Your Own Pics on Postcards from Hazel Mail

How many times have you rummaged through the postcard rack in some tourist town and thought, "My own pictures are better than these." And have you dropped into the post office in say, Cusco, and been flabbergasted at how much it costs to send off those postcards you just bought?

I've been testing out a pretty cool solution from Hazel Mail that brings postcard mailing into the digital age. Here's how it works: first, you log into their site and upload your photo. Hi-res ones straight from the camera are fine. Then you format the image, with the ability to stretch it, crop it, or put a border around it. Then you enter your message and the address, picking out a font that you like. You pay $1.50 per card to addresses in the U.S., $2 for those in Europe, varying rates elsewhere.



Then you go about your travels, knowing that even if your e-mails get filtered and nobody really looks at all those pics you painstakingly uploaded to your Facebook page, your friends and relatives will know you are thinking about them. After all, a piece of mail stands out far more these days than another few megabytes in the digital firehose we're all drinking from.

There are a few little quirks. The website is very coy about giving out any info when you visit. You actually have to go through the whole uploading process to find out anything about fees and payment methods. Then they send a confirmation after the order, which is nice, but in mine the graphics covered up all the text so it just looked like an ad in HTML mode. I assume they'll work out the glitches soon though and add more info for prospective users up front in time. Apart from that, the site is dead easy to use and once you've registered it's easy to send new cards in the future. It'll store the address of Mom and Sis, for instance, so you don't have to retype them later. You can even upload a whole bunch of addresses from a contact list or spreadsheet.

I sent one of the Mexico City postcards to my own house to test the outcome and the result was nice. The photo looked almost as good as what you would get from a photo processing place and it had a real canceled stamp on it. The printed message doesn't have quite the same charm as a scribbled note with road dirt and spilled coffee on it, but still more personal than an e-mail. All this and you can avoid paying rapacious international postage costs.

Several writers have wondered if the sending of postcards is a dying art, but Hazel Mail seems like a good compromise in keeping this more personal communication method alive. Highly recommended.

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

Renting a Cell Phone for Travel

As I noted in this MSNBC article I wrote a while back, using your home cell phone when you travel can cost you a fortune: Traveling with your cell phone? Beware.

Most travelers have no idea how much they're getting dinged on every phone call and data kilobyte until a month later when they get a bill for hundreds of dollars. This is a huge profit center for the carriers---why do you think you see an AT&T full-page ad in every travel magazine saying "Works in 200 Countries"?

The article linked above offers several alternative solutions, including renting a phone for your travels so you can pay local rates. You can do this upon arrival in some countries, but there's less hassle and stress if you do it beforehand with a company like TravelCell. They ship you a phone that works in the country or countries where you are traveling, you use it for the agreed-upon time, then you ship it back in the supplied packaging. While you are in the foreign country, you pay lower rates than you would pay to your own carrier and in most of Europe anyway, incoming calls are free.

I tried the TravelCell service out for a recent trip to Iceland and it went off without a hitch. My Nokia phone arrived fully charged, with a charger and case. There were cards printed out with my custom phone number on them so I could leave them with people who needed to reach me. Clear instructions explained how to use the phone for calling around the world and what to do with it when I was done. Explanatory e-mails arrived at the beginning and end.

I still spent a chunk of change to stay connected, of course. Outgoing calls from Iceland were $1.19 a minute. (They would have been $1.29 a minute from my carrier, if my phone had worked there.) Incoming calls weren't free in that country, but they were 49 cents a minute--compared to the same $1.29 for my carrier. I talked less than the person who later told me he got a $180 bill from T-Mobile for one week, but my bill was a doable $42, including the $20 for shipping to and from.

