Travel Hack - Part 5

12 Must Have Travel Gadgets

by admin

Travel Gadgets

What gizmos and gadgets do I need to take on my next trip? This question is usually answered while packing an extra bag full of electronics that never get turned on and collect nothing more than scratches from the other devices. Thankfully, the following list has been researched and compiled to help you determine the most useful gadgets to buy and bring with you on your next trip. No ShamWows or Flowbees included:

1. Trackstick II

Trackstick II is a GPS Receiver the size of a memory stick used for tracking weeks of your every step. Take it on vacation to keep a satellite album of your travels, record your explorations, track where your vehicle has been, or carry it whenever you go out to get a better sense of your everyday life. Traveled locations can be shown via a red line that is traced on satellite photos and 3D terrain using the latest mapping technologies from Google Earth. The Trackstick II continuously records its exact route, stop times, speed, direction, and other valuable information, all of which can be quickly downloaded and viewed on your computer. No monthly fees are required and Trackstick Manager, an advanced tracking and geo-photo tagging piece of software, is provided free to download.

2. Canon PowerShot D10 12.1 MP Waterproof Digital Camera
Canon D10

If you need a durable camera for your adventures and trips, look no further. The PowerShot D10 is waterproof to 33 feet, cold resistant from 14-104 degrees (F), and shockproof up to four feet. Its 12.1-megapixel CCD captures enough detail for photo-quality poster-size prints. Also, Canon’s powerful, state of the art imaging technologies (DIGIC 4 Image Processor; evolved Face Detection Technology plus Face Detection Self-timer) are built-in, making this camera the best choice for capturing memories during your travels.

3. Apple’s iPhone 3G

The iPhone 3G is really three devices in one – a revolutionary phone (Quad-band smartphone that will work in almost any country), a widescreen iPod, and an Internet device with email and a desktop-class web browser. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and over 35,000 apps available, the iPhone 3G puts more features at your fingertips than any phone out there. If you need to use Verizon Wireless and can’t handle the touch screen keyboard, check out RIM’s BlackBerry 8830 World Edition.

4. SteriPEN Traveler Handheld Water Purifier

SteriPEN is perfect for people traveling to “at risk” water countries, and for peace of mind in water emergencies anywhere. The purifier employs ultraviolet light (UV) to destroy the DNA of microbe like bacteria, viruses and protozoa (like Giardia and Cryptosporidium), making them unable to reproduce and cause illness. It purifies a 16oz. Glass of water in just 48 seconds and has no aftertaste after being purified. It also has an easy one button operation – no pumping, chemicals, or test strips.

5. ASUS Eee PC 1000HE

The compact form factor and rich feature set make this notebook the number one choice to take with you on trips. The ultra-bright 10″ screen is combined with built-in 802.11n, Bluetooth V2.0, 160GB HD, preloaded XP and an Intel Atom 280 Processor. It allows for a long battery lifespan of up to 9.5 hours and weighs just over 3.2 pounds.

6. Franklin 12-language Speaking Global Translator
Franklin Translator

Translates to and from 12 languages (Chinese, Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Turkish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish). It’s large screen is ideal for viewing both translations simultaneously and the European phonetic spell correction lets you enter words as they sound. The device allows you to hear over 115000 and 12000 phrases pronounced in recorded human speech, and includes over 450000 words and 12000 phrases in the languages provided.

7. Tripshell International All-in-One Travel Plug Adapter
All-in-One Travel Adapter

This universal travel adapter covers outlets in over 150 countries including US, Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and UK. The built-in surge protection protects your electrical appliances from frequent spikes/surges in foreign electricity supply. It eliminates the need to carry multiple adapters and allows you to charge your laptop, PDA, and cell phone internationally.

8. Denon In-Ear Hybrid Headphone
Denon AH-C452K

These headphones (AH-C452K) are drastically underrated and provide the best quality/price ratio of any set of headphones out there. The clear and crisp mids and highs, coupled with the clean and strong bass produce a better overall sound than the Shure, Bose, and Sennheiser counterparts. Make sure you use them for 24-36 hours to “break them in”.

