Geeky Traveller

Last month, while attending Les Blogs, I stayed at Hotel Clos Medicis. It’s just around the corner from the Luxembourg Gardens, on a street that appears to boast every Japanese restaurant in the country. It was a small, charming boutique hotel in the French tradition. The room was tiny, but was clean and quiet. The staff were courteous and friendly, and generously tolerated my appalling French without switching to English (which they also capably spoke).

There was no wireful access–just wifi at a truly abusive 22 euros per day. Or, rather, it was until 2:00pm the next day, which isn’t quite the same thing. Regardless, they had me over a barrel, so I paid.

They did have a public Internet terminal in a tiny closet off the lobby. Charmingly, the closet also doubled as the ironing room, so you want to plan your Internet usage around peak ironing hours.

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This is only in the proof-of-concept stage, but Actively Mobile (via We Make Money…) wants you to leave your MP3 player, cell phone and pedometer at home:

Actively Mobile is a small disc worn on the wrist, arm or hip – wherever is most comfortable – of those engaged in physical exercise. Incorporating the functionality only available currently by carrying several devices, it offers a range of facilities, and accesses a variety of services, of particular use to runners: a heart-rate monitor, a GPS locator, and time and speed tracking. To aid motivation it also allows two or more people, running together but in different places, to share conversation and their current performance (to hear each other’s pace for example).

Right, because gasping out a conversation with my running buddy is really going to motivate me to climb out of ye olde easychair. But I jest–this definitely sounds like a desirable device for the frenetic set.

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This review comes courtesy of Jeremy, my partner in blogging-related crimes. He recently spent a few nights in Winnipeg, the poor bastard, and had this to say about his hotel’s geek appeal:

The 17? TV was not. I

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This is kind of an anti-geek site, but I’d certainly enjoy visiting and asking some pointed questions. The Creation Museum is a US $25 miillion project currently under construction in Ohio.

The Creation Museum will proclaim to the world that the Bible is the supreme authority in all matters of faith and practice and in every area it touches on. This

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Dude, I need to listen to some tunes and make some calls while I’m shreddin’ da pow. My hands are busy, you know, holding the sh’mon (thank you, snowboarding dictionary).

Fortunately, O

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This is slightly old news, but earlier in the week Lifehacker pointed to an iPod vending machine at the Atlanta aiport. I see that you can also buy batteries, phone cards and digital cameras. I do note the absence of the excellent Apple World Travel Adapter Kit. Maybe you can’t fly internationally from Atlanta?

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The vast majority of digital cameras are butt ugly. I mean, I’ve got a honkin’ Nikon D-70. It takes great photos, but it’s hardly attractive.

I was pleased, then, to spot the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX8 on Engadget. Black with silver highlights–very old school. Apparently it comes in other colours as well:

As with the FX7, the new model will be offered in four color schemes for the Japanese market – “Silky Silver”, “Comfort Blue”, “Misty Pink” and “Gross Black” (perhaps a little something got lost in the translation, but we’re actually quoting Panasonic on the names).

Specs, schmecs, I just want it to look good while I’m, you know, clubbing in Ibiza.

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On my way back to Canada, I recently spent a night in the High Tech Arturo Soria near the Madrid Airport. Really, it’s called “High Tech”.

The hotel is situated in a bleak group of airport hotels and apartment buildings. There’s something essentially grim about airport hotels–they’re essentially pods meant to house you between place A and B.

The Arturo Soria is a three-star with no illusions about its place in the hotel food chain. There was no wifi in the rooms, but there were three oddities about my small room:

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Via a portal for the geeky traveller who’s surfing the Web using his tiny, awkward cell phone. This comes via geekBlue:

No more waiting for a complex site to load up while you get bombarded with charges by your carrier! Use a portal made for you mobile device. These portals collect sites, which are made to be used on small screens. They keep a controlled amount of images in order to have the site load quickly on your personal device. After looking over a bunch of sites I found Web On Your Cell to be the most useful.

Whenever I try surfing the Web on my phone, I end up hurling the thing in the ocean in frustration. So, you know, I don’t try very often.

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When you’re out on the open road, astride your Harley as it glides down Route 66, sometimes you’ve got to call the office to see if the Feinstein Report got coallated. When you don’t feel like stopping, you can Bluetooth-enable your Prussian riding helmet with the Scala Rider from Cardo Systems (from Engadget).

Cardo also seems to have made some advances in robotics, because their site promises that the Scala Rider offers “self-assembly in five minutes”. Maybe we should send a couple thousand of these things to Mars, and they can assemble some kind of vast headset wigwam for future astronauts?

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