CVS Picture DVD Slide Show

CVS has installed some cool Kodak kiosks in their stores to get your megabytes of photo data onto something more permanent than your Facebook page. I tried one of them out this week and turned out a DVD that's pretty darn cool. It took 60 of my photos (the max) from two vacations with my family and made a DVD with motion and music. Not bad for $12.99, especially considering the almost-instant gratification.

You can bring in your photos on a media card, on a burned CD, or on a USB thumb drive. The machine reads your photos and you then decide which ones to use and in what order. You make choices just by touching the screen and dragging things around. Then you give it a title, select which song you want as background, and hit "burn." Then you wander around the store looking at painkillers, condoms, and chocolates while it does its thing. (10 minutes in my case)

The music choices on the one I used were limited to 16, but for most people that's enough to find something that will work. The Isley Brothers, Willie Nelson, and KC and the Sunshine Band may not be current, but they're pretty good accompaniment for this kind of thing. Then the photos zoom and pan their way through to provide movement the whole time. When the combination ran on my average TV at home, it looked great.

I'm sure you can do the same thing yourself at home if you're willing to play around with your Mac all day, but since the price of this equates to about 20 minutes of my time, screw that.

I hit a few snags though. The CVS closest to my house didn't have the right machine yet. One machine at the second location I tried gave me an error message just as I was finishing and I had to start over on the one next to it while a clerk rebooted. As you would expect for the wages they get, the clerks aren't exactly tech wizards when something goes wrong either. But as long as you're not cutting it too close on your schedule, you should be okay.

Overall, this is a nice way to preserve your travel photos from one trip or to group a bunch of them together by theme. It offers you a way to show pics to friends and relatives later in the comfort of a living room or to send a neat gift off to someone who was along with you.

Gear Advice from Around the Web

I'm going to step back from the mic today and point to a few worthy travel gear posts I've come across lately from elsewhere.

First, Beth Whitman discusses the thorny issues involved in picking out a travel adapter. For some good specific choices, check out this travel adapter round-up I did for Tibesti.com. I especially like the Travelon one with a built-in converter. I've used it successfully on a few trips now.

One of the Traveling Mamas has a great post on how to avoid those pesky travel illnesses. I especially like the Earplanes. Besides the catchy name, they solve a common problem and they're only $6.95 at Amazon.

Here's another reminder why you should never put anything valuable into your checked luggage. (Well, unless it's a bottle of duty free liquor since you've got no choice.) Gadling notes that two thieves employed at Portland's airport made off with more than 200 items stolen from passenger bags, including laptops. Who checks a laptop?

Fresh off my recent complaining about cell phone charger non-standardization, Dan Tynan looks at how the cell phone companies are waking up to their environmentally unconscious ways, sorta.

Standardized Cell Phone Chargers? Pinch Me I'm Dreaming!

On this travel gear blog I have bitched and moaned plenty about the lack of standardization with chargers for electronics, especially when I posted a review of something like the iGo charger or Callpod Chargepod. While these are both fine items I am happy to recommend, it's kind of sad that we need them. Why do three phones require three chargers anyway? It's just stupid. All those chargers do is transmit electricity, so the only reason to have a proprietary connector is to lock in your customers, annoy them, and make it harder for them to travel.

Either someone has been listening to people like me or the executives at these companies are finally realizing they are at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to helping preserve the environment. I was shocked and elated to see this small headline in USA Today: "Standardized Phone Chargers Coming. "

Here's the full scoop on the announcement from the International Herald Tribune. It is filled with depressing factoids like these:

- Cast-off chargers generate more than 51,000 metric tons of waste a year

- Every 20 months, 48 million to 51 million mobile phone chargers become obsolete.

- The GSM Association...calculated a reduction of 13.6 million to 21.8 million metric tons a year in greenhouse gases from making and shipping replacement chargers.

So they are waiting until 2012 to make this happen because....?

See solutions online at iGo.com

Portable Room Safe for Travelers

With the Travelsafe100 from Pacsafe, you can forget about maids with sticky fingers.

When I was in a big foreign city recently on a travel writing assignment, two women sitting beside me in the lobby of a Sheraton hotel were filling out a police report. They had put some things in their safe but forgot to lock it before leaving the room. When they came back from dinner, their money and jewelry were gone. I've usually managed to hold onto my valuables when traveling, but when I stayed at a very nice Hyatt on assignment in a different country, my wife's watch got stolen from the bathroom counter. Once while sleeping in a hostel in Singapore, another backpacker stole my camera during the night.

