… no Spring allergies there.
Category: travel
MiFi – Personal Hot Spot – WiFi to go
The latest in technology from the Times’s David Pogue …
Someday, we’ll tell our grandchildren how we had to drive around town looking for a coffee shop when we needed to get online, and they’ll laugh their heads off. Every building in America has running water, electricity and ventilation; what’s the holdup on universal wireless Internet?
Getting online isn’t impossible, but today’s options are deeply flawed. Most of them involve sitting rooted in one spot — in the coffee shop or library, for example. (Sadly, the days when cities were blanketed by free Wi-Fi signals leaking from people’s apartments are over; they all require passwords these days.)
If you want to get online while you’re on the move, in fact, you’ve had only one option: buy one of those $60-a-month cellular modems from Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile or AT&T. The speed isn’t exactly cable-modem speed, but it’s close enough. You can get a card-slot version, which has a nasty little antenna protuberance, or a U.S.B.-stick version, which cries out to be snapped off by a passing flight attendant’s beverage cart.
A few laptops have this cellular modem built in, which is less awkward but still drains the battery with gusto.
But imagine if you could get online anywhere you liked — in a taxi, on the beach, in a hotel with disgustingly overpriced Wi-Fi — without messing around with cellular modems. What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go?
Incredibly, there is such a thing. It’s the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It’s a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card. It has one power button, one status light and a swappable battery that looks like the one in a cellphone. When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot. …
AWESOME – US$60/month – details on NY Times – Wi-Fi to Go, No Cafe Needed
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Aeroplan® expiring me
Are your air miles expiring on you?
Got this email May 5th.
Dear Rick,
Aeroplan® wants to keep you informed of your account status.
Aeroplan’s mileage expiry policy
In order to keep an Aeroplan account active and avoid the expiration of all miles in the account, members must make at least one qualifying transaction—either by earning or redeeming miles—every 12 months. Aeroplan will expire miles in the account if more than 12 months has passed from the date of the last qualifying activity.
According to our records, the miles in your account will expire on July 25, 2009 unless you make at least one qualifying transaction prior to this date. …
Stay Informed about the program, our policies and your account status
For more detailed information about these policies, other program information, as well as access to your Aeroplan account, please visit aeroplan.com.
This policy was begun July 1, 2007.
But this is the first I’ve heard of it.
I’ve given up on Air Miles on all airlines aside from Air Canada. After I use up my Aeroplan miles this year, I’ll give up Aeroplan as well.
Those programs are more trouble than they are worth in 2009 unless you are some kind of air commuter.
related post – Air Canada still sucks …
Moon and Lonely Planet – best guidebooks
On a recent trip Gadling blogger Brenda Yun and friends compared the 4 main travel guidebooks to Cuba:
Lonely Planet Cuba by Brendan Sainsbury
Moon Handbook Cuba by Christopher P. Baker
Frommer’s Guide to Cuba by Susan Boobbyer
The Rough Guide to Cuba by Matthew Norman & Fiona McAuslan
Frommer’s and Rough Guide were worst, as usual.
Moon and LP best. As usual.
LP reinvented the travel guidebook genre. Others were forced to copy them. Or lose market share.
Here’s the most common criticism of Lonely Planet. It’s too popular.
Conclusion
Based on Christopher P. Baker’s wealth of experience in Cuba, Moon is a sure thing. Sainsbury’s Lonely Planet Cuba is also a rich and trusty companion. …
I think it’s worth mentioning that too many people carry the Lonely Planet guidebook around — not just in Cuba but around the world. In Cuba, it’s the only one I saw in at least five different languages (the content is the same). While useful, Lonely Planet is suffering from a unfortunate hipster effect: the same restaurants, hotels, and sights are becoming overrun by “budget backpackers,” and travelers are relying too heavily on LP-specific travel tips and suggestions. …
Get the basics from Lonely Planet. Look for alternative ideas in Moon.
Alberta mocked for ad that used England as stand-in for province
Boy, is my face red.
My Provincial government paid $25 million for a tourism rebranding campaign.
Might be a good idea. … If a sharp-eyed guy on the internet had not discovered that this promo photo came not from Alberta but “from Bamburgh Beach in Northumberland – home of the castle of the mythical round-tabling knight Lancelot.”
