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So a friend sent me a link to Kiva.com a website that lets you lend money to businesses in developing countries to help them grow their businesses. Please check it out and see if there’s anyway you can help even $25 will make a difference, check out the Kathika Profile.

The next time you’re in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Chicago, or Dubai and realize you’ve forgotten your toothbrush again, don’t fret: Flight 001 is there to rescue you. Selling everything from toiletries to fashionable luggage, the store is the brainchild of Brad John and John Sencion.

Designed as a one-stop shop for busy travelers on the go, the idea for Flight 001 (pronounced Flight One) was born in 1998 when John and Sencion were rushing around for a trip to Paris. Frustrated by all the different stops they had to make, the two decided that a store with everything would truly fill a niche.

What began as one store has grown into eight, each designed to look like the interior of an airplane, with curved walls and storage bins that look just like in-flight overhead luggage bins. To create the feel of an international airport lounge, the owners also used walnut paneling.

All Flight 001 products are interesting and not quite run-of-the-mill, offering bright colors, beautiful designs and fun gifts, like magnetic Scrabble and an F-1 Plane Pal Kid Kit. So the next time you find yourself in need, get to a Flight 001 store and buy yourself some color.

You can almost touch the momentum of travel bloggers around the world as they run with their New Year’s Resolutions to post more and post better:

• For those keen to compare the every day costs at different destinations so you can make the most out of your traveling dollars, try a useful post at Vagablogging on Cost-comparing your destinations
• Gadling has some tips on how to deal with air travel in light of the prediction that things are only going to get worse in 2008: prices will rise, more luggage will get lost and planes will be more crowded
• Along the lines of secret Wurst recipes and champagne being a drink that only comes from a particular region of France, the United Kingdom is considering ways to protect whisky, according to a report at Vagabondish.
• The brave travelers at Brave New Traveler posted an interesting read on surviving dangerous border crossings with some helpful tips for any tricky passport control situation
• At Perceptive Travel, there’s a great piece on traveling with children which seems to decide that it’s really not as hard as all those checklists and warnings make it out to be
• And because I love an animal story, I also got a good laugh out of reading GoNomad’s tales of feeding a hippo in South Africa

Nothing can sour a flight like a child kicking the back of your seat, a stranger falling asleep on your shoulder, or a loud and drunk passenger regaling the entire plane with stories only she finds funny. Flying is frustrating, at best, and passengers without manners only make it worse. Thankfully, Delta’s finally supplied us with Miss Manners for Flying.

The Atlanta-based airline has developed “Planeguage: The language of traveling by plane,” a series of 25 videos that mix humor with basic airline etiquette. Episodes detail passengers we know all too well, like Kidtastrophe, which depicts the crying, whiny children whose parents do nothing to discipline them.

Delta has created these comedic shorts to help reinforce what we already know: things like:

• Remember to close your shade when the movie comes on, regardless of whether you’re watching.
• Politely ask your seat mates to let you out, instead of merely standing and expecting them to move.
• Cover your mouth when you cough and turn your head away when you sneeze.

These things seem so logical on ground, but we often forget when we’re in mid air and frustrate those around us. Planeguage might be just the friendly reminder we all need.

MSNBC reports on the eight changes for travelers to expect this year:

• Convenience fees: You often pay them for event tickets, and now you must prepare to pay “convenience” fees to book hotel rooms, specific car rentals, and many other travel options.
• Energy surcharges: Last year, we paid extra for plane tickets, shipping, and more services, but this year, you can look forward to paying energy surcharges on things not even related to crude oil, like hotels and cruises.
• More expensive rental cars: American Express predicts that car rental prices will increase between 2 and 4 percent this year. Though it doesn’t sound like much, the increase, in addition to car companies’ famous ability to upsell their customers, will cause you to pay a lot more than you used to for your rental car.
• Traffic, traffic, traffic: Traffic got increasingly worse in 2007, and 2008 will likely be the same. To avoid this irksome problem, take public transport or, if you have to take a car, carpool so that there are less cars on the road.
• Extra cruise fees: Next time you take a cruise, you may find that the surcharges have really racked up, fuel surcharges in particular.
• Hotels are a seller’s market: Room rates will increase about 6 percent this year that increase, combined with high occupancy rates, means that your chosen hotel won’t need you as much as you need it. If they can get away with extra charges, some will, so be prepared.
• Airlines may not treat you well: If the Passenger Bill of Rights gets passed, it will be one with weaker language and, therefore, weaker rules over the airlines. The fact of the matter is that you can’t do anything about it, so we’ll just have to grin and bear the continued mistreatment.
• Broken promises: Though travel experts might make some pretty promises, don’t fool yourself into thinking that they’ll all come true. Keeping your ears open and reading all opinions on future mergers and consolidations is the only way to assure that you know what’s really going on.

