February 2006

I’ve posted over at Blog Business Summit about Sony Ericsson’s new phones that allow users to write posts and send photos straight to their Blogger blogs from their new Sony cell phones.

To me, LAX now equals DFW as the worst airport. Going through security, in a serpentine route, around various cubicle wall barriers (some attached to each other with duct tape), we were asked 4 times to show our boarding passes. We then walked on nasty carpets to our gate and the whole airport was unclean, unkept, and no one seemed to care. Previously, I’d thought Dallas Fort Worth was the worst and vowed to never fly into that airport again. Right up there, equalling DWF, is LAX.
The sadness of LAX can be seen in the photo of a weary traveling trying to sleep in a notch in a wall next to the bathroom.

On longer business trips, I travel with my bicycle. I like to get out and ride a city, do some training, and see where the locals ride. Yesterday, I packed my [SciCon bike bag](http://www.cyclingnews.com/tech/?id=2002/reviews/scicon-aerocomfort) extra special careful and was totally sweatin’ Menzies Aviation and whether they’d lose my bike, bang it up, or throw it across the tarmac. Much has been posted about Menzies and Alaska’s troubles and for me it goes to brand. I really don’t want to worry that much when I travel and I can’t imagine the untold dollars Alaska has lost in brand alone when they outsourced their ground crew.

We’ve all heard the horror stories about business trips gone horribly awry when some klutz pours hot coffee directly onto a laptop keyboard. But I’m pretty excited about these new Toughbooks from Panasonic that will withstand such catastrophes. Still, I’ll reserve judgment until I actually get to sit down and try one out.

Has anyone out there used one? Are they really as waterproof as the ads make them look?

In Scott McCartney’s WSJ Middle Seat column this week, he describes how some airlines are more effective at getting you on your way despite inclement weather.

The article Which Airline to Fly During a Snow Storm says “An analysis of airline cancellations at East Coast airports during the severe snow storm 10 days ago shows the airlines’ differing attitudes in action, and offers travelers a chance to make better decisions about which airline they’d prefer when storms threaten travel.”

According to the article, American and United are more prone to cancel flights due to snow, and JetBlue and Continental Airlines will work harder to get their flights into the air.

“We believe customers want to get where they’re going even if it’s very late, so we fly as much as we can,” said JetBlue spokesman Bryan Baldwin.

The downside is that you are more likely to be diverted if your plane does depart.

On Sunday, not all the flights launched by JetBlue and Continental during the storm made it as scheduled. Nine JetBlue flights diverted to airports like Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo in New York before making it to JFK late Sunday. About 20 Continental flights inbound from Europe had to divert to Montreal, Cleveland, Syracuse and Gander, Newfoundland.

I came across this editorial by Adam C. Engst written for his Tidbits email and web publication about the way-to-common annoyance of never finding a power outlet when you need one. I can’t count the number of times that I have not been able to finish a project on my laptop because I could not find a power outlet while waiting at an airport. Maybe it’s some kind of collusion between the airlines and the airports–because it forces you to find (and pay membership fees for) the only place you are guaranteed to find a little juice–the Airport Club rooms that are offered by most major air carriers.

Adam mentioned that the SmartCarte people are now providing cell-phone charging pedestals that gouge you $3 for 30 minutes of charge time(!) for the poor guy who just happened to forget his cell phone adapter. Let’s just hope thats not the direction we’re headed for such an inexpensive public commodity.

It also reminded me of what I have said before–batteries are quickly becoming the Achilles heel in this world of portable electronic devices.

Does anyone have any tricks that they have used to find an outlet when they need one while traveling?

Flying back from [Colorado](http://coloradoski.com/clubcolorado) and [Bloggy Mountain High](http://www.technorati.com/tag/bloggy+mountain+high), we found the skies to be somewhat friendlier on United. I suppose emerging from bankruptcy puts an extra lift in your step and it’s easier to be nicer.

