Tag: Travel And Technology
What’s To Be Done About Porn on Public Transit?
by Eva Holland | 11.12.09 | 3:32 PM ET
Forget about the Mealtime Seat-Recliner or the Armrest Hog—now there’s a new breed of bad seatmate to worry about: the Porn Watcher. This Washington Post story provides a couple of horror stories as it takes a look at the ways in-flight wireless, personal video devices and other technological advances have brought pornography into the public domain. The most shocking thing about the article? In two of the incidents described, the viewers in question left the audio on for all their co-passengers to hear—in my book, that’s unacceptable even if you’re listening to something as inoffensive as Kenny G.
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Yahoo! BuzzIs an Electronic Guidebook Packing Too Light in 2010?
by Rick Steves | 11.10.09 | 10:50 AM ET
On Kindles, guidebooks, and whether the two are ready to be mixed
‘Is Japanese Getting Simpler, Easier or Just Worse?’
by Eva Holland | 11.09.09 | 2:09 PM ET
Writing in the New York Times, Emily Parker ponders the changes being wrought on the Japanese language by the internet and cell phones:
Americans may fret over the ways digital communications encourage sloppy grammar and spelling, but in Japan these changes are much more wrenching. A vertically written language seems to be becoming increasingly horizontal. Novels are being written and read on little screens. People have gotten so used to typing on computers that they can no longer write characters by hand. And English words continue to infiltrate the language.
Eight Great Travel Twitter Tweets for October
by @worldhum | 11.02.09 | 2:07 PM ET
iStockPhoto What makes a good travel tweet? Here are eight favorites from the past month.
Chevy Volt Takes its First Road Trip
by Eva Holland | 10.16.09 | 11:03 AM ET
An eight-car convoy of Chevrolet Volts is on a three-day road trip from Michigan to West Virginia and back, Wired reports. The trip is part of final pre-production testing for the long-awaited electric car.
Eight Great Travel Twitter Tweets for September
by @worldhum | 10.02.09 | 12:04 PM ET
iStockPhoto What makes a good travel tweet? Here are eight favorites from the past month.
‘Could iPhone Apps Change the Way We Travel?’
by Michael Yessis | 09.17.09 | 11:22 AM ET
Over at Slate, Tom Vanderbilt takes “a broad and by no means exhaustive look at the most promising—or at least most intriguing—apps to date.”
Interview With John Rasmus: ‘The New Age of Adventure’
by Jim Benning | 09.16.09 | 10:03 AM ET
Jim Benning asks the National Geographic Adventure editor about a new travel anthology, and about how technology is changing our sense of adventure
50 Things Being Killed Off by the Internet
by Eva Holland | 09.08.09 | 4:37 PM ET
The Telegraph compiles a funny list. Among the species-at-risk: geographical knowledge, and the mystery of foreign languages. Matthew Moore writes: “Sites like Babelfish offer instant, good-enough translations of dozens of languages—but kill their beauty and rhythm.” (Via Outside the Beltway)
Ten Great Travel Twitter Tweets for August
by @worldhum | 09.01.09 | 12:14 PM ET
iStockPhoto What makes a good travel tweet? Here are 10 favorites from the past month.
Thomas Friedman on the ‘Overconnected Tourist’
by Michael Yessis | 08.17.09 | 9:40 AM ET
He went to remote Botswana—the “Land of No Service”—and sent forth a column that touches on the “blessings and curses” of being connected:
For the normally overconnected tourist, the first thing you notice in the Land of No Service is how quickly your hearing, smell and eyesight improve in an act of instant Darwinian evolution. It is amazing how well you can hear when you don’t have an iPod in your ears or how far you can see when you’re not squinting at a computer screen. In the wild, the difference between hearing and seeing with acuity is the difference between survival and extinction for the animals and the difference between a rewarding experience and a missed opportunity for photographers and guides.
He sounds downright Pottsian.
