The tackiest tourist photos on the web

Help your child become more engaged in your family's vacation by lending them a camera of their own to play with. Kids will savor having their own point of view. And picture-taking will pull them away from their portable game consoles, engaging them in the experience that you're all supposed to be sharing. Here are some tips to enhance the fun. Keep nagging them to wear the wristband. Don't feel guilty about insisting. They'll drop or forget the camera otherwise. Buy a Gorillapod for your kids. This clever camera tripod has twisty legs that latch onto anything from fences to car doors to help keep the camera steady for better shots. Your kids will probably think it's fun to adjust the squishy, Gumby-like legs. Kids often have jump hands, so this will help them take steady photos—especially helpful when taking shots of animals in motion. joby.com/gorillapod, recently $7 on Amazon. Encourage your kids to try unusual views and angles. Demonstrate for them some unusual ways to take photos, such as putting the camera on the ground of an airport underneath a seat looking out a the passengers in the terminal. These surprising angles may make your kids become more aware of their surroundings and could unleash their creativity. Prod them to photograph other children. Depending on their age, your child may need a push to ask other children encountered on a trip if he or she could take their picture. This is a hassle that's worth it, though, for the potential bonding moment. If your child has a digital camera with an LCD screen, the picture can be shown right away. This picture-sharing is a way of breaking down social barriers and helping children build confidence to talk with peers their own age. If your child really takes to photography, think about buying a camera as a gift. For under-7s, consider the Fisher-Price Kid-Tough Digital Camera (from $47; Amazon) It has kid-friendly side grips, a two-eye viewfinder, and waterproof casing. MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL 16 best summer attractions for families in 2011 Travel games: Scavenger hunts by cell phone are all the rage Wow the kids with these age-appropriate dream trips

How many times have you researched hotels on TripAdvisor (or any user review forum, for that matter), and found yourself wondering how accurate the descriptions were? We all know to discredit excessively positive or negative reviews (which were likely written by someone with an agenda), but what if there was a reliable way that sites could flag suspicious write-ups? Cornell students and professors have come to the rescue. As reported by Travel Weekly, the tech geniuses at the Ivy League college have created a software program that can identify fraudulent critiques with 90% accuracy (human judges, on the other hand, were only accurate 50% of the time). To put their algorithm—which looks for keywords that are more likely to be embedded in fake reviews—to the test, students hired writers to create 400 false reviews for TripAdvisor's 20 most popular hotels in Chicago. These reviews were then interspersed with 400 actual reviews and subjected to the software program for analysis. Human test subjects formed the control group. As indicated above, the results suggest that no matter how hard we try, we humans aren't good judges of honesty online. (The students published their findings in a report entitled "Finding Deceptive Opinion Spam by Any Stretch of the Imagination.") The issue of fake reviews is not a new one. It's been on travelers' minds as far back as 2007, when Nancy Keates called attention to the problem in a telling article for the Wall Street Journal. Two years later TripAdvisor started posting disclaimers warning customers to watch out for fake reviews (the subject inspired a lengthy debate on this site about the trustworthiness of user-generated review sites). The debate, however, seems more timely than ever when you consider that TripAdvisor—already the biggest travel review site on the web—has grown its traffic by 35% since 2008.* Whether or not the site jumps to use the program created by Cornell remains to be seen, but I for one am glad to see that there are folks out there who are actively searching for a solution. What about you? Do you worry about being misled by fake information on user review sites, or do you think you're a pretty good judge of accuracy? Do you have any tips on how to avoid being taken by misinformation? *according to PhoCusWright research quoted by Travel Weekly. SEE MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL: How is Airbnb Dealing With the Robbery That Rocked the Vacation Rental World? Open Secret Websites for Booking Hotels 8 Ways to Save on Hotel Rooms

One month before the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, I got a preview of the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan, which will be open to victims' family members on Sept. 11, 2011, and unveiled to the public one day later. The memorial plaza sits on eight of the 16 acres that comprise the redeveloped World Trade Center site, and consists of twin memorial reflecting pools in the footprints of the original twin towers, around which are inscribed the 2,982 names of the people who died in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 and on Feb. 26, 1993. Rather than arrange the names alphabetically, they are arranged by what organizers call "meaningful adjacencies," so that, for instance, all the first responders are grouped together, those that died in World Trade Center North are grouped together and those that were on Flight 11 are together. Friends and family of the victims could also request that names be placed next to one another that had particular meaning or significance to them. There will be kiosks where visitors can go to search for names and their placement on the memorial by name, company, flight, tower or even hometown. The rest of the plaza consists of more than 150 trees, all of which are oak, except for one, a Callory Pear tree, also known as the "survivor tree." It was at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and the Parks Department rescued it from the rubble. It had been reduced to a stump, but has since sprouted new branches. At the center of the plaza lies the Memorial Museum, which is slated to open in 2012. The remainder of the World Trade Center Redevelopment project consists of the Transportation Hub, which will connect a PATH station with 13 subway lines, and several commercial office buildings, including Four World Trade Center, which when completed will be the future headquarters of The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and One World Trade Center (formerly called the Freedom Tower), which will be the tallest skyscraper in New York at 104 floors and 1,776 feet to the top of the building's spire. To visit the site, guests have to reserve a visitor pass online at 911memorial.org. Passes are free and can be reserved as far as six months in advance. There are daily limits, which is why The National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center Foundation, Inc. recommends reserving online. The entrance to the site will be at Greenwich and Liberty Streets. When it opens, the memorial will still be surrounded on all four sides by construction. Hard hats not required. More from Budget Travel: 50 Reasons You Love New York City More airports consider ditching TSA U.S. urges travelers to be vigilant in aftermath of bin Laden death

Hotwire.com released its list of the top-ten most booked destinations for the upcoming Labor Day weekend, and as usual, big cities dominate. New York $195 (average nightly hotel price) Boston $129 Chicago $90 Las Vegas $95 San Francisco $135 Toronto $93 Vancouver $116 San Diego $94 Dallas-Fort Worth $59 Washington, D.C. $89 if (WIDGETBOX) WIDGETBOX.renderWidget('31b1df89-acb6-47db-9ac1-870808ce3966');Get the Poll Creator Pro widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! Not seeing a widget? (More info)But it came as a slight surprise to me that New York—which has far and away the highest average hotel price on the list—ranks number one. Sure, the Big Apple is great. We have the Statue of Liberty, museums galore, pizza, Broadway, the Yankees, and most importantly, the Budget Travel offices. But I would have suspected that budget-conscious Americans might flock to more wallet-friendly regional hubs on a three-day weekend. So what gives? Leave a comment and let us know how you decide where to go on a three-day getaway! (And by the way, you don’t need to shell out $195 for a hotel in New York! Check out our New York hotel page for stylish options under $150.) MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL: Times Square Like a Local A Tour of New York's Best Street Food New York's Hopping Beer Scene