9. Garmin nüvi 500
Garmin nuvi 500

This GPS (3.5″ display) serves up turn-by-turn navigation in a rugged, waterproof exterior. It fits easily in a purse, backpack, or jacket pocket, making it perfect for travel. It provides driving, walking, bicycling and boating modes, which customize your nüvi specifically for your method of travel. It supports Geocahing.com GPX files and comes preloaded with the highly detailed City Navigator North America NT maps for the lower 48 states, with maps for many countries worldwide available for purchase on the Garmin website.

10. Third Generation WiFi Detector

Great for quickly finding Wi-Fi without having to boot your laptop. Finds wireless networks up to 200 feet away, and provides specific information about each network when multiple networks are present. The back light LCD screen shows signal strength, network ID (SSID), encryption status, and channel.

11. Power Monkey eXplorer
Power Monkey Solar Charger

Charge this device anywhere there is sunshine. It stores up to 96 hours of reserve power for all of your favorite devices. USB connectors are included for iPods and accessories, MP3players, PDAs, smart mobile phones, digital cameras,games consoles, BlackBerrys, Bluetooth headsets and many more digital devices. If you need extra power to charge something like a laptop, look at the Powergorilla and Solargorilla.

12. Dicapac
Dicapac

Provides cases for the majority of mainstream devices (digital cameras, phones, mp3 players, etc.), which make them 100% waterproof (up to 18m deep), snow-proof, dirt-proof and the perfect investment for year-round protection. The UV, water repellent, and scratch resistant coating allows for quality pictures. A transparent and flexible case design supports easy camera control and zoom functions.

Topics: Hacks

8 Frequent Flier Mile Hacks

by admin

Frequent Flier Hacks

Being a perpetual business traveler used to be the only way to build up a worthwhile amount of frequent flier miles. This meant traveling on the same airline at least once or twice a year to keep your miles from expiring. Not only that, you needed 10-25 round trip flights under your belt to build up a rewarding collection of miles. This would take most travelers (who only have two weeks of vacation and numerous responsibilities) around 10 years to develop a beneficial amount of miles. Today, with the large availability and joining incentives of airline credit cards, hotel programs, and airline third party partners, it is easier than ever to rack up enough miles to get a free award ticket. The following list of hacks will help you to save up and organize frequent flier miles for free air travel in no time!:

1. Book FAR in advance or at the LAST minute – Look at both ends of the spectrum. First, search as far ahead as possible to find a low mileage priced award seat. You can generally start searching at least six months in advance. Booking far in advance is usually your best bet if you want to use the least amount of miles for an award seat. If you can’t come across (or you don’t have the convenience of searching for) a seat far in advance, there is also a possibility of scoring a great deal on a last minute award seat. This is usually hit or miss and will depend on your flight.

2. Examine ALL your choices – Before you decide to cash in your award miles, determine if you can save a greater amount of money by using the miles for a more expensive ticket down the road. Don’t spend 25,000 of your miles on a $150 round trip flight, unless you’re not planning on traveling again for years to come. Save them for that last minute flight you would’ve shelled out $600 for instead. Last year, I was going to use 25,000 miles for a $200 round trip flight to Atlanta. Instead, I waited a couple of months and used 40,000 miles for a $1300 round trip flight to Rio de Janeiro. Also, instead of using 25,000 of your miles for a cheap ticket, find out if you can pay with a portion of your miles. Many award programs (Delta for example) will let you pay for flights with miles. This usually equates to 5,000 miles for every $50 you want off of the flight, which is normally a better option for lower costing flights.

3. Track Your Miles – Use mileage managing software to keep track of the miles on all of your accounts. This will allow you to get a summary of all your accounts in one place. The software also lets you determine which airlines you need to focus your efforts on more, and will help keep you from losing miles to expiration. Here are a couple of options:
– Mileport.com (free)
– Mileagemanager.com ($14.95/year)

4. Keep up with the rule changes – Frequent Flier program rules are constantly changing. Keep an eye out for changes, including new offers and expiring miles. Check out the forums at FlyerTalk.com and FrequentFlier.com for the latest information and buzz on rule changes and deals.

