Well, their job is getting easier with the launch of Dcovery, a new online and mobile tool. Users just install Dcovery’s Place Finder bookmarklet and then go about doing their normal travel research. When they come across a page with travel destinations, attractions or hotels, they just hit the bookmarklet and it scans the page and extracts the specific place data. You just save the entries you like to Dcovery, which adds in the address, map location, hours and other important information and saves the page for offline reading. Users can also just enter in a specific destination and Dcovery saves that place as well.

Dcovery currently scrapes a bunch of place information from open source databases like Wikipedia and Wikitravel and also relies on local information from Google+ and Foursquare.

When a user heads out for a destination, they just pull up Dcovery’s iOS app, which has all of the saved information synced over and available for offline use.  You can save a location to your contacts or have Dcovery give you turn-by-turn directions. There’s even a cool taxi mode that lets you turn the iPhone on its side so your destination is written in the local language, allowing a taxi driver to easily take you where you want to go.

If you only have an iOS device for research, you can browse from the app and save locations. Dcovery is also working on getting a bookmarklet created for the iOS Safari browser, which should be available soon. While the current iOS app works on the iPad, Dcovery is building a standalone iPad app as well.

Co-founder and CEO Matt Bellemare said he and co-founder Phil Michaud came up with the idea after they were traveling in Beijing. They found that their research ended up being a lot of notes jotted on paper and circles on maps. And getting around proved especially difficult because they didn’t speak Mandarin.

“Now, we found an easy way to collect the places you want to go on a trip,” he said. “You can build your own guide that’s unique to your interests and tastes.”

Bellemare, Michaud and co-founder Max Boulin started the company in Thailand last year and are bootstrapping it so far.

I think Dcovery has a place in the travel planning world. While some people like to hit up a few reliable travel planning sites or others use social travel services like Gogobot or Wanderfly, there’s also a certain number of people who just like to roam far and wide across the web for their travel tips. Dcovery allows them to pull in all of those threads and easily create guides that work on the ground offline. That’s especially important because you don’t always have connectivity when you’re abroad. There are other good travel planning services.

Trippy also lets you create itineraries using a bookmarklet but it’s more photo-based. Triposo, another startup I’ve written about, is also good at saving research for mobile use but you’re limited to browsing through its app. The bigger challenge for Dcovery will be to become a regular resource for users, something many travel startups are struggling with.

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It’s how many people travel these days. Now Triposo has updated its travel guide app for iOS and Android  to 2.0 and brought in some smart ideas about how travelers can make the most of their iPad and smartphone while traveling. The company, started by some ex-Googlers, first made noise last year with its downloadable guides, which provide smart algorithm-based suggestions based on the time of day, weather, local business hours and other information.

Now with 2.0, users get a new iPad interface that allows them to bookmark places that they’d like to visit, which can be synced to their iPhone or Android. Then, when a user heads out and consults their downloadable guide on their smartphone, they can see what places they’ve bookmarked. They can then weigh those plans against new suggestions from Triposo based on where they are and what might be good for that time of the day and weather. That’s something I was missing on my last trip using my combination of notes and downloadable maps.

Triposo 2.0 also includes a new travel journal feature that lets you check-in to a location, associate pictures with a place and jot down notes, all while offline. Then when you return to Wi-Fi connectivity in your hotel, you can see your daily journal on Triposo’s website and share it out to Facebook. It’s a nice way to remember where you’ve gone and what you saw there.

I chatted with Richard Osinga, one of the co-founders of Triposo about the upgrades to 2.0 and he said it was about addressing the ways that people really travel today. So many people now tote iPads when they go on the road, but they don’t like to carry them while out on the street, instead relying on their smartphone.

“This release is about bringing together these two devices, which have different roles,” he said. “The new interface gives you a way to find the coolest things around you, which you take on your phone. Then we’ll suggest more things on your path.”

Triposo, which launched last year, has been on a roll and now has 3 million downloads. The company was started by Osinga, along with his brother Douwe and Jon Tirsen, who were part of the Google Wave team in Australia until the project was abandoned. The Berlin-based company is going up against a number of competitors, from traditional guides like LonelyPlanet and TripAdvisor to social travel startups like Gogobot and local exploration services like Foursquare. It took on $3.5 million in funding from InterWest in July. Chris Sacca, Google Wave co-founder Lars Rasmussen and Crunchfund put in $800,000 into Triposo’s seed round. 

Richard Osinga said Triposo is trying to make its mark by building a product made for real-world travelers, taking into account the limitations and behavior patterns of users. Ultimately, he said Triposo is trying to make a travel guide that’s as smart as the devices running them.

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