While planning a trip to London recently, a friend recommended I use this site as a reference. While I have always respected the concise and informative editorial available in Conde’ Nast Traveler Magazine, I have never until now made use of their online services provided by Concierge.com.

Especially useful are the ‘travel tools’ section, which include weather, currency calculator, maps, destination finder (listing getaways based on activity, region or time of year preferences), forums and my favorite–the Hotel Finder. It provides access to the magazine’s proprietary Gold List, giving quick reference scoring of ’service’, ‘rooms’, ‘locations’, ‘food’, ‘design’ and ‘overall’ scoring supplied by non other than the magazine readers themselves.

Definitely one of the best travel websites around.

For those business travelers who are so addicted to MySpace that you must have access to it even in the terminal, now you can play around on the site without paying for WiFi at the airport. Just user your Helio phone.

Us bloggers talked more about [United's Economy Plus](http://inflighthq.com/archives/2006/02/2900_for_5_inch.htm) last night and how much of a plus it is. The conclusion is that it’s not much. Despite the offerings of preferred security, boarding, none of us got that. The extra 5 inches is great, but that’s the whole plus of it. And then [Buzz](http://buzzmodo.typepad.com/buzznovation/) said that he just waited for the fasten your seat belts light to go off, and moved up to Economy Plus.

This comes from Buzz Bruggeman, who is with our team of bloggers at the Blog Business Summit editorial retreat Bloggy Mountain High. This trick will also help you remember what level of the parking garage you parked your car on.

When you go to your hotel room for the first time (or leave it for the first time,) take a picture of your room number with your cell phone. I just used this tip at the fabulous Keystone Lodge in Colorado.

I paid $29.00 for an extra 5 inches in [United's Economy Plus](http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6722,1314,00.html) seats today for my flight to CO. Nice thing is that there were about 14 people on the plane, so I had the whole aisle to myself plus the extra leg room so that I could work. I got things done like rearranging my hard drive and starting [a photocast](http://photocast.mac.com/dlbyron/iPhoto/bloggy-mountain-high-photocast/index.rss
) (requires an RSS reader) for [Bloggy Mountain High](http://blogbusinesssummit.com/evangelism/).

While the space was great, and I’m sure business people use it, I also felt “nickel and dimed” for the charge and wished that there was just that much room on every flight.

[Upcoming.org has the details](http://upcoming.org/event/55803/) on our Bloggy Mountain High Meetup. Come and meet up with us, talk blogging, business, inFlightHQ and everything else that’s bloggy.

I called the helpdesk for Palm and was told that for $195.00 they would put
in a new battery. Which begs the question “Why is the battery unable to
hold a charge in the first place?” (No answer given from India.)

A less expensive option is to get the battery here ($25) or on eBay ($10) and install it yourself following these instructions.

Sounds simple and priced right. Has anyone tried this option? If so did
you have success, failure, or heart-ache? Let me know; I am not sure I want
to be the first on this one.

At Sea-Tac, it used to be that you could get a WiFi connection with T-Mobile for $6.00 for the first hour and 10 cents a minute after that. Since I rarely spend more than 2 hours at the airport - and usually only a half hour to an hour of this time is spent on the Web - this was a good option for me.

Now, it costs $9.99 for 24 hours of straight access with Cingular. This is absurd because no sane person spends 24 hours in an airport without a massive delay. I’m paying $4.00 more for unlimited Internet access whose unlimitedness serves no useful purpose to me, and I don’t like it.

Whoever got rid of the T-Mobile pay-as-you-go service ought to bring it back, stat! The more choices, the better.

I came across this easy interactive guide which took most of the guesswork out of trying to figure out which adaptor to buy for the countries I’ll be traveling to next month……will I need a converter? or a transformer?…..is the local voltage 110 or 220?

Yesterday, I made the mistake of going to my local AAA retail store where not only were the products not clearly marked as to which country it would be applicable to, but the employee was not even sure if they even had an adaptor that would work in Bulgaria–a complete waste of time on my part. I should have know that an online search would have given me a much more expeditious solution.

