Plan your vacation with help from Web

Now that Memorial Day has passed and summer has unofficially begun, it’s worth looking at how helpful the Internet can be in planning your summer vacation.

First, if you’re going somewhere exotic, you may want to check www.cdc.gov/travel/index.htm. Presented by the Department of Health and Human Services, the site features health and safety tips for nearly every destination.

Online travel agencies like Expedia.com and Orbitz.com are well known, but a useful site to finding the cheapest route is www.farereport.com. It provides airfare averages on over 6,000 routes with data from the Department of Transportation.

If you’re concerned about delays or cancellations, the Department of Transportation’s Web site ( www.bts.gov) gives detailed statistics on different carriers. It also links to air travel consumer reports at http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov /reports/.

FlightAware.com is a fascinating site that offers live flight tracking. Plug in any flight number and watch its progress across a map. You can also simply enter an airport (like New York’s JFK) to see its current activity.

For tips from fellow travelers, there are multiple community forums like Flyertalk.com, FlightStats.com and Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree (http://thorntree.lonelyplanet. com).

A number of travel-centric social networking sites have sprung up too, including WYAN.com (“Where are you now?”), Gusto.com and VirtualTourist.com. TripAdvisor.com also compiles over 5 million traveler reviews.

WikiTravel.org, a wiki dedicated to travel, won the 2007 Webby Award for best travel site. Like Wikipedia.com, it is susceptible to false information contributed from users.

And if you can’t afford a real vacation, there’s always Synthravels.com, which claims to be the first online virtual travel agency. It offers guided tours to digital, video-game realms.