Jimi Plastic Wallet

I'm on vacation right now, but am popping in with a review of the Jimi plastic wallet I'm carrying around. It has a slot for credit cards and a money clip, which is about all I need besides my passport.

Why a plastic wallet? Well, paradoxically it can be good for the environment, but I like it for practical reasons. My money stays dry at the pool or on a boat---or in the rain. It pops into a zippered pocket easily on my shorts. And I don't care if it gets scratched up or something. If you want, you can even hang it around your neck on a lanyard, wearing it under your clothing.

The Jimi wallet comes in a variety of colors, is durable, is water resistant, and is made in the USA even, from 100 percent recycled materials. Get your own for $15.

Best Travel Electrical Adapters

I've done quite a few posts on this blog about travel adapters for electronics. For a start, I've covered the Travelon adapter and converter, the three-piece unit from Sima Products, and the 150-country adapter with USB port available from a catalog company.

But there are more, many more, so here's a full rundown I did for a product review website: the best travel electrical adapters.

The way that site works, there are 5 "best of the best" and 5 "best of the rest," but of course it really depends on your individual needs. If you are just carrying a laptop with a built-in voltage converter, a plug set is fine. If you are carrying five devices of varying wattage, then you need a voltage converter that can handle all that.

Look through the options and see what makes sense. Or just leave it all at home and act like a backpacker from 15 or 20 years ago: no gadgets, no plugs, no worries.

Yeah I know, if nothing else, there's your digital camera...

Koss Isolation Earbuds Upgrade Your Sound

Let's face it, no matter how expensive your iPod or MP3 player is, the earbuds that come with it are going to be pretty crappy. You can dramatically upgrade your sound by adding to your investment with a better set of headphones or earbuds, like these $30 (or less) Koss KEB24 Isolation Earbuds.

Most people put up with their free earbuds because they are, well, free. But when I ran a test between these Koss earphones and regular iPod earbuds, it was like the difference between a symphony hall concert and listening to the symphony play over a bad p.a. system in a concrete hockey arena. Then I ran the test with a non-Apple MP3 player and the even lower-grade buds that came with it. It was night and day.

With the Koss ones I was hearing guitar parts I didn't even know existed, bass lines that were buried before, and a richness of sound that just plain didn't exist with the standard white earbuds you see everywhere. (Those make you a clear theft target too, don't forget, as theives think there may be an iPhone or Touch at the other end of the cord.) Even the distortion I was used to on rap songs ripped to iTunes from a CD was significantly lower.

Despite the reasonable price tage, these Koss Isolation Earbuds come with small, medium and large silicone ear cushions for a customized fit. This won't give you the kind of noise cancellation you get from a $300 pair of Bose headphones, but it does strongly reduce the noise level on an airplane and keeps your music in your ears instead of your and your neighbor's ears.

I tried these out in the midst of checking out a whole series of headphones and buds and while they don't reach the transcendental sound of something costing 10 times as much, it's close enough for a gym workout, a flight, or a long bus ride. Be advised they have one of those cords where the part going to one ear is shorter than the one going to the other. This doesn't matter to me, but some people prefer the traditional style. They come in black, silver, green, or pink.

These earphones come with a more generous promise than ones costing far more: a "no-questions-asked lifetime warranty. And hey, if you are traveling around on a company expense account and want to upgrade your sound, you can pick these up at the W Hotels store.

Timex Expedition E-compass Titanium Watch

The Timex Expedition line of watches is a favorite with adventurers and casual travelers alike. They're rugged and comfortable, yet are priced at a level that's affordable to most anyone. You won't get in a fight with a mugger to hold onto your watch and you don't have to worry about being a theft target.

This E-compass Titanium version has been on my wrist the past few weeks--without getting in the way. It has a wide, easy-to-read face, but is slim and attractive, with a black watch face on the inside and metal hands with glow-in-the-dark accents. It has the Indiglo function too, which means you can check the time in complete darkness, whether that's while hiking through the forest or checking how long the damn commercials have been running while you sit in the movie theater.

The defining feature of this particular model is the electronic compass, which is nifty but not something to bet your life on. If you just need to know which general direction is north or south it works fine. The watch instructions come with some rather complicated steps for calibrating it to "true north" but it takes a lot of tweaking. Plus there's a warning not to calibrate it or use it around electronics, so I had to walk out into the middle of my yard to set it up. Still, even without tweaking it should get you out of the woods or tell you if you're walking in the wrong direction in a city, which is enough for most needs. The compass only comes on when you press a button too, so it's not whirling around all day as you walk down the sidewalk.