5. Rack up miles with new credit cards – This is by far the easiest way to earn miles. You’ll never get anywhere signing up for offers yielding 50 or 100 miles that end up adding you to 17 different mailing lists. Most miles programs are offering at least 15,000 miles for signing up and using their corresponding card for a few months. Check out FrequentFlier.com for a comparison of some of the best miles cards available. Remember that credit card offers only allow you to take advantage of the promotional feature once – this means you can’t sign up, collect the bonus miles, close your account, and open up another one to get the additional miles. You can get around this a single time with a business tax id. With a tax id, you can sign up for another card with your business name using the same frequent flier miles account. I was able to do this with American Airlines and rack up 50,000 miles in less than two months.

6. Focus on ONE Airline – When it comes to miles programs, diversifying yourself doesn’t always work. Having some miles in a lot of different programs takes a good amount of time and energy, without yielding great results. With the ease of getting frequent flier miles increasing, the market is becoming watered down with the amount of miles out there. The best benefits and bang for your mile come about when you rack up a lot of miles and frequently travel with the same airline. These programs were designed to keep travelers coming back. Travelers will book the same airline to get to elite status, which includes free upgrades and preferential treatment. Also, don’t rack up miles in a program that doesn’t have flights to or from your city of residence. For example, signing up for offers to get 30,000 miles on Alaskan Airlines won’t do you much good when you live in Orlando.

7. Use Yapta to find award tickets – Plan a trip through Yapta and find the flights you’re interested in taking. From the search results, choose to “track” prices & “include award tickets”. Yapta will email you when airfare & award seats become available for less. Here are the five Frequent Flier Programs that are currently supported by Yapta: Alaska, Continental, Delta, U.S. Airways, and United.

8. Use a Middleman to Transfer Miles – I don’t usually recommend this option, as huge “fees” are tacked on for transferring miles. For example, with Points.com you can transfer miles between various airline miles programs, but it isn’t a 1 to 1 ratio. You get around 500 miles in the program of your choice for every 1,000 miles you transfer. This is sometimes a good option when you need a few additional miles in a certain program and you don’t care about losing a lot in another.

Topics: Hacks

12 Invaluable Resources for Travel Advice

by admin

Travel Advice

With so many websites and guidebooks available for travel details and information, people find themselves asking, “Where do I go for the best and most relevant information?” Many tools and resources are available for everyone’s needs. Online tools may be good for one person, while others may find guide books most resourceful. There is a prevalent amount of information available both online and at the bookstore. Online, community travel sites can be great because, unlike guide book authors, posts are made by real tourists, who aren’t likely to get the 5-star treatment by local establishments trying to get rave reviews. Their experiences are usually real. When picking a guide book, go to your local bookstore and compare all of the different books on your choice destination and purchase the one most fitting for you. And don’t cheap out – buy the most up-to-date guidebook. The people who have the most miserable and uneventful travel experiences are the ones who didn’t do any research before they left, or who are too cheap to buy a $15 guide book. Don’t believe everything you read, as some people are impossible to please and will complain about every little thing. Also, many postings and writings are biased or out of date. It is known that many writers’ “facts” and opinions are based on hearsay, travel brochures, or other books, instead of their direct experiences.

Hopefully, this listing will give you a good overview of what is out there and helps to send you in the right direction for travel advice:

ONLINE COMMUNITIES
1. Tripadvisor – This is the first choice many people and number one resource for all of my travel research. They offer unbiased hotel reviews, photos and travel advice for hotels and vacations. Other sites claim to have the largest travel communities on the web, but I find TripAdvisor to have the most activity and information of any site out there. Their forums are well-monitored and constantly updated by numerous local “experts” who answer the most obscure questions on thousands of available forums. Peer reviews and ratings are provided for a plethora of hotels and attractions at every location, making it the easiest place to plan the perfect itinerary.