The longer I had been abroad, the more sense this would have made. Unfortunately, all nations are not created equal when it comes to cell phone systems. I am off to Peru next week and as has been the case in Mexico, Panama, and Costa Rica, services like TravelCell are useless. They don't have agreements with the monopoly carriers, so you're on your own. I plan on using Skype and VoIP phone kiosks to avoid what AT&T wants me to pay per minute:

Nomad Travel Journals

On my three round-the-world journeys, I was an avid travel journal keeper. I still get a kick out of going back and reading these journals and they come in handy when I'm trying to recall the name of a particular place or what year it was exactly that I was in Bukkatingi. And was that hotel room with a view in Jaisalmer really only a buck a night? (Answer--yes.)

While some would argue that personal travel blogs online are more interesting because of the visual element, they're certainly not as convenient. With a paper-based journal you can be at the top of a mountain or writing by candlelight, no outlet or gadget required. A journal does not need to be booted up, recharged, or repaired and when do you not have access to a pencil or pen?

These Nomad Adventure Journals want to put a little structure into your spiral-bound notebook or Moleskin habits though, keeping your writing protected. The two elements are a case and a printed notebook inside. The case I tried out was zippered "weatherproof" nylon. It's rugged and feels nice in the hand, with the dimensions of a thin guidebook. There's a pocket inside for notes, ticket stubs, or receipts. There's also a fancier leather version for a couple bucks more.

The type of journal inside is up to you. The one I tried is a little too organized for my tastes, with a separate page for each day of the journey and blanks to fill in for "recommended maps," a "tick list" of what to do and see every day, "most memorable daily event," "weather conditions," and more. If you're the type that loves packing cubes and carries a map every step of the way in a new city, then this is probably a good fit. Others who are less concerned about structure can go for a blank version.

There are different journals for different situations though and some fit a nice niche. There's a live music/festival journal that has spaces for the band you saw, set lists, and people you met. The birdwatching edition looks like it would be really handy if you're into that since it's a passion all about ticking boxes and recording notes. Others are journals for fishing, hiking, climbing, and wine tasting, with a waterproof version for rafting and kayaking.

That last one is $8.50 but a new package for the others runs $27 to $29. Then the replacement journals are $15 each. If you like to record your experiences but would like something with more structure and durability, check out the options at the Nomad Journals site.

Learn a Language With Some Earworms

I've discovered through my travels that some people have a knack for picking up languages and others struggle to retain every single word of vocabulary. I'm probably somewhere in the middle, but closer to the struggling language learners than the naturals. So I've tried just about every method out there and was intrigued by these CDs from Earworms.
Think of them as the hipster's no-effort language course, or maybe as something that will enable language to creep into your brain like a worm. Play a little chill-out electronica, slip in some repetitive language lessons, and next thing you know the listeners are ordering cervezas like they own the place.

It's not quite that simple of course, but points to Earworms for taking the Pimsleur method and making it less nap-inducing. There's lots of necessary repetition and repeating, which despite all the desire for shortcuts, just plain works. The trick here is you get to listen to some cool music while it's all sinking in.

My only real beef with this system is that it really doesn't give you all that much for the money. When the Spanish one with "200+ essential words and phrases" stopped playing on my car CD player after what seemed like a pretty short time, I really thought something was wrong. Turns out that the 11 lessons, ranging from about a minute to nine minutes, were all there is. You're going to need three or four of that length before you can say much of anything. By the time you start adding up the tab (at $17 to $30 a pop), Rosetta Stone starts looking a lot more attractive.

Of course you can't listen to Rosetta Stone while you're cruising down the highway on a road trip, which is why I still think these Earworms are a nice place to start. Go see more at the Earworms site, but be prepared to endure an intro screen, lots of Flash, pop-ups, and other annoyances before you get to the core.

Franklin Electronic Spanish-English Dictionary

A while back I reviewed a 12-language electronic translator from Franklin that was meant for traveling all around Europe. This more focused Spanish-English one ends up being more robust and in the end, far more useful. The Franklin DBE-1490 goes far beyond being just a dictionary, also functioning as a learning tool, grammar guide, and phrase book.

Although this can seem overwhelming at first--to have four thick books crammed into one calculator-sized device--the controls are intuitive and the instructions are well-written and organized. I found translating words and phrases to be a snap and anticipate a lot of airplane time playing learning games and quizzes in order to improve my command of the language.