The "titanium" in the name comes from the bevel part of the case, which is crafted from this very tough metal and seems quite resistant to scratches and bangs. It is also water resistant to 100 meters/300 feet, so you can wear it into the pool or on a rainy hike with no fear of it fogging up. Battery life is estimated at three years. There's also a second hand and a date function, but refreshingly it stops there. You only need to get to know two buttons.

The Timex Expedition E-compass Titanium watch lists for $175, but you can generally find it for sale in the $130 to $150 range. Try here, for example:

Timex T49211dh Expedition E-compass Mens Watch at Buy.com

A Pen for Your Wallet

Put your money where your pen is!

How many times have you seen someone talking on a cell phone start looking around frantically for a pen? Wouldn't it be nice to have a pen on you every time you're carrying your wallet---without having to remember it?

That's the idea behind The Wallet Pen, a nice little writing device that clips into the folded part of your wallet. It's thin enough to squeeze in there without making the wallet any thicker, but it's larger and easier to write with than the tiny pens in the Pico Pen device I reviewed a while back. I've been carrying it around for a week and only notice it's there when I need it or when I open my wallet and see a silver glint coming from the fold.

This is not some cheap throwaway item though. It retails for $49 and comes in a nice gift box with a ribbon, a spare ink refill enclosed as well. It comes in two sterling silver models, made in Vermont and not in some Chinese factory. It's an item you'll want to use and keep using for years---or give to someone who will think it's the coolest and most thoughtful present ever.

You can order the Wallet Pen direct from the manufacturer, or here's a list of stores that carry the pen both in the real and virtual worlds.

MP3 Car Transmitter in a Cup Holder from Maxell

I love the simple innovations that solve a problem well, at a reasonable price, by figuring out what we really need. This cool device from Maxell blasts the tunes from your iPod or other MP3 player through your radio, on a frequency of your choosing, and remembers up to 10 of those frequencies for later. All well and good, but it plugs into your car socket and then fits in your cup holder! So there it is, in a handy spot, right near your radio.

If you are using an iPod, this Maxell FM transmitter performs double duty by charging up your music player at the same time. So you leave the car with more juice in your player than you had to start with--and you didn't pay the electric company for the power. (Yes, I know, your engine powered it, but you were driving somewhere with that gas anyway, right?)

Maybe I'm so overjoyed because this innovation arrived on my doorstep just as my car CD player started picking and choosing which discs it wanted to play, with no discernable pattern to which ones would be rejected or when it would decide to not play any of them. Like a guy who gets in a fight with his girlfriend and then that night picks up the hottest babe in the club, I can smugly ignore my CD player's moodiness now and wait for it to admit it's wrong. Maybe we'll never get together again--who knows.

Sure, everything has its drawbacks, and in time I'll see the bad side of my new date. For now, the one principle flaw seems to be the printed warning to "store unit at temperatures less than 60 degrees F." Say what? Unless I make a drive up to the Arctic Circle sometime soon, I can't imagine any scenario where my car is going to spend a summer day under 60 degrees. So either this little cutie is going to wilt on a hot day or I'm going to have to take her with me everywhere I go...

She's also playing a bit hard to get. If you want to find one for yourself, search around the web for model P34 or Maxell 191234 transmitter.

DaySafe 200 Theft-proof Laptop Daypack

There are a few different ways to guard against theft loss while traveling. Some solutions just require some common sense (leave the Rolex at home, don't travel with gear you can't afford to lose), while other solutions are technical ones where the right travel gear can make a difference.

In the latter category is this cool DaySafe 200 "secure computer backpack" from Pacsafe, the makers of the MetroSafe 200 bag I reviewed last year. If you've got your laptop and other electronics in this backpack, a thief is going to have a really tough time getting it from you. Here's what's built in to deter them:

* Lock and leave eXomesh built into the construction. It's slashproof, snatchproof, and tamperproof.

* Slashproof adjustable shoulder straps

* Snatchproof shoulder strap allows the bag to anchor to a secure fixture

* Tamperproof zippers

Most thefts occur from a plain snatch & grab, by slashing the bottom of your pack with a knife, by cutting a strap to make it slip off your shoulder, or by getting inside a locked pack by cutting the zippers. This bag thwarts all those attempts, even providing a little buckle that can fasten the bag to a belt loop while you're on the move.

