By the way, if you haven’t already checked out the holiday-inspired site decorations you should do it now before they go away forever (or at least until next year).

Here are a few of the new features we added:

Search for Matches: This runs a quick search of the existing Joobili database to prevent uploading duplicate events. It was really frustrating for some of you who spent a lot of time uploading an event only to have it be denied by the Joobili editors because it was already in the system. Hopefully this solves that issue.

Recurring Date: Most Joobili events are annual occurrences so we wanted to create a way to automatically set future dates assuming your event happens on a fixed schedule.

Category Limits: You can now select 1 main category and max 2 additional categories for your event. A few people were setting every possible category to describe their event which really doesn’t help us know what the event is all about. Sure, almost all events serve food, but that doesn’t mean you need to mark it as a Food/Drink festival. Hopefully this changes will improve the quality of your event searches.

Attendance & Tickets: We added two new fields, one for how many people typically attend the event and another for whether it is free or requires tickets. This will eventually allow us to better filter your inspirations beyond just dates and interests. Sometimes you are looking for a cheap thrill and you want to only search free events. Sometimes you want some solitude so you search for events with small crowds. There is a lot of potential here and we’re working on some more cool ideas for more expanding your travel inspiration options on Joobili.

Feel free to upload an event and let us know how it goes. As always, feedback is welcomed and needed.

We launched a new feature today allowing you to see upcoming events that don’t have a confirmed date yet. A lot of festivals only lock in their dates 4-6 months in advance, but for people who like long-term planning we wanted to at least allow you to see an approximate date based on previous years. Unconfirmed dates appear as grey numbers while confirmed dates are the usual green color. This was a feature that was always in the plans, but it was put on hold while we pushed out the more urgent features in the beta version. Let us know what you think about the new feature.

National Tourism Offices and private event promoters host fantastic travel events every day throughout Europe. But you never hear about them. They hide on the back pages of event calendars on difficult to navigate websites. Or they are locally famous events that are unknown to an international audience. Joobili is on a mission to make these events easier to discover. Part of this effort requires enlisting the help of tourism professionals to tell us about their events. Later today we will unveil the Joobili Pro membership, which makes it as easy as possible for Pros to post and edit their events without having to wait for approval from the Joobili editor (notice I speak of the Editor in the 3rd person as if he and I weren’t the same person).

Why should you care? More Pros = more quality event content = more inspiration for you.

On 1 May 1707 the Kingdoms of England (including Wales) and Scotland were formally united. A century later the Kingdom of Ireland passed the Act of Union. The modern ”United Kingdom” was born and with it one of the most confusing country names of all time. Question: does your London friend live in England, Great Britain, or the United Kingdom? Answer: all of the above. You can read about the difference here. Why all the discussion about the UK? Well, some of our beta users pointed out that Joobili only listed the United Kingdom on its drop-down list of countries. This made it difficult to search for travel experiences just in Scotland. We agree, and we’re using our immense political powers to “un-unite” the United Kingdom. The change should appear in a few weeks when we publish a new version of the site.

Keep the feedback coming. It helps improve Joobili and bring down Empires.

PS: My vote for the second most confusing name is figuring out which country your friend from Amsterdam lives in…is it Holland or The Netherlands? You can find the answer here.

1. Bologna City of Food: Bologna, Italy - Bolognese food inventions extend far beyond meaty sauces and you’ll find all of Bologna’s tasty creations on display here.

2. Mengen Cookery Festival: Mengen, Turkey - Some of the finest Mediteranian dishes originate in Turkey. This festival on the Turquoise coast will teach you how to make it like a Turk.

3. Naples Pizza Festival: Naples, Italy - The world’s largest celebration of pizza in the birthplace of pizza. Enough said.

4. Sueca Paella Festival: Sueca, Spain - Celebrating my favorite Spanish dish. The last day of this festival features a Paella eating contest that is sure to fatten you up.

5. Sheep Festival: Arrens Marsous, France – Fluffy fat sheep are returned from summer pastures and made into sheep cheese, lamb cutlets, sheep sausage, etc.

6. Abergavenny Food Festival: Abergavenny, Wales - The highpoint of Welsh cuisine where chefs gather to show of their skills and you become the judge.

7. Cherry Beignet and Kirsch Fair: Fougerolles, France - Fried French donuts and sweet cherries. Yummy.

8 Chasteilet Festival: Sigriswil, Switzerland - For nearly 250 years this region has hosted an annual cheese sharing festival.

9. Galway International Oyster Festival: Galway, Ireland - Buckets of oysters and never-ending pints of Guiness beer. If that won’t put on the kilos I don’t know what will.

10. Kivik Apple Market: Kivik, Sweden - Enormous artistic displays of apples. But don’t worry, this is art you can eat.

11. O Grove Seafood Festival: El Grove, Spain - Europe’s elite fishmongers unite for a two-week seafood safari.

12. Weimar Onion Festival: Weimar, Germany - Don’t worry, it’s not just onions, but also everything that tastes better with onion added.

13. Det Goda Koket: Stockholm, Sweden - Lutfisk anyone? You’ve got to give this dried, salted white fish a taste. It is just one of many foods available at the birthplace of the Smorgasbord.

14. Brotherhood of Goat Meat Eaters Festival: Bellegarde-en-marche, France - This gets my award for strangest festival on the list. If you love goat meat or unusual events you shouldn’t miss it.

15. Eurochocolate: Perugia, Italy - Hope you saved room for desert! This is the final stop on our Winter Fattening tour.

Some of you received an email today inviting you to join our private beta testing group. If you did not get an invitation and would like to participate let me know. A big thanks to all of you willing to give up some time to help make Joobili cooler.

The Face-Off is Joobili’s newest feature. It will appear on the homepage and it allows users to vote between two “competing” travel experiences happening in the upcoming week. It’s pretty simple, just click on the event you want to vote for and the percentage of total votes magically (read ajax refresh) appears. So get out and vote for your hometown events.