With Josie Bennett.

Love them for freeing independent travelers with their wealth of information, or hate them for making everywhere accessible to the backpacking masses, the Lonely Planet guides have undeniably rempapped the face of travel.

A few months back, I blogged about Tribewanted.com’s Fijian island experiment. James Vlahos went along with the “first footers” who kicked off development on the island, and lived to tell the tale in National Geographic Adventure.

Abha Malpani of the Written Road spilled the beans today about a new online travel community that’s just emerged from private beta. Matador Travel is going for one-stop shopping for all your Web 2.0 travel-site needs.

In May 2004, Jono Lewarne and a childhood friend set out from the UK for a 12-month round-the-world trip. Little did he know, then, that it would turn into an odyssey that would run through April 2006.

Mark and Nate are two guys from Vancouver, who like to “get the hell out whenever there’s a chance.”

Couchsurfing.com is having a bit of a moment right now.

The duo behind BigTripProductions’ videos aren’t kidding with the “Big Trip” part. Otherwise known as Kevin Allgood and Valerie Marshall, they’re currently on a one-year, round-the-world journey that they’re filming and blogging along the way.

User ianmack is otherwise known as Ian MacKenzie – the voice behind the new online travel magazine Brave New Traveler, and a co-founder of the backpacker resource Travelblogger.net.

As an aspiring journalist, Kelly Loudenberg interned at CNN, ABC, NPR, and HBO, before deciding that corporate media was too restrictive for the kind of stories that she wanted to tell.