The dictionary part is dead simple and accurate. I used it to translate words I didn't know on Click Mexicana's Spanish-only website, to the point I was able to successfully book a flight for within Mexico. I can imagine using this for airport and highways signs also while on the move.

To speak in full sentences, you can choose the phrases function to scroll through in either language, looking up the likes of, "Hay alguien aqui qu hable ingles?" (Does anyone here speak English?) The games and exercises include Hangman, flash cards, a spelling bee, a gender tutor, and others.

As is often the case with a Spanish dictionary or phrase book, this one is geared to Spanish as it is spoken in Spain, not as it is in the far more vast Latin American region, from Mexico down through the bottom of Chile. So when you travel with this through the Americas, it would also be helpful to take along a phrase book for the country (like a Mexican Spanish phrase book) or the region (a Latin America Spanish phrase book). Otherwise, you might miss a lot of idioms and descriptive phrases. This will get you the right word or phrase at least 90 percent of the time though, which is usually good enough.

The Franklin Spanish-English Electronic Dictionary is stuffed with some 274,000 definitions (from Miriam-Webster) and loads of other tools. The thin device is only about 4 by 5 inches, with an ample display screen (monochrome), a hinged cover, and keys that weren't built for a 4-year-old's fingers. It retails for $50-$60.

Buy it at Amazon

Impressive Netgear WiFi Phone for Skype

I plow through a lot of travel gear that is fine for what it does, but not groundbreaking. This Netgear WiFi Phone is a different story. It has the potential to revolutionize communication for travelers and get rid of much of the frustration and expense of making phone calls home from abroad.

This little gizmo is the size of a cell phone and it works wherever you have an unsecured WiFi connection (or a secured one where you know how to log in). You set it up once by syncing it up with your Skype account, then after that your contacts load automatically every time you turn it on. The interface looks pretty much like it does on your computer, so there's almost no learning curve. You just plop down in a coffee shop and start calling Costa Rica or Bali for a few cents a minute with SkypeOut, or free if the other person is on Skype at the same time.

The implications of this are huge for a long-term traveler or international business road warrior. Instead of paying your damn cell phone company two bucks a minute or fiddling around with different SIM cards on different continents, you can make hours of calls from any open hotspot for the price of a latte or two. At around $150, this baby isn't cheap, but it wouldn't take long to pay for itself, especially if you are going on a long-term trip and can ditch the cell phone contract altogether.

This WiFi phone also frees you up from the computer, which is also a big deal. It turns on and finds a network in less than 30 seconds, compared to the boot-up time you have to endure with a laptop. You make phone calls just like you would from a normal phone, so you don't look like a nerd with a phone cord sticking out of your computer. It just looks like you're talking on a cell phone.

One bonus use I discovered with this is that you could also use this Netgear phone as a makeshift WiFi sniffer. If there's no open signal, the phone won't connect to Skype. So you know before turning on a laptop to check e-mail that the spot you're in is either a paid hotspot or the signal is weak.

The only gripe I have is the cradle. Fine if you're just using this at home to cut down on your phone bill, but not very travel-friendly. Hopefully there's some kind of adapter out there that would allow you to charge this with just a cord. Otherwise, highly recommended!

Get the Netgear WiFi Phone at the Skype Store.
Read more about it at the Netgear site.

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A Couple's Round-the-world Gadget Packing

My friend Derek Hughey and his new wife Shanna just began a round-the-world journey. Since they were living a few miles from my house before storing their possessions into storage and hitting the road, I checked in to see what travel gear they were packing.

The contents of these backpacks were a gadget-lover's dream, mostly because our newlyweds were able to register for lots of cool but useful wedding gifts. They registered for gear at REI and Amazon, picked up their packs from Backcountry, and even had relatives give them splurges through TravelersJoy.com. Their big challenge then was not deciding what to spend money on but rather what was worth packing and what was going to provide mostly extra weight.