In general I think electronic safes in hotels are pretty reliable, but if you forget your code someone can always open it, right? So that means at least some employees really can get in it if they want to badly enough. Plus in many cheaper hotels, you either need to leave things up front in a shared safe or take your chances unless a locker is supplied.

This portable safe from Pacsafe will keep your valuables safe in any hotel or hostel and will also serve as a secondary stash while on the move. It's basically a pouch with slash-proof steel mesh, a locking cinch cable at the top, and a padlock with a key. You just secure it to any fixed or hard-to-move item like a pole or large piece of furniture. Then it would take a pair of bolt-cutters to get at your things. So you could also use this to secure items on a bus or train while you are trying to snooze, resting easier than you would if your camera and iPod were just zipped up in your daypack. (Unless you have a daypack from the same company that is.)

I've tried out a lot of different items from Pacsafe and have been impressed with their strength and durability. They keep the practicality in mind too though: this portable safe can be rolled up and held that way by an included piec of elastic or a rubber band if you lose that. So it's not all that hard to make space for it in your pack or suitcase. (There's a video demo at this link that shows you how it works.)

The Travelsafe100 lists for $45, but you can get it for a shade less at these retailers:

Pacsafe TravelSafe 100 at Backcountry.com


TravelSafe 100 at Buy.com


Get it at REI

Handy Travel Scale from Travelon

Most of the travel gear reviews on this blog are for travel items you take with you on a trip. But here's one that could relieve some frustration before you step out the door: a travel scale that tells you whether you are over the weight limit or not.

I actually received this Travelon luggage scale as a holiday present back in December and have used it a couple times since. My old method was to stand on the bathroom scale holding my luggage and see where it came out. Close enough when I'm well below the limit, but this is a far more accurate method if it's close.

You pop the hook out of the recessed holder on the back and put it around your suitcase handle. Turn on the unit, lift, and check out the verdict on the display. It needs AAA batteries, but they were included and I can't imagine they will run out of juice anytime soon.

On most commercial flights you can get away with 50 pounds for your bag, but on an African safari or Alaska puddle jumper you may be limited to 25 pounds. On a cheapo flight in Europe, the limit could be less than 20 pounds, or 8 kilos. If you have a rolling bag with wheels, you may be at 10 pounds before you even put anything in it, so this scale could tell you whether that fourth pair of shoes makes the cut or not.

There's another cool feature to this that also helps you determine whether you bag qualifies as a carry-on. There's a tape measure you can pull out of the side to measure the bag dimensions. Some of those rolling suitcases advertised as carry-on compliant are really pushing the envelope when it comes to total linear inches, so using this you can see if you are definitely in the clear or not.

I think my gifter got this for me from Target, but it's also available at Amazon for 20 bucks.

iGo Everywhere Saves Packing Space

If you want an example of an industry that is about as far away as you can get from "green," it's the consumer electronic gadget industry. There are four cell phones in my house and every one of them has a different charger connection for both the wall outlet and the car. (This includes two phones from the same manufacturer). Then you need a different charger for a Blackberry, an Apple device, a handheld game device, every digital camera, and on and on.

So when you travel with your gadgets, you are forced to carry along a whole array of chargers to keep everything juiced up. Unless you have a power adapter from iGo that is.

If you pack an iGo and a few tips to fit your particular gadgets, you can carry one charger that works for everything. Instead of three or four different plugs, you've got one plug and the interchangeable tips---all fitting into a handy little travel case. Despite the small size, it's also dual-voltage, so as long as you're carrying a plug adapter too, you can use this around the world.

After I wrestled with the treacherous plaster blister pack the iGo Everywhere came in, the device was intuitively easy to set up and use. The plug itself is one part, the retractable cable is another, and then each tip is separate. So the whole thing takes up about as much space in your bag as a pack of cigarettes would. The $40 "iGo Everywhere" version also comes with a car charger. It worked flawlessly charging up my iPod and phones as fast as the proprietary charger does.

The tips are labeled with cryptic markers that don't mean much (A133 for an iPod for instance) and the main downside of this product is that you have to buy each tip separately, at a list price of $13 a pop. So if you have four devices with different connectors now, you're up to $92, or more than $100 if you buy the splitter to enable you to charge two devices at once.

