I think plans are in the works to add this feature.

How much does it cost?
Free (sign up here) with an account upgrade option for re-sizing the player, adding more photos, and downloading your slideshow.

Brave New Rating: 5 out of 5

What do you think of Slideroll.com? Check it out and post a link to your slideshow!

Who makes it?
Slide, Inc

Why should you use it?
If you’re wondering how to create a pretty nifty slideshow with your travel photos, Slide.com will allow you to do it very quickly and easily. I signed up for a new account and had my slideshow completed in under 4 minutes. Granted, I only uploaded 2 photos but it was enough to get the idea.

The interface is fairly intuitive, along with the navigation. All the buttons are bright and shiny so it would be difficult to get lost. The site also allows you to customize the look and theme of your slideshows, from having tiny bubbling hearts drift by, to lightning forking up the sides of the photos.

Even more impressive are the re-sizing options, and the abiliity to embed the player in almost all social networking websites, like Myspace, Facebook,and more. You can also upload the photos directly from your photo albums on these other websites, or upload them from your computer, or even directly reference a photo anywhere online through the URL

What could be better?
Not much. The only glaring problem I saw was the interface lacked a few crucial buttons when viewed in Firefox. (Slide.com would do well to fix that shortly, as Firefox is the fastest growing browser in the world).

Lastly, I couldn’t find any privacy settings to set my photos as private only — though the option may just be hiding.

How much does it cost?
Free (sign up here)

Brave New Rating: 3.5 out of 5

What do you think of Slide.com? Feel free to link to your travel slideshows in the comments.

Who makes it?
Cogitum

Why should you use it?
Being able to place information tags directly on your travel photos is pretty cool, since it really allows other people to understand a photo better and at a deeper level. (see example)

For instance, adding guidebook information to landscapes, architecture, statues, and people. The info tags can be toggled on and off easily for those who want to examine the pure image without the tags.

With Fototagger you can also search your photos by their tags, in case you need to find them specifically, or group them together. You can post them directly to a few blogging platforms like Blogger and Livejournal, and it allows you to export your tags into your Flickr photo albums.

Since Fototagger is deskstop based, you have to download and install the program. The interface is fairly straightforward, and I was able to annotate a photo quickly and export it as an external webpage. The help menu is readily available should I have hit any problems.

What could be better?
The interface could benefit from a few minor tweaks with the toolbars that would allow them to sit a little more intuitively next to the photos instead of accessing from the top menu.

As well, the customization options for the tags could be improved. In the current version, it appears you can only change the colors of the text and not the style of font.

Lastly, since it’s a desktop program you can’t really use it on the road. Tagging your photos would have to wait until you get back from your trip, unless of course you have a laptop.

How much does it cost?
Free (download it here)

Brave New Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Have you tried Fototagger? Let us know what you think in the comments.