Safaris: Saviors of the Printed Word?
by Eva Holland | 08.04.09 | 1:07 PM ET
In the latest installment of Bookspotting, Book Bencher Vicky Raab spied Wired’s New York editor, Mark Horowitz, toting a stack of travel books—real ones, in hard copy!—in preparation for an African safari. What, no Kindle?
Raab writes: “Horowitz acknowledged that he was ‘totally Kindlized,’ but he was a bit worried about recharging, and none of the titles he had purchased are available as downloads. Still, he said that he may bring his along for the plane ride.”
Fair enough. The man does work for Wired, after all. His list of essential pre-safari titles is a good one, with everyone from Isak Dinesen and Peter Matthiessen to Stanley and Livingstone represented.
Ten Great Travel Twitter Tweets for July
by @worldhum | 08.04.09 | 10:28 AM ET
iStockPhoto What makes a good travel tweet? Here are 10 favorites from the past month.
Google Mapping the Alphabet
by Eva Holland | 07.27.09 | 12:41 PM ET
Over at the Daily Dish, Chris Bodenner has come across a collection of Google map terrain views—all from New York state—that appear to spell out the alphabet. Just one more way that Google is helping to shrink the planet?
AirTran Presents ‘Internetiquette’
by Eva Holland | 07.14.09 | 4:29 PM ET
As we’ve noted, AirTran has been leading the charge on in-flight Wi-Fi service—and now it’s pioneering in-flight internet protocol too. The airline’s new seat pocket guide, “Internetiquette: A Guide to Keeping Everyone in Line, While They’re Online,” is no dry list of rules, either. Take, for instance, Tip #10 on personal photo galleries:
SFF, or Suitable For Flights: family vacation photos, graduation photos, birthday party photos.
NSFF, or Not Suitable For Flights: the photos from Vegas. You know the ones.
Sometimes humor can be the best way to get a point across. Here’s hoping AirTran’s passengers take note, and that e-card jingles and musical MySpace pages are kept to a minimum on future wired flights.
Have We Entered the Era of the ‘Roadcast’?
by Michael Yessis | 07.07.09 | 9:57 AM ET
Mark Vanhoenacker argues that we have. What’s a roadcast? It’s “a podcast that has particular qualities of randomness and reflection; they’re fascinating and thought-provoking but not news-focused or educational,” he writes in the Christian Science Monitor. “Like the tape deck itself, or the cup holder, roadcasts manage to revolutionize the road trip while also being right in tune with its sensibilities.”
Do these types of podcasts “revolutionize the road trip”? Not quite. Are they intriguing? Sure.
Some of Vanhoenacker’s examples of good roadcasts: Philosophy Bites, In Our Time and the New Yorker’s fiction podcast.
Vanhoenacker goes on to say he believes that roadcasts fill in “some gaps in the road trip experience.” He writes:
Ten Great Travel Twitter Tweets for June
by @worldhum | 07.01.09 | 1:49 PM ET
iStockPhoto What makes a good travel tweet? Here are 10 favorites from the past month.
Google Unveils City Tours, Comes One Step Closer to World Domination
by Eva Holland | 06.25.09 | 12:40 PM ET
Look out, guidebook publishers—Google is coming for you. The all-new Google City Tours provides users with suggested urban itineraries and then allows for customization from there. The Guardian’s Benji Lanyado takes it for a test drive.
Shrinking Planet Headline of the Day: ‘Facebook Swahili Version Launched’
by Jim Benning | 06.15.09 | 2:15 PM ET
Facebook is now available in roughly 50 languages, and Swahili was the second African language to get its own version of the social networking site, the BBC reports.
English Hits the One-Million-Word Mark
by Eva Holland | 06.12.09 | 2:50 PM ET
And the milestone word? Web 2.0. The Global Language Monitor, an online agency that tracks English word use, made its official announcement yesterday, and noted that the new addition was “indicative of the age.” You can debate the methodology that they used in determining the million-word threshold (as plenty of commenters on the story I linked to have) but, as someone whose traveling life is totally wrapped up in—and made possible by—the web, I’d certainly agree with that second point.
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