Besides all that, it looks like a plain old daypack, which is a theft deterrent in itself. Are you carrying a $2000 laptop, or just a cheap camera and a Lonely Planet guide? Nobody can tell since the bag doesn't scream, "I have a laptop!"

The only drawback to all this is the bag is clearly heavier and bulkier than the cheaper laptop backpacks like the eBags one I've been using for years. For a good reason though, as there's far more padding, the laptop sleeve is removable, and the hardware is much stronger all around. There are two large mesh pockets on the side for water bottles, the usual array of pockets accessed from the front, and another hidden pocket at the top. There's a strong handle at the top for carrying the daypack by hand.

One interesting feature of this bag is that you can remove the inner exomesh compartment and leave it in the room as a separate permanent safe. You use the included padlock with a key and the attached cable to lock the whole slashproof inner bag to a permanent structure. Then you can take the daypack with you for sightseeing.

Think of the Daysafe 200 as a portable safe and insurance policy and you'll feel better about spending the $180 to $200 it retails for. This bag will keep your valuables in your possession wherever you are and as the company's tag line says, "When your gear's secure, you can do more."

See all the specs at the Pacsafe site.

Get the DaySafe 200 at Amazon

Search prices for the Daysafe 200

Casio Exilim EX-Z9 Digital Camera Review

I spent most of June traveling and I toted two cameras along: my usual 12X zoom Kodak Z612 and a new pocket camera I tried out for the first time, the Casio Exilim EX-Z9.

This Casio Exilim has a few drawbacks, but considering you can often find it on sale for around $130, it's a great value. It's small and ultra-slim (about half the size of my hand and less than an inch thick), easily fitting into a pocket without much of a protrusion. The LCD on the back is 2.6 inches, however, and looks good even when you're viewing shots in direct sunlight. The power button seems to have been shrunk proportionally though; I often had to try two or three times to turn the thing on or off and even my 7-year-old's fingers seemed too large for it. The other buttons are also teeny tiny and I usually had to resort to a fingernail to press what I wanted.

But what about the photos? Outdoors, especially for scenery, the shots were fan-fricking-tastic. Here's an example of a nice (unedited) shot of Moraine Lake in the Canadian Rockies. You could easily mistake that for something that came from a Nikon SLR.


It helps that the camera has built-in special situation modes you can select for scenery, night portraits, sports, candlelight, flowers, etc. (Accessed by the unfortunately named button labeled as "BS") There's also a handy mode that, after registering once, allows you to upload video to YouTube as soon as you plug into your computer, without actually visiting the site. That doesn't mean the video quality is any better than you usually get from a point and shoot camera, of course, especially when panning. To see a short clip I recorded with this camera, for the same area as the photo example here, check out the Moraine Lake Lodge video.

On the downside, shutter lag was a big problem--as it often is with cameras at this price point--and inside shots taken with a flash were really washed out, especially compared to what I get from the Kodak. Some were so overexposed in the normal automatic mode that they were just plain unusable. (The portrait mode fared a little better.) Also, the engineers were apparently loaded up on sake when they designed the charging system: the battery pack and bulky cord take up twice as much room in your pack as the camera itself and the connectors are not compatible with anything else you own, so you have to lug it all along to recharge the proprietary battery.

Overall though, this is a great little camera for the price, especially if you'll mostly be using it on weekend breaks instead of taking it on a long vacation where you'll need to cart along the recharging gear. The Casio Exilim EX-Z9 comes in pink, black, silver, or orange.

Search prices on the Casio Exilim EX-Z9

Tati Yes Watch Keeps You in Sync as You Travel

I have only been home three days in the past month, so I have been trying out the abilities of this TATI version of the Yes Watch as I moved through different latitudes and time zones.

The Yes Watch company marries the wonders of computer chips with the solar and moon cycles we've seen above us since the dawn of man. The new with the old, the unseen with the obvious. Their whole line of watches visually displays the daylight time and the moon cycle time, wherever you happen to be. You click through an alphabetical menu (using two of the four buttons) and pick your home city and away city out of 500+ cities around the world. Then you see when the sun will rise and when it will set, plus the time you will see the moon and what it will look like.

