PowerStation Traveller for Car Charging

Are you a road warrior off to new meetings in your car every day or two? Or do you seem to spend as much time in traffic as you do at home? Then you might want to check into this PowerStation Traveller bag for charging up multiple electronic gadgets at once.

This item is a one-trick pony, but it solves a specific problem of our age: one or two places to plug in three or more gadgets in a vehicle. Older cars usually only have one socket--the old cigarette lighter--while most newer cars have two. But that's not enough for a lot of people, especially those with a few kids in the minivan.

This handy tool lets you share one socket for three items. You lay the items in the bag, use the sliders to keep them from moving around, then plug into one socket from the bag. You can leave it open beside you or zip it up and forget about it, with all there devices charging up as you drive. The 5-foot cord will also reach to the back seat. When it's time to leave the car, you just pick up the one bag instead of fumbling with three gadgets and their cords. The bag has a hand strap, a shoulder strap, and an estra pocket.

The PowerStation is pretty low-tech. There's no voltage converter or adapters, so you already have to have a car charger cord for your item to use this. There's an A/C adapter available separately though if you want to plug it in at home also.

I'm not sure why "Traveller" is spelled with two L's in the name since the item is made in China and distributed by a U.S. Company, but let's chalk it up to a trademark issue. If this makes your life easier, get it for $32.99 plus shipping at CableOrganizer.com. (Scroll down to the second item.)

Bad Service About to Get Worse at Circuit City

If you think you'll need any help whatsoever when going out to buy an electronic travel gadget, you'd better avoid Circuit City. The company said this week it plans to lay off about 3,400 in-store staff members, and has said outright they will hire lower-paid employees to replace them. In other words, people who at least know a little bit and can speak in coherent sentences will be replaced by workers who couldn't get hired at Taco Bell or Jiffy Lube.

The company plans to replace all 3,400 workers "as quickly as store directors are able," a spokesperson said. Obviously the company is in trouble and is getting hurt by better service at Best Buy and online sources. The company closed about 55 stores in February, and more closings are coming.

If you're trying to figure out the best digital camera for your needs, forget the store people and go surf the web for an hour. Start at CNET and branch out from there.

Small Travel Adapter and Surge Protector

Sometimes I'll run across an item that looks like it was just made for this travel gear blog and I find myself saying "I've GOT to have one of those." The latest example is this fine little gadget: The 150-Country Auto-Detecting Travel Adapter And Converter. As long as that name is, it still doesn't point out everything this multi-use gadget does. It's also a compact surge protector, which is a good insurance policy in developing countries with fluctuating current.

The beauty of this device is that it lets you leave a lot of other stuff at home. It provides multiple plug adapters. It works as a USB plug-in. It automatically detects the voltage and converts it to 120 if needed. And check this out: "The device allows simultaneous AC and USB connection to charge two devices at once."

I'm all for traveling with as few gadgets as possible, but sometimes you've got to lug around a laptop, a cell phone, a music player, and a camera. This handy item makes all that a bit less painful. I haven't tested it out yet, but assuming it works as advertised, this is a breakthrough and a bargain at only $39.95 at Hammacher Schlemmer. Hey, sometimes browsing through that SkyMall catalog on the plane ride really is worthwhile!

CVS One-time Video Camcorder

I've always snickered at people lugging around a camcorder when they travel, but now that anybody can post short videos online for others to see, it makes a little more sense. If you can carry a camera that's only as big as a digital camera even better. How about if it's only 30 bucks? Now we're talking.

There's a catch of course. This one-time video camcorder available from CVS only holds 20 minutes of footage and, as its name implies, once it's full you're done. You can delete along the way though, so if you do it right you've got 20 minutes of good stuff once you take it into the store for processing. It's dead simple to use, with just a few key buttons, a lens on the front, and a LCD screen on the back with crisp images. It's small, it's light, and it's unobtrusive while you're filming.

After you finish, you take it in to CVS and pay $12.99 for processing. In theory they can do it in an hour, but the first store I took it to told me to come back the next day, while the second said "an hour and a half at the minimum." When completed, they keep the camera and hand you a DVD with your videos on it. You can watch this on your TV, play it on your computer, and save the videos to your computer hard drive as MPEG-1 files. You can also upload them to the Web as well, but I found that the compression really kills the image quality for these when doing that. Here's an example of one that looked great on the DVD, but pretty bad after uploading to YouTube.

Apart from that flaw though, this is a nice little gadget. It delivers as promised and would be a great thing to take along on a vacation or to capture a kid's recital performance or ball game. Nobody wants to watch more than 20 minutes of home video anyway, so this preserves the event without making you go out and spend a fortune on a digicam. This is not high-def video by any means, but good enough for a regular TV.

Kid-friendly Luggage Tags

Snap a fun kiddie luggage tag to his/her suitcase and give the little one something to watch for.

Standing at the luggage carousel ranks up there as one of the most trying times in the life of a traveling parent. You've already endured a cramped flight, everybody's tired, your kid wants nothing better than to ride and run on that moving belt, and you're just waiting. And waiting. Then all the bags start rolling off and half of them look exactly the same.

Next time my little tyke will at least have a reason to help watch for her bag. The folks at Stuck on You sent me a batch of kids' luggage tags to check out and my daughter's eyes lit up like it was Christmas when I showed them to her. The one pictured here is a flower, but they've got mermaids, wizards, dinosaurs, trains, and more---18 designs in all. At $3.50 each, they're a cheap diversion.

The company also makes all kinds of other items in the same whimsical designs. You can even get custom labels with your child's name on them that you can stick on anything and everything they own. Good for camp or the kids' club at your hotel. They ship internationally too, so check it all out at StuckOnYou.biz.