Recently introduced by Magellan’s, this ‘Electrical Connection Wizard‘ selected the adaptor plug set that I need after just a few quick steps. After asking which type of appliance I need to power, the guide determines the plug adaptors (s) needed and whether a transformer or converter is required. In a few minutes time I had my answer.

I am a neophyte with this Palm and GPS thing. So this post is about my experience with a new technology in a rental car in the rain. It was useful, it was fun, and it was easy….sort
of.

We pried the TomTom Navigator for Palm Tungsten T3 out of the box, didn’t read much (actually not much to
read), got the software installed onto the Palm T3, and hit the road. The
GPS unit (smaller than a hockey puck) took a couple of minutes to pick up
where we were. Our location was in Seattle headed to the airport from Denny Way. The route was planned with a few quick entries, then we picked the guide’s voice, since commands are audible.

In the middle of our trip to the airport, we decided that we needed to go
to REI to look at some stuff, so we found REI under ’stores’ and our route
was re-planned. It wasn’t the route I expected, but with faith (and
trepidation) we followed it to an entirely new-to-me REI at Southcenter
which was closer than the Seattle store that I expected. That is useful,
but the amount of faith required was a bit disconcerting for me.

It was fun, though. In spite of the good directions, I missed some turns,
but the voice came back with new instructions on a new routing each time. The Bluetooth zapped the battery pretty fast (40 minutes) in the T3, likely
due to the less than ideal OEM battery (I’ll be writing soon about replacing the battery in a
T3 for under $40). We plugged it into the charger socket, but in the
meantime had missed several major turns. No problem: a new route was
communicated to us. For the initial test, I did not change the route preferences, and went with the default settings. We were always on the most ‘direct’ route, if my navigation of
Seattle was correct. A faster route may have been possible using freeways.

However, the user interface was very simple and straightforward. A very extensive review from PocketGPSWorld shows how nice the layout is, how easy the interface can be, and the options, so I won’t go into them. Suffice it to say that I
could get it done with minimal frustration.

I don’t know if the value is there. That is a personal decision for the
buyer. We thought it was worth it, and you might too. I liked using it
since it got us where we wanted to go in an easy and fun way. How does it
compare to other GPS options that you may have experienced?

For all you hardcore gamers out there…..PCWorld recently reviewed a new Graphics Card officially known as the GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB DDR3 XXX Edition video card (can someone tell what is up with the overextended nomenclature here?). I will admit I am not much of a gaming fanatic, but it appears that this is the Ferrari of Video Cards (at a proportional price of $749!). Am I wrong, or does this bring a whole new meaning to impulsive extravagence. How big of a difference does a Card like this really make? Makes me curious……..

Fon, a three-month old Spanish wi-fi provider has raised $22 million in venture capital to help launch a plan to form a network of broadband users that would share wireless connections when away from home.

Essentially, as more and more laptop users join the Fon network, more and more hotspots are created.

Fon founder, Mr. Martin Varsavsky, envisions a “unified global broadband wireless signal”. Because the user must first join an ISP, Mr. Varsavsky claims he is ‘befriending ISP’s by sharing the revenue’.

But, Roger Entner, an analyst with market research firm Ovum, said the idea could be revolutionary - in terms of both its potential and its possible pitfalls. “It’s an awesome idea just like Napster was, with all the consequences that come with it,” he said. “It’s a great idea, but you are breaking the law. It is treating wi-fi as communal property when it is not.”

I believe that eventually wireless broadband will be like a utility–preferably provided as a free service to the community or at least available as a very inexpensive public amenity. Maybe this will end up being a step in that direction.

The TP Insider said that a recent View from the Wing post reminded them of how “cool” we are.

Aww…shucks!

We think TP is cool, particularly the feature that allows travelers to start their own blogs. We’d love to know if any of our readers have blogs over there, or are planning to start any.

We also think View from the Wing rules the skies.