Summer is here and that means travel, loads of travel - it also means many of us are in need of some fine, mobile apps that make our summer travel a little easier.

And so, I'm glad to share with you some fine mobile apps and mobile friendly websites that are designed to help with your travel using your mobile.. enjoy! The following are mobile-friendly url's optimized for use from a mobile handset:

Mobile airline check-in - simply hit the site, login, and check-in for your flight:
Southwest - http://mobile.southwest.com
Delta - http://mobile.delta.com.
United- http://united.com/mobile
AA - http://aa.com
JetBlue - mobile.jetblue.com
Alaska Air - http://wireless.alaskaair.com
Continental - wap.continental.com
Air Canada - mobile.aircanada.com
WestJet - http://mobile.westjet.com/
USA Air - http://www.usairways.com/awa/content/traveltools/mobile/default.aspx

For details flight stats and reports on any airline I use Flightstats - the send me an update (email or txt) is awesome! Imagine your waiting to pick someone up so you simply park in a holding lot until yet receive an SMS alert that the flight has landed! See mobile.flightstats.com or via PC http://www.flightstats.com

Other useful, mobile apps and services I take advantage of include:

Traffic.com from NAVTEQ for traffic reports, directions and more (email updates available) See mobi.traffic.com

Gasbuddy for the cheapest fuel near me - http://gasbuddytogo.com

Facebook Mobile is handy to stay in touch while I'm on the road - http://m.facebook.com. I'm not a user, however, if I was then the Mobile MySpace site at m.myspace.com would be useful I guess! 

I also like to stay LinkedIn while away and so the mobile url m.linkedIn.com enables me to quickly login and check things out!

Qik live video streaming enables me to share live streams with my friends while on the road - http://m.qik.com/ Likewise, I can easily checkin with my YouTube account via m.youtube.com

Flickr mobile at m.flickr.com enables me to view and upload easily to Flickr from any handset.

Accuweather mobile provides the latest weather updates to my handset - http://wireless.accuweather.com/

Other handy travel related app that are a must-have are Worldmate http://www.worldmate.com/ and Psiloc World Traveler - http://worldtraveler.biz/ - These apps provide a handy UI to flight info (pro), clocks, currency exchange, weather reports and more.

Finally, everyone needs acccess to Google apps and services while away - I forward all my email to gmail when on the road. Access all the mobile apps (gMail, search, gMaps) from Google via http://www.google.com/mobile/ or jump to m.google.com on your handset. Twitter users, remember, you can always login to your Twitter account via m.twitter.com go to http://dabr.co.uk/ (my favorite Twitter mobile url) or use a handy mobile Twitter client like Gravity (Symbian S60), Tweetie or Twinkle (iPhone)

Using mobile-friendly WAP portals you can check-in for your flight on any airline from your phone!