More on that later, but first a bit on this specific model, the "tati." I have the wrists of a musician rather than the wrists of a construction manager or a fat executive, so those huge Swiss chronographs you see splashed all over GQ and Best Life aren't going to look very good on me most of the time. This watch is mounted on a leather strap, so you can tighten it to fit and it doesn't look like you're trying to say, "Hey everybody, look at my watch!" It's attractive in a more subtle way but still has some heft and the feel of fine workmanship. (It even comes in a pretty velvet box.) It's small enough to be unisex, with five strap color choices that switch out easily.

I found myself looking at the sunrise and sunset displays on this watch frequently as I moved through Portland, Seattle, British Columbia, Alberta, and then the east coast of the U.S. Not only was the novelty of it interesting (as in sunset at close to 10 p.m. and sunrise before 5 a.m. in parts of Canada), but it helped me as a parent figure out when I could hope to get my kid in bed and whether we needed to draw the hotel blackout curtains. The moonscape part was interesting too, seeing the cycles and noticing when the moon would be visible during daylight hours.

As with any watch with multiple functions, you need to keep the instruction manual handy. After a while I got the hang of changing cities easily as I moved around the hemisphere and after a while I could light up the display in the dark without hitting the wrong button. I had to look up how to set the alarm each time though. It's not all that loud--better as a backup if you're a heavy sleeper--but there is a snooze function. If you're so inclined, you can also take advantage of any of these functions: 24-hour stopwatch with laptime, a 99 minute timer with alarm, a past and future date time calculator and a 999 day countdown/up.

The tati watch from Yes lists for $395-$445 is programmed through 2099, so unless you were born yesterday it should last a lifetime.

Air Strip Lite Shirt from Ex-Officio

I'm kind of a cheapskate when it comes to travel clothes, constantly watching for sales to get great gear at a bargain price. Right before the trip through the Pacific Northwest I just finished up, I snagged this Ex-Officio Air Strip Lite shirt for $48 from Campmor. The normal price is $80 on the Ex-Officio site, though they do run good sales there as well fairly often.

No buyer's remorse with this item. I've been putting the Air Strip Lite through its paces and this is one impressive piece of clothing. It is amazingly lightweight considering the ventilation flaps, the pockets, and the long sleeves. It seems to weigh less than a cotton t-shirt. Plus it is really wrinkle-free. No matter how many times I've stuffed it in my bag or tucked/untucked it, a little while later it's looking fine.

I'm sure the wicking properties perform as advertised, though I haven't done enough sweating to find out. I did wash it twice though and it dried in a few hours on a hanger in a hotel bathroom.

The Air Strip Lite shirt is 80 percent nylon, 20 percent polyester, but it feels soft and supple.
Like everything else I've gotten from Ex-Officio, this is a well-made, quality product that exceeds expectations. A couple more versions of these shirts and my carry-on packing list is going to get much simpler. Highly recommended.

Get the Air Strip Lite for men or for women

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Buzz-off hat

Buzz-off clothes for kids

Solio Magnesium Edition Solar Charger

If you have read an article about personal solar power or have seen items featured on a TV show, chances are there was a Solio charger in the mix. The company was one of the first to put out a compact, innovative solar charger and its fan design made it fun to photograph.

Now they have put out a more rugged but far more expensive Magnesium Edition model that is nice, but a dubious upgrade in my opinion. (It lists for $200). Like the original, blades fold out to allow three different surfaces to catch the rays and store them as energy. Then you can charge up your phone, your iPod, or whatever gadget you have the right connections for. Some of those come with this, plus this newer model gives you a coupon for ordering one more. This model also works with the iGo system of plugs, so if you already have that this upgrade will be worth it for compatibility.

I got more stymied by this item than most. For one thing, there is only one button on it, so if the charger is not doing what you want (indicated by coded flashes), good luck figuring out what to do. In my case it would not charge initially using the sun; I had to plug it into a socket first, then use solar after it ran down. It did fully charge my iPod from solar power though, and the company claims it will hold its charge for a year. The rule of thumb is, one hour of sun equals 15 minutes of cell phone talk time or 40 minutes of MP3 music.

This newer one claims to have 25 percent more output, but is it worth $100 more than the original Solio charger? If you are about to climb Mt. Everest, maybe so---or if you already use the iGo charger system. Otherwise, go for the original.

You can get either version of the Solio Hybrid charger---as well as lots of other useful solar gadgets--at Current Energy.