Here are a few of the useful highlights:
Portable speaker for iPod Nano. Derek checked out a bunch of these and found this JLab one to have the best customer reviews for quality sound.
150-country electrical adapter with surge protection.
Eagle Creek packing cubes. I tend to just roll things and stuff them in my pack, but some travelers swear by these cubes as it helps them keep everything organized.
Convertible travel pants - a must-have to cut down on bulk.
Quick-dry travel towel
Retractable cable lock
Ipevo phone for making Skype calls

The last one only makes sense if you're carrying your own laptop, which Derek is. Carrying a laptop is not my preference when traveling for pleasure only, but he is a digital photography buff and they intend to document their trip through this blog: One Year on Earth.

Here's what's really cool about this couple: they quit real career jobs to go travel the world. Fearful sorts-especially American ones-constantly fret that they are afraid to take off and go traveling because they'll derail their job prospects for the future. For the most part, this is bunk. I know more people who have been out of work for six months just hanging out at home doing a job search after a layoff than I do people who have had a hard time getting a good job after a year of travel.

Derek and Shanna are attorneys. She already has a job waiting for her when she returns--she worked it out in advance. Derek doesn't, but that's the last thing he's thinking about as he goes out and sees what the world has to offer. He knows he'll be fine. They will both return wiser, more educated, and better able to deal with change and adversity. Dream candidates for any organization.

Another Skype Phone Option from Philips

I've written previously about the cool Ipevo phone for Skype that's light and compact for traveling. This week I've been trying out another option from Philips and in some ways it's an improvement.

My Ipevo phone didn't come with a case, which this one does, plus there's one small design change that makes a huge difference: There's a slot going all the way around the phone so you can wind up the cord when you're packing it away.

For some reason my XP desktop took two reboots to get it installed (there's no CD driver), but after that it worked fine, with as good a clarity as you would expect from Skype and buttons that perform the functions of a normal phone. I made a long SkypeOut call to Costa Rica for 6 cents a minute then did another Skype to Skype one for free. The phone is incredibly light, so I'll be glad to pack this when I head to Europe for two weeks next month on a writing assignment.

The Philips VoIP080 is available at Skype Store USA or your own country's equivalent. Right now it's selling for $29.99. If you're traveling with a laptop, it won't take long to make that pay off by using Skype instead of making regular phone calls.

Upgraded Skype Phone from Ipevo

A good while back I posted an Ipevo phone review for one I had been using to make Skype calls. I've since traveled with it a few times using my laptop and when the connection is good, it saves me a small fortune on calls.

Now there's a new and improved Ipevo Free.2 version out that adds some enhancements. I'm not going to run out and replace my current one, but if you're thinking of getting something to replace that headset you're using, you might want to consider it.

The main addition is an LCD screen, which keeps you from having to keep looking at your computer monitor while you're making calls. Plus now you can store your Skype Out contacts in it and just scroll through them and dial instead of going back to your mouse and monitor to click on a name or number. It feels like a regular phone, which is nice, and it packs a lot easier than a headset. Looks cool too--in black or white. The Ipevo Skype phone sells for $45 plus shipping.

Franklin 12-Language Translator Gadget

Phrase books are great if you're going somewhere with one language, but who wants to carry a whole collection of them around Europe? Franklin Electronic Publishers
sent me this 12-language translator to try out and it would be a nice solution for a pan-European trip.

It has an attractive design that looks like a miniature paperback book, with all of the buttons covered when it's closed. Open it up and there's a sizable screen plus a thumb keyboard with all the letters laid out qwerty style. The display is very old-school: it looks like an electronic Rolodex I had in the early 1990s. A simple monochrome screen with plain text. I assume this keeps the battery use low though, so it won't crap out on you in the middle of a trip.

There's a sizable learning curve involved to figure out how to work it, so set aside some time on the plane trip on the way over. For the basic translation, you pick the "from" language and the "to" language and then go at it when you need a translation. The translator supplies a few suggestions and common phrases. You can enter accent marks, but the device usually figures it out for you without them. When I put in "banyo" in Spanish for example, the translator figured out that I meant baño.