2. Virtual Tourist – This site also has a comprehensive travel community and forum, but its layout is outdated and it pales in comparison to Tripadvisor’s. Still, I have found their “Travel Guides” to be some of the best on the web for a quick way to access listings of information (hotels, nightlife, restaurants, local customs, off-the-beaten-path, etc.) on most major cities in the world.

3. BootsnAll – This site advertises itself as the most comprehensive travel resource on the web. It is geared toward the independent traveler. I found a lot of their links and tools to be sub par, but their forums and Traveler’s Toolkit make up for this, helping to bring this site to the front of the pack. Their destination forums cannot compete with Tripadvisor’s, but their alternate forums boast activity and topics unseen anywhere else on the net.

GUIDEBOOKS
4. Lonely Planet – These guidebooks cover everything you need for a basic guidebook, especially if you are going to be spending a long time in a country. They cater to the adventurous and active backpacking traveler. They offer comprehensive tips on dealing with various daily challenges for independent travelers – lodging, where to eat, how to get around, and local facts. These books are sometimes derided by many travelers because, at almost any time, you can arrive in one of the locations and see a larger number of people living their lives by them.

5. DK Eyewintess Guides – These books advertise themselves as the guides that show you what others only tell you. They offer the best visuals – 3d walking path and city maps, and diagrams of major museums, galleries, and attractions. The full-color and thick pages make these books much heavier than other guidebooks. Because of the emphasis on photos and illustrations, an additional guide book is recommended for more comprehensive information.

6. Rough Guides – These guides offer the most comprehensive background info (historical and cultural) on the site you are traveling to. They used to only cater to budget travelers, but now offer detailed information for independent-minded travelers on any budget.

7. Time Out City Guides – These are a series of guidebooks to over 50 cities worldwide, and are considered among the best city guides available for travelers today. Users consider these the most comprehensive, most up-to-date, and best guides for nightlife for the cities offered. These are for travelers who want to experience a city from a local’s point of view. They also offer 25 shortlist guides, which are for travelers who want to get the city’s best on a shorter stay

8. Let’s Go Guides – These guidebooks are 100% run and written by Harvard students. They are usually pretty thick books and are targeted predominantly at serious budget backpacking students (18-35 year olds). They are very opinionated and attract the younger crowd looking for the best info on nightlife and what to see during the day. Like Lonely Planet, they have a large backpacker following, which can be known to overrun their listed destinations. It is sometimes known as the hosteler’s bible.

9. Fodor’s and Frommer’s Guides – I group Fodor’s and Frommer’s guides together since they are very similar and both cater to the more mainstream and older (30-40+) traveler. These guidebooks are designed for those looking for a nice vacation rather than one who is more budget minded. Fodor’s guides are known to be a little more reader friendly than Frommer’s guides, but at the expense of being bulkier – usually a couple hundred pages more. These guides offer comprehensive general travel information (shopping, dining, hotels, attractions) for 200+ destinations. They seem to have less cultural and historical info than other guidebooks and their maps are not as great as the ones in DK Eyewitness guides.

OTHER USEFUL RESOURCES
10. Tripprep – Offers a comprehensive listing of recommended vaccinations, embassy listings, tips on local customs, local transportation, crime advisories, and travel medical providers (supposedly not very comprehensive) for all the countries in the world. Free registration is required.

11. Hire someone to do it for you – If you’re planning a trip and you don’t have time to do the research, or you don’t know how much to budget, a virtual assistant can help with all your travel needs for a reasonable price. This includes making hotel and flight bookings for you, providing detailed research, and a potential budget for you. Look up “Travel Planning” on Elance, or check out AskSunday to get a list of people to hire for research. Also, if you purchased travel insurance with your flight or have a platinum AMEX card, you can get free concierge service, which includes travel research.

12. Making friends with and talking to the locals – My best adventures have been found by going this route. I usually try to make friends with one or two of the locals on the trips I take. They point me to the best restaurants, nightclubs, and places to see without having to do any research. They can give better information than anyone, especially if you’re looking for something off the beaten path. Local scammers usually won’t take advantage of you either if you’re with one of their own people (always be careful though).

Topics: Hacks, Tools