In comparison, the Chargepod Callpod I reviewed before has a much bulkier profile (mainly because of the clunky plug), but it will charge six devices at once and you can buy an $80 bundle pack that has the six most common plugs supplied---including USB and mini-USB.

Overall, this is a sleek and cool device that solves a major annoyance for frequent travelers. If packing small and light is more important than the simultaneous charging offered by the Callpod, the iGo charger could be a worthwhile investment. Just understand that you will have to pony up $13 every time you get a new gadget---unless the electronics companies join the 21st century and start cutting down on wasteful proprietary connectors.

Get the iGo products at your local electronics store, Amazon, or igo.com.

Rolling Carry-on Roundup

The current issue of Wired magazine puts four rather pricey rolling carry-on bags to the test and the reviewer is not exactly blown away. The best one in the bunch gets a 7 out of 10, two rate a 6, and one ranks a 4---despite a list price of close to $500.

What's the deal?

First, as I've said before, wheels take up a lot of space and add a lot of weight, so think about whether you are really so frail (or your bag is so heavy) that you need them. Lots of time going between airport terminals? Then maybe. Flying straight to your destination then taking a taxi to a hotel? Then probably not.

Second, with those wheels it is not so easy to fit inside the true limitations of a carry-on bag. True, you can get away with more that the 45 linear inches total supposedly allowed on most airlines, but I dare you to try to fit anything larger onto one of those 3-seat-across planes you get crammed into so frequently now. Technically something that is 22 inches long is okay, but in reality that is often too large and the weight will be too high for European budget airlines.

The top-ranked one in their tests was the Eagle Creek Tarmac 22 pictured here. But here's the rub: "At 8 pounds it's tied with the Tumi for lightest of the 22-inchers. That weight is mostly from the wheels. My leather duffel carry-on holding the same amount is 2 pounds.

The Tumi T-Tech Polycarbonate one looks slick and the reviewers thought it was as strong as a bank vault, possibly impervious to the apocalypse. The design will turn heads and it was easy to pack, but "a real shin-buster" and a list price of $395.

A Victorinox Werks Traveler 3.0 WT-22 could have won the "longest product name" category, but it scored only a 6 due to being large and bulky and having "a wobbly grip that makes it tough to negotiate tight corners." It's half a grand too, which is way too much for a suitcase unless it's going to make breakfast for you too.

The Samsonite model they reviewed was almost as expensive, at $465. For a Samsonite! They liked the quiet wheels, 3-level handle, and TSA-approved locks. But "for this price, imitation carbon fiber shouldn't wrinkle at the edges or pick up smudges."


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A Jacket That Packs Some Heat

Baby it's cold outside! Bundling up in lots of layers is fine, but not so great when you need to move around a lot, say snowboarding or skiing. Each layer adds more bulk and less flexibility.

How about packing some heat?

I've been trying out a sample of a vest from Ardica Technologies that is definitely unique. The Ardica Moshi System provides your own private heater for up to 8 hours on the low setting, or three hours on high. Basically it's a thin battery-powered heater that goes in a flap resting against your back, between the shoulder blades. You recharge it before you go and then control it through a lighted insigna on your chest, Star Trek style. In my tests the heater made a major difference, keeping me toasty on long walks in sub-freezing weather. It's light enough and thin enough that it wasn't a nuisance either.

But wait, there's more! The system also has a USB plug that allows you to charge up your iPod while you are on the move. Unfortunately that plug is situated in a side pocket rather than the one close to your ears where there is a slot to put your earphones through. So you either listen or charge, but not both. However, you can also use it to charge your cell phone or anything that has either a USB plug or an adapter with one. Other commercial jackets on the way will probably have multiple linked batteries and charging ports situated differently.

This is no thrown-together piece of technology. You can thank the U.S. government for laying out the millions in research grant dollars it took to develop it all. You see, soldiers don't like to be cold either.

The only problem is, the marketing has gotten ahead of the actual availability. You can't buy it from the Ardica website, so apparently I'm special to have gotten this loaner. Mountain Hardwear is going to put out a jacket equipped to use the Ardica heating system, but not until the fall of '09. Assume this will add a chunk of change to the price of a jacket as well, anywhere from $150 to $200. (Yet as it stands now, there's only a one year warranty.) But hey, my wife would have gladly paid that last time we spent a long weekend skiing in the blustery cold.

Stay tuned...