There's a whole phrase database that you can browse through to see common expressions like you would find in a phrase book. If you want to order a "glass of white wine" in Budapest for instance, it tells you to ask for "egy pohar feherbor" (I've left out the accent marks here). Where this falls short compared to a phrase book, of course is that you have no idea how to pronounce that and will probably end up showing it to the waiter.

Other functions would come in handy if you wanted to spend the time programing it: the machine will give you the local time in different cities, it has a phone list where you can input important numbers, and there is a currency converter. A calculator and a few very rudimentary games round out the offerings.

The Franklin 12-language translator won't blow you away with its features, speed, or readability, but for $79 retail, it would be worth carrying along if you're visiting a lot of different countries in Europe. Get it at Amazon for $79.

A Phone in a Jump Drive, from Vonage

Here at Practical Travel Gear, it's all about small things that perform far beyond their size and weight. This little Vonage jump drive phone is the kind of thing that really fits the bill. It's the size of a keychain, yet when you plug it into a USB port somewhere, that computer is now your phone. Could the instructions be any easier? "Simply insert the Vonage V-Phone into any available USB port, plug the earpiece microphone into the side of the Vonage V-Phone and you're ready to make and receive calls! Remove the drive when you're done and the phone and all your important contact information goes with you."

Okay, so you still need to carry the earpiece/microphone, but that won't take up much space either. What this means is that if you're floating around the world, just popping into internet cafes, here's another reason you don't need a laptop. Just plug in and gab away with the folks at home, without any rebooting necessary.

I can't admit to having tried this out myself. I use Skype and an Ipevo phone on the road when I'm carrying a laptop, but this is certainly appealing--especially when I get to leave the laptop at home and just travel.

Phoning Home for Cheap

I surf a lot of travel message boards and am always amazed by the number of people who are asking about how to travel around the world with their cell phone. Are you people nuts? It's going to cost you a bundle, you have to have different sim cards for different locations, and it's another gadget that allows you to tune out and act like you're still home. Leave home at home--there are better options.

For one thing, there's e-mail, which you can send from almost any little town these days. Many Internet cafes are even set up with webphones, Skype phones, and other things that let you talk for next to nothing. Then there are phone cards, which are small, light, portable, and cheap.

I've been trying out one from Pingo and it's a dream. Once you register the card online, you can just keep recharging it and it's pennies per minute. I just talked to someone in Canada for an hour and a half solid for about $2.50. They have local access numbers for other countries, so if you're in Mexico, for instance, you can spend under 10 cents a minute, instead of the 50 cents a minute you'd spend with an official telecom monopoly card. They route all the calls over a VoIP system--as in through the Internet backbone instead of through the normal legacy phone lines. Think of it as a Skype call that actually sounds normal.

Want a free one to try? Click on the banner here.

Cool Ipevo phone handset for Skype

I don't get too jazzed up about the latest phone technology, but this little Ipevo handset for Skype is about the coolest thing imaginable. It plays into my thrifty side, while being easy to use as well. You just download the driver, plug it into your USB port, and you're calling around the world for nothing or next to nothing. If you already have Skype, you use it to call other users on your list or use SkypeOut to call anyone else for about two pennies a minute, no monthly charges. If you don't have Skype, what's wrong with you? You can make and receive calls to ordinary phones with your computer. www.skype.com

Before, I'll admit, it was a bit of a pain. You had to buy a headset and figure out how to hook it up right. If you used that in public you would look like some call center worker who got waylaid at the coffee shop. With this little phone though, you can talk away at any hotspot and look gadget-savvy instead of goofy.

If you're staying far away from home, where your cell phone doesn't work or is too expensive, just log on and start gabbing. I gave it a test run this morning and while Skype won't win any awards for perfect phone clarity, it's generally as good as the average cell phone call and you can't beat the price! Check out the Ipevo phone here.