In a series of Lonely Planet blog posts that promises to be fascinating, LP writer Frances Linzee Gordon is publishing her experiences traveling as a single woman traveling in Saudi Arabia for an upcoming guide on the Arabian peninsula.

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 good guidebook can go a long way towards making or breaking a trip, but the best travel experiences still come with the thrill of discovery attached: secret spots known only to locals, with directions sketched out in hand-drawn maps.

The paperback companion of the world’s backpackers has joined the blogosphere.

The experts in everything at Lifehacker have an interesting comment thread going right now, with readers’ tips for getting info while exploring a new city, especially places where you didn’t expect to end up, or have extra time on a business junket.

Wallpaper, the glossy magazine-cum-bible of modernist chic that helped turn “design” and “lifestyle” into the ubiquitous buzzwords they are today, has just released a series of travel guides.

Ever heard of the Republic of Molossia, the Conch Republic, or the sovereign nation of Lovely? These and other experiments in declaring your own state are covered in a new Lonely Planet guide, Micronations.

The guidebook gurus at Rough Guides have launched a series of free “PodScrolls.�? Not to be confused with audio podcasts, PodScrolls are sequences of text pages and images that you can navigate using the clickwheel on your iPod.

More guidebook news today. It appears that Lonely Planet is indeed the travel advice force to be reckoned with, as the city of Moscow has decided to pin their image problems re: crime, corruption, and hedonism on the publisher’s Moscow city guide.

Is the mighty, middle-of-the-road Frommer’s guidebook series losing ground to the Lonely Planets and Rough Guides of the world? (let’s not even begin to discuss the interweb) The AP ran a story yesterday about how Frommer fille, Pauline Frommer, has l