After wading through a million posts about New Year’s Resolutions (and making a few of my own), I did still find some interesting posts to come out of the land of travel blogs this week:

• Gridskipper’s great urban reporting continues with a typically informative post on options for getting a haircut if you find yourself bedraggled and in need of a lift while on vacation in New York: Hipster Haircuts in Williamsburg
• At Budget Travel’s This Just In blog you can get check out where you can see a Terracotta Warriors exhibition in the United States this year
• If you’re sometimes worried by the wildlife when you travel, you might want to check out Gadling’s post on When Monkeys Attack - it’s a great collection of videos and commentary about those moments when monkeys become not quite so cute
• At Towers and Tarmacs (what a great name for a blog), you can read a succinct post on the best and worst US airports for 2007, as voted in Travel + Leisure
• You can turn your travel plans into a crusade to save the word - philosophically speaking at least - if you scan Brave New Traveler’s interesting piece called How Travel Will Save the World
• And if you’re interested in combining traveling with writing, the Write To Travel Blog had a great round-up of Top Posts for Travel Writers

Some travelers are addicted to checking TripAdvisor before they book a hotel room anywhere, and it’s true that if there are a number of guest reviews for the hotel on the site, you can often get a good insight into what you might expect there. Some believe it’s full of fake reviews that you can’t trust, and others just follow whatever their guide book or travel agent recommend.

But whatever your personal opinion on the validity of TripAdvisor, you’ll have to agree that there are sometimes some hilarious and ridiculous reviews up there! Recently TripAdvisor released its 10 Funniest Traveler Comments of 2007. And while some of them seemed more of the standard of those suspicious fake reviews, a few genuine comments did make me laugh, including these ones:

• Some guests get off track and complain about the streets around the hotel, which is usually not something the hotel can control: “The neighborhood is filled with aggressive mimes, including one sitting on a toilet bowl (how creative).”
• And some guests are more than honest about their negative opinions - there’s no mistaking this guest’s anger: “Sleeping in the street during a blizzard would be better than staying at this hell-hole. The place should be imploded.”
• And other guests take the chance of posting a review on TripAdvisor as a time to get all poetic: “I echo the sentiments of the previous reviewer. The ambience is lacking to be sure, but the food is like angels copulating on your tongue.”

A lot of travel blogs took a well-earned Christmas hiatus this week, but there were still some interesting posts out there, including these:

• The South American experts at On the Road Travel gave us an appetizing list of the meals available over Christmas in restaurants in Cusco, Peru. Check back there for tips on New Year’s Eve celebrations in Peru, too.
• Australian round-the-world trip planner The Lost Globe posted one of those neat photos of the contents of a backpack - carefully labeled - ahead of his week-long “mini-trek” in Tasmania
• The Gadling gang tipped us off about a strange kind of guy who takes confiscated scissors and turns them into artwork
• The folks at Gridskipper thought we should know about the best places to go sledding around New York City, presuming that there’s actually enough snow coming along
• Fans of The Lost Girls - three New Yorkers who have been traveling and blogging from the road for some time now - will be excited to read that all three have finally got back home to NYC, but maybe less excited to know that they’re more or less joining the rat race again - although with a new perspective
• And in the spirit of wrapping up the year that was 2007, the traveler with the social conscience at Nomad4Ever posted a summary of his blog’s most well-read and well-liked posts for the year, giving an interesting overview of the year that was

Are you one of the uncannily large number of people who find dinosaurs absolutely fascinating, even if they’ve been extinct for many, many lifetimes? Then you’ll be keen to hear the news of the biggest ever dinosaur-related tourist attraction that’s just been announced in Dubai.

The Restless Planet project, recently announced and due to open in 2010, will be located inside the City of Arabia complex, another typically large Dubai construction which will also contain apartments, shops, offices, restaurants and even schools. Being described as an “electronic media and natural history experience”, the Restless Planet attraction is basically the Jurassic Park movies come to life, only - hopefully - without the danger.

With a bunch of experts on the job, including Jurassic Park consultant paleontologist Jack Horner plus scientists from the Natural History Museum of London, the Restless Planet will include life size animatronic dinosaurs whose breath will realistically stink, and they’ll even react to the movements of visitors. If you like up, you’ll see pterodactyls flying around and there will be water features full of dinosaurs, too.

In all, the combination museum/theme park will take up two large buildings, divided by time period and vegetation. There are also plans to have revolving exhibitions and special events to keep attracting visitors back again and again.

In the wide world of travel blogging this week:

• Gadling let us know that a new museum connected to vacuums and brooms is about to open. The small Idaho town of Potacello will proudly bring us the Cleaning Museum from the fall of 2008 and it even includes Kid’s Clean World where they have exciting interactive activities … about cleaning.
• Being prepared for the nightlife in your travel destination is important, according to a Brave New Traveler post about packing for a big night out - and it’s true that heading to a pub or club is a good way to learn more about the culture and to meet a few locals
• At Jaunted, they road-tested some silky travel gear: the PamBee Travel set which includes an eye mask, blanket and pillow case, and looks like it could actually make long flights just a touch more pleasant.
• If you can’t get up early enough to enjoy those trendy local food markets, Gridskipper tells us about six open-air markets in Paris that are open in the afternoon and evening instead.
• And if Thailand is your next destination, the Travel Happy blog has a post with no less than 55 tips to help first-time travelers to Thailand.