There’s a very nice review of TravelPod today on the travel blog Ready to Roam. Vagabondpoet says that “Travelpod is great simply because it’s the biggest”, and lists it as one of his favourite travel blogging sites.
A new service from Rovair, allows you to rent an internet “aircard” for “as low as” $5.95 per day when borrowing it for 30 days or more.
Here’s how it works:
You order the card, they send it to you in the mail, then you can plug it into your USB port and use the internet pretty much anywhere you want to go in the United States.
One reviewer took it to New Orleans and used it in a taxi, at his hotel and at the airport, so I gather he saved a lot of money. Just by skipping those hefty internet access fees in the airport waiting lounge alone would probably be worth it.
I’m curious as to how far into the wilderness the coverage goes and how it works in other countries. This could be very good, especially for someone blogging about a multi-city or RTW trip.
Update: After a quick call to the RovAir marketing department, I was informed that the service does not officially extend into Canada, but it is indeed possible to receive the signal outside of the U.S. They also told me the company is working on a bigger, international network, but for now, it will only work in domestic U.S. locations.
There go my dreams of blogging from the wilds of Yellowknife this summer like this guy in Costa Rica:
Wow, talk about some travel controversy. The Lost Weekend is reporting that author Thomas Kohnstamn had written the Colombia guidebook without even going to Colombia. He justifies it by insisting that Lonely Planet wasn’t paying him enough to write the thing.
Is that the best you can come up with? I personally, spent a few years being a freelancer, however, not as a travel writer. I was also paid a pittance, but I never faked my writing and editing! It never even crossed my mind! Travel writing is something you do for the love of travel, not for the virtually non-existent paycheck.
In this case, I am more disappointed in the starving writer than in the big corporation signing his cheque. If you want to be a travel writer, you should be a travel writer, and worry about the money later. Not only does constantly worrying about money corrupt your travel writing biases, it also doesn’t get you into an occupation that you will enjoy.
Today, I’m asking the TravelPod community: “Where would you like to live for the rest of your life?” If money wasn’t a problem, and you didn’t have to worry about working or anything else, where would you live out the rest of your days?
In the forums, there is quite a bit of discussion surrounding the potential for floods on small islands due to global warming. Maybe it would be better to set up shop on the top of a mountain. Perhaps you’d like to live in a small European village, or maybe a place where you can stretch your hard earned dollars the furthest.
Oh horror of horrors! They took down the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios to make room for The Simpsons ride.
Was this the right choice? I really don’t think so… While The Simpsons is not a passing phase, certainly it can’t be more influential than the likes of Back to the Future trilogy!
I think this is a bold move on the part of amusement park management, what do you think!? Have your say in the TravelPod travel forums.
I will sorely miss the Back to the Future ride…if I ever go back to Universal Studios again, that is…the park will never be the same again… Here’s the article at the LA Times
There are some real numbers behind the decline in tourism to the United States. Overseas arrivals in the U.S. have declined 11 per cent this decade, down from 26 million in 2000 to 23 million in 2007. That has all happened while the travel industry as a whole grew 6 per cent per year!
That’s some astounding stuff. Why are people staying away from the states in such numbers? Is it American’s attitude toward foreigners? Cutting through the red tape needed to visit? How about a lack of signage in other languages? I guess it all adds up.
Will you be visiting the states anytime soon? Why or why not?
According to a friend of journalist, Ben Groundwater, some people who call themselves backpackers are just lazy people, going around, getting stoned and drunk in various locales. In short, wasting precious time. Does this sound like you?
Groundwater hypothesizes that there are three kinds of travelers, doers, watchers and wanderers. The stereotypical “lazy” backpacker presumably fits into the “watcher” or perhaps the “wanderer” category, but definitely not the “doer” category.
Many Travelpodders can’t decide how to categorize themselves, and there is a whole sub-discussion on the definition of “doing” a place.
Which one couldn’t you wait to leave? What makes a bad airport suck so hard?
One of our forum members says Miami’s airport is constantly under construction, another says Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 is “a joke” and he also hates the plastic chairs at Frankfurt Hahn.
There’s also the danger factor. There’s a myriad of dangerous airport runways around the world. Saba, in the Caribbean has the shortest in the world, would that scare you away from visiting the airport? What say you?
Did you know, you can put your new blogs on your MySpace page, just like on Facebook? I just tried it out for the first time today, and I was really impressed. You can display your travel map on your MySpace homepage and all your blog entries are just a click away! Your friends can display your entire trip route or narrow it down to view just one of your blogs.
Elisabeth Osmeloski of SearchEngineWatch has written recently that TravelPod’s addictive gaming creation, Traveler IQ, is continually “blowing away the competition” on Facebook. Read it for yourself:
“There’s little doubt that travel lends itself well to the most popular social networking tools on the Web. As I write this, there are 174 travel applications on Facebook, but of those, it seems like only two have actually been able to prove themselves. The two most popular examples – TripAdvisor’s Cities I’ve Visited (with more than 60,000 daily users) and TravelPod’s Traveler IQ (with more than 20,000 daily users) – both blow away the competition. No other apps even come close.”
Right now, everyone’s talking about human rights abuses in China. How will this affect the Olympics? Some people are calling for a boycott to the event.
Would you boycott China or any other country because of their political track record? Would you have gone to South Africa during apartheid, or Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban? Some people would rather not travel to the U.S. or Israel, what do you say about that?
Indian newspaper The Hindu has just discovered the neverending benefits of blogging on TravelPod. Pegging it as a useful tool for “nomadic netizens” who love to communicate everything instantaneously to all their friends, they have published a glowing review in the “Web-Sight” section of their newspaper. Reporter Sriya Narayanan just gushes when she says “TravelPod is probably the closest mankind has ever gotten to telepathic communication, for now, anyway”.
Our newest Local Expert, introducinlyric posts another entertaining article on the dirtiest places in the world. One travel writer gives Agra, India the “Golden Garbage Can” award and describes it as home to one of the most beautiful structures in the world, and also the most disgusting.
