The art of disconnecting
It doesn’t take a card-carrying frequent flier to know that traveling with technology can be traumatic. But it helps. Chris Burgeson knows. A consultant for a San Diego software developer, he recently worried about getting data transferred between laptop computers - a topic this column devotes a lot of attention to precisely because it’s so unnerving.
ISP dilemma
Q: I plan on retiring in Portugal, and I am going to buy a laptop to connect to the Internet. But how do I find an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in English? I’ve found only one with a 95-cent roaming fee. On a retiree’s fixed income, I’ll go bust. Do you know of any other [...]
Wine-ing your way up the California coast
Highway One’s infamous hairpin turns just north of San Simeon, Calif., are enough to make a pagan of anyone. Believe me. On a late December morning I survived a crash-course in alternative religions, courtesy of the Golden State’s scariest two-lane road. Picture this: to your right, a steep incline from which dry grass and cactus emerges in uneven patches. To your left, sheer cliff plunges into the Pacific Ocean hundreds of feet below. Ahead, the red taillights of a pickup truck weave in and out of the intermittent fog. Terrified yet?
The laptop that inspired poetry - sort of
This was supposed to be an ode to Gateway Computer. Nine hundred words of praise for its Solo 3350 CS laptop, composed in all but iambic pentameter. I owe Gateway big time. For starters, it’s one of the only computer manufacturers with the chutzpah to let this critic test its portable computers. In my book, that’s less of a reflection on the critic and more of a statement about this column’s readers. Gateway obviously believes its products are good enough to accompany any business traveler on the road anytime.
Delta’s DVT debacle
Q: I have flown on Delta for the past six years on a monthly basis. Last year I landed in the hospital with a massive blood clot. Since I do not have propensity for having clots, the doctors concluded that it was due to the amount of flying without sufficiently moving about in the cabin.
Delta’s [...]
Parasites and Pepsi challenges
Can an online business give itself an unfair competitive advantage with clever programming? That’s a question SideStep’s rivals are asking themselves after a subroutine called “The Pepsi Challenge” was discovered earlier this week. SideStep is a travel search application that downloads to a Windows PC using Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4 and above. The program integrates into the browser and launches after an icon on the browser’s menu bar is pushed, searching close to 100 travel suppliers for low airfares, rental car prices and hotel room rates. Problem is, that’s not the only time it turns itself on.
Doing the online/offline two-step
Call it the online, offline two-step. It goes something like this: Dot-com venture stakes a claim in the offline world, either by starting its own magazine or buying part of a bricks-and-mortar business. The strategy drives traffic to the company’s Web site, attracts new customers, and increases sales. This industry’s latest case-in-point is TravelGolf.com’s partnership with Turnstiles’ Golf and Travel Magazine. The deal, which is expected to be announced next week, is an alliance intended to “increase banner ad sales and readership,” according to both companies.
On your own
Q: We recently moved just north of the Bay Area in California from Arkansas, and we were looking to get back to Dallas for Christmas. We watched Travelocity and both the Delta and American Web sites for the best fares. After letting a pretty good fare go, we locked into a $420 fare on Delta’s [...]
Logan’s Run: Travel technology’s inspiration
Sometime in the 23rd century, the survivors of war, overpopulation and pollution are living in a great domed city, sealed away from the forgotten world outside. Here, in an ecologically balanced world, mankind lives only for pleasure, freed by the servo-mechanisms which provide everything. There’s just one catch. Life must end at thirty.
Mysteries of the tech traveler’s universe
In technology, as in life, there are things that just don’t make sense - issues that defy logic or explanation. Unraveling these mysteries seems to be about as easy as clearing up those lingering questions about black holes or the fate of the dinosaurs. So why try? Because travel tech enigmas are so infrequently articulated that we’re resigned to accepting them. Maybe we shouldn’t be.
Continental calamity
Q: I am a guest coordinator and executive travel manager for a highly rated national television show that is aired on a major network five days a week. Each week I get an average of 10 to 15 well-known celebrities, political officials and studio executives to our show’s taping.
Over the past three years my company [...]