With these 13 terrific Websites and online services, you can make travel arrangements, dig up discounts and unusual gifts, decide on a great restaurant, or whip up amazing meals of your own.
For more on the year's top sites, see "The Web's Best Productivity Sites" and "The Web's Best Entertainment Sites."
Travel
Great travel sites are a lot like great travel destinations: There's an ideal place for everyone. Our all-around favorite travel assistant, Kayak (free), lets you punch in any destination, and then it launches multiple searches on all of the major travel sites at once so that you can compare fares quickly. The only drawback is that it clutters up your PC's desktop with little windows for all the search results.
If you want to retrieve just the best airfare for your upcoming excursion, Hipmunk (free) searches all the major airlines simultaneously and presents the results in an intuitive timeline format that shows you fares, layovers, connections, and airlines at a glance.
For excellent customer service on flights, hotels, and travel packages, Hotels.com (free) can't be beat. The site has won our trust with dependable, friendly 24-hour phone assistance.
Of course, not everyone wants to stay in a hotel when they travel. If you're looking to rent a ski cabin this winter or you want to check out beach houses for a summer getaway, turn to Vacation Rentals By Owner, aka VRBO (free). With VRBO, you deal directly with the property owners--but the site takes most of the guesswork out of renting a house for your holiday by offering user reviews from people who actually stayed in the rentals, and providing in-depth reviews when one of the site's employees has stayed there. Best of all, the site backs you up with $10,000 in rental protection in the event that the property owner rips you off.
Shopping
You already know that Amazon sells darn near everything you could ever want. But if you're hoping to nab stuff at deep discounts, you'll need to do a little surfing. Groupon (free) uses the power of numbers to present outrageous discounts on products and services available in your local area. When enough people commit to buying, the deal is on.
For used stuff in your region, Craigslist (free) remains the go-to site. If you know how to browse classified ads, you know how to find bargains--not to mention amazing free stuff--on Craigslist.