Canadian Press – Alberta mocked across Britain for ad that used England as stand-in for province
Peter Bailey, the sleuth that discovered the phoney photo, “badgered the provincial government with emails for weeks” until they finally admitted the beach was not in Alberta.
“It just brings more attention to our area, so that’s great.”
– Sheelagh Caygill of Northumberland Tourism.
Thanks Garth.
Lost on Planet China
Of all the places I’ve traveled, the least rewarding was China.
It’s a disaster for the laowai (foreigner), especially a bumbler like author J. Maarten Troost.
… ill-equipped with a sliver of Mandarin, questing to discover the “essential Chineseness” of an ancient and often mystifying land. What he finds is a country with its feet suctioned in the clay of traditional culture and a head straining into the polluted stratosphere of unencumbered capitalism, where cyclopean portraits of Chairman Mao (largely perceived as mostly good, except for that nasty bit toward the end) spoon comfortably with Hong Kong’s embrace of rat-race modernity. From Beijing and its blitzes of flying phlegm–and girls who lend new meaning to “Chinese take-out”–to the legendary valley of Shangri-La (as officially designated by the Party), Troost learns that his very survival may hinge on his underdeveloped haggling skills and a willingness to deploy Rollerball-grade elbows over a seat on a train. Featuring visits to Mao’s George Hamiltonian corpse and a rural market offering Siberian Tiger paw, cobra hearts, and scorpion kebabs (in the food section), Lost on Planet China is a funny and engrossing trip across a nation that increasingly demands the world’s attention. — review by Jon Foro
China changes so quickly that this book published July 2008 is already nearly hopelessly out of date.
If you foolishly ponder a trip to China in future, this is a must read.
Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid – Amazon
loving the Calgary Airport
For a city of 1 million, Calgary truly has one of the best airports in the world.
Flying on a Wednesday I had no long line-ups at any of the usual bottlenecks.
The self-service check-in kiosk for United Airlines worked. (You need a zip code and hotel name destination to do it on your own.)
The U.S. border was friendly and efficient.
Security check brisk.
Two Tim Hortons greet you in the departure concourse.
It’s easy to find an electrical outlet for your laptop. And — best of all — there’s 2hrs free WiFi.
You still much flip through some log-in pages. But it’s easy to use your Facebook credentials to speed that process.
I’m flying to Lincoln, Nebraska for the NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships.
Prague’s Kafka International Named Most Alienating Airport
Business Week ranked the airport last in customer satisfaction due to long delays, bureaucratic employees, and overall oppressive atmosphere.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I love the Onion News Network.
They’ve actually hired a former CNN Anchor, Bobbie Batista. That’s her in the clip above.
all-you-can-eat restaurants
In the 1990s I spent a month in Trinidad, the most developed economy in the Caribbean.
When I asked the young guys there what they liked about the States — young people all wanted to move to Canada or the USA — they told me: all-you-can-eat restaurants.
Me too.
When on the road I typically replace breakfast with coffee. Then schedule a big, late lunch at an Asian buffet. And snack in the evening.
The last one I visited for $9.99 included Sushi and a Mongolian Grill.
The only downside … Asian deserts.
Yuck!
flightstats.com sucks
Air Canada uses links to flightstats as an extra service for people like me who want to track flights.
I’m stranded in the Calgary Airport, closed due to blizzard and — possibly — a plane that slid off a runway.
It’s 11:50PM now. The Airport has been CLOSED SINCE 10:30PM.
What does flightstats tell me …
“Delay Index Moderate”
That the flight I await landed 10min late at Calgary. … In reality it was rerouted to Edmonton.
If flightstats is not up-to-date enough to know that an international airport is closed, what good is it?
Air Canada … you Suck too. Drop flightstats.
UPDATE: Scott Hopkins of flightstats sent a rapid and considered response to my complaint. Thanks Scott. … Still, your service didn’t work for me. I spent 4.5hrs in an airport. $30 on parking. My friends stuck in another city overnight when their flight was rerouted. And your site never reported any of that. Last time I checked, your site still told me that the flight had arrived safely, 10min late.
Rick McCharles 