TravelPost recently launched a Q&A site called TravelPost Connections. This is an early product from the stealthy travel company, which was founded by Expedia veterans who bought the existing travel review aggregator from Kayak and took on its name, and now promises big things are on the way. In the meantime, TravelPost is experimenting around social Q&A. Travel forums such as Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree are already abundant and well-used, but TravelPost puts a more modern spin on things by modeling on a Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers and Quora. COO Simon Breakwell noted in a blog post that key features include the use of tags rather than a forced hierarchy and social emphasis, such as close integration with Facebook and the capability to follow other users and their activity. It’s going to be hard for TravelPost Connections to compete against something like Facebook Questions (if they ever get that working properly), but the idea is users can poll a travel-specific crowd (and their friends) for advice about where to visit and what to do when they get there.

Meanwhile, Tripline is a new travel-mapping widget startup. This bootstrapped company has a neat little product that helps users create and annotate maps about their trips. This can be a way to spatially envision an upcoming vacation, or to show and tell what you did when you come back. (It’s somewhat similar to Dipity — which helps users illustrate events by putting them on a timeline — but for maps.)

Tripline founder Byron Dumbrill was head of product for Jumpcut, the video editing startup acquired by Yahoo in 2006 (and later shuttered). Dumbrill said he hopes Tripline can be a storytelling medium, as in the example embedded below, which was made by user Jay An to tell the story through pictures and words of his four-year stint in the Marine Corps.

So what is New Travelco doing? Barton tells us that the company is “re-thinking travel planning” given “the big travel sites were all conceived in a different era.” Slyngstad’s idea to buy TravelPost was actually the genesis of the company, according to Barton, who is serving as chairman while Slyngstad is CEO. TravelPost does accept user reviews but it’s more of an aggregator, parsing and combining hotel reviews from places like Yahoo and BedandBreakfast.com.

“Online travel is a massive space and will continue to evolve,” Slyngstad added via email. “When Kayak was launched in 2005, people were asking the same question about startup going against 4 very big, entrenched players. Kayak has built a sizable, highly profitable business and is now nipping at the heels of the big entrenched players.” Barton also pointed to the “heterogeneous” nature of the travel category as reason there’s room for another successful player.

In a sort of mission statement on its web site, New Travelco says it believes “The increasing power of transparency, connectivity, and mobility will continue to open new worlds to travelers and new channels for suppliers.”

As far as opportunities to innovate go, TripAdvisor, one of the original user-generated sites that’s actually owned by Expedia, is somewhat hip with the times — it has the requisite Facebook Connect integration and iPhone app, though there’s certainly more that could be done. In terms of trip planning, the current hotshot is TripIt, which offers nifty integrations to help travelers organize and access their travel information on the go. But it’s not the only one who does that; Kayak, for instance, recently added similar features to its popular iPhone app.

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