Geeky Traveller

Texting isn’t just for the high school crowd – it can come in handy when you need to quickly send some info back to the office while you’re on the road. If you’re on vacation and your family has split up to visit different attractions, it can be used to suggest a meet-up time and place when you’re done sight-seeing. But everyone knows that using your fingers to tap out long messages on those little keys can be an enormous pain, even if it has a QWERTY keyboard.

SlideIT offers up something innovative. For $40 you can get …read more

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Mary Jo Manzanares is a flight attendant and writes an awesome travel blog, Fly Away Cafe. Lately she’s been giving some basic travel tips and here’s a really good one for people like us, those of us who can’t leave home without our beloved gadgets. She wrote a handy post covering ten important tips for using a laptop on a plane.
For example, it’s good to be reminded to follow the rules by stowing your laptop in its bag during take-off and landing, and to be considerate of fellow passengers by using earphones if you’re watching video or listening …read more

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Here’s something to keep around if you’re going on a road trip or even camping. The One Battery Emergency Mobile Charger Torch is a heavy duty flashlight that resembles the kind a security guard might carry. It runs, as the name implies, on only one AA battery. However, there’s more to it than just a nice bright light. It can also charge your cellphone for 100-180 minutes. Think how handy this could be if you run into trouble – the light will let you see while you keep your phone charging until help can arrive.
It …read more

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I came across journeyPod today and it’s an interesting site. Right now it’s limited to covering 16 destinations, but they’ll likely grow and expand over time. If one of the cities listed happens to be where you’re headed (for instance, New York or Dubai), you can check out a travel guide that lists some of the best restaurants and hotels in that area.
That’s nothing innovative of course, travel guides exist everywhere these days, but they also have a section for podcasts. Right now, their podcasts cover only luxury travel, but if that’s what your travel plans include, …read more

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Here’s one of those things that sounds like it should be convenient but it’s also a bit scary. The Wallet MediCard allows you to essentially carry your medical history in your pocket. It’s a wallet sized USB Flash Card and you can carry everything you might ever need for any medical situation.

This, on the one hand, sounds really convenient. If you’re traveling, you can have all your records anywhere you go in case of the horrible chance that you get ill or injured while you’re away from home.
But it’s a lot of sensitive information being carried around …read more

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When I went to Mexico, one of my favorite days was when I left behind all the tourist markets and headed to the market area where locals shopped. I had flown four and a half hours to be in another country and I was tired of hearing English and French – I wanted to go somewhere that would allow me to be completely surrounded by people speaking Spanish. When I was getting the directions from one of the hotel staff, she warned me that it was likely I wouldn’t find a single person who would be able to …read more

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There are a lot of people who use GPS in order to find their way to their destination. But what about GPS for the sky? This will bring a whole new perspective to a camping trip, let me tell you. I have a telescope and a pair of binoculars. They’re great – if you know what you’re looking at. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of pretty stars and when your five-year-old starts hounding you about constellations and all you can find are three, well, it’s amazing how kids can make you feel pretty dumb.

So whip …read more

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Here’s something to take with you if you’re going camping or even just on a long road trip. The LifeLight not only offers you 15 bright LED lights to help you see in case of emergency (or in case you need to hike your way to the outhouse at 3 am), it also has an AM/FM radio, emergency flashers, emergency siren, a compass, and external speakers that can connect to your mp3 player. It doesn’t need any batteries – it uses crank power to run its generator, which means you don’t have to worry about it wearing …read more

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One of my favorite sites on the Internet is Flickr. I’m a total camera addict – I honestly feel as though I’ve forgotten a limb or something equally important the rare time I leave home without my camera.
So how does Flickr fit into travel? It’s worldwide, with photos uploaded by local residents and travelers alike. Pick any destination you might like to see, type it into Flickr’s search engine, and you’ll find photos galore. There are also groups that focus on themes – I particularly enjoy looking at the Prague and Northern Canada groups.
If you’re planning …read more

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As far as I’m concerned, a good vacation spot includes water – swimming in the ocean, kayaking on a river, splashing in a lake. It doesn’t matter much which kind of water (though I do prefer the ocean), as long as it’s H2O I’m happy. I’ll even settle for a pool.
What makes for a lousy vacation is realizing that you lost your keys when you’re sitting on a boat in the middle of the water, watching your keychain sink rapidly below the surface. Losing the keys to your car or your rental home would royally suck.

Although this …read more

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