This lens is prize winning! How cool, and thank you to the team at Squidoo for loving it - I've had fun finding the articles and pulling them all together. Keep watching, there will be updates.
Backpackers
- Michael Palin's travel books online for free
- This guy has one of the best jobs in the world - and now his books are available online.
- Thorn Tree Travel Forum
- I hadn't come across this forum in my travel research. Thanks Boing Boing, it'll be useful - I'm off to Malaysia and Thailand later this year - kids and all! The forum is part of the Lonely Planet stable and like most backpackers I rely on LP.
- Fun on Flores
- Oh yeah, travel to this Indonesian island will be boosted by academics, not by fun lovin' tourists. Ultimately it may have that affect as the infrastructure is boosted to cope and people talk about the Island but it won't be an instant hit.
- Unwired in Kashmir
- 12 years ago when I travelled through SE Asia it would have been great to email or blog en route - making phone calls was hard enough and, really, you had to rely on mail. Personal security must be greatly improved by global internet connectivity.
Fun and Games
- Airport: a short film
- A cute short film made by the Aussies using the images from airport signs.
- North Korea travel promotion
- A wacky flash movie promoting travel, but of greater interest is the political nonsense about the links from Boing Boing to the site.
Personal Stories
- The Island Chronicles
- Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair moved from Los Angeles to the South Pacific. Their first stop is Rarotonga, a tiny island in the South Pacific and this is a photo essay on their experiences.
- Jake, a geek traveling in Iraq
- Interesting stories from the front-ish line.
- Going Natural
- Mary Belton tries out a little bit of nudity.
Oddities
- Photos of Mass Tomb near Prague
- Sedlec is a bizarre tomb from the Middle Ages constructed from human bones. This challenges the sanctity of the dead and the images presented are beautiful and not grotesque. Would I want my bones used in this way? No, but I can appreciate those that have been.
- Travel-sized Xmas tree
- Is it me, or is this just sad? A USB powered Xmas tree for the frequent traveller.
- Retractable USB-powered phone-chargers
- OK, I've run my Xmas tree from my laptop, now I'm going to charge up my cellphone. Well, this one makes sense!
- Tigers in the Korean DMZ?
- A heads up on the difficult maturation of the two Koreas and the conservation groups that try to tell other people how to live. However in this case I'm all for the conservation area, given the information I have at hand.
- Lava lamp as tourist destination
- Somehow I pictured it stuck in a field (a la Lemon and Paeroa, or the bra fence) but no, it's plastered onto the side of a building. Amazing what people will do to give their town an identity.
- Do "out-of-office" e-mail autoreplies help burglars?
- Here's a scam to consider... who has your email, and are they reliable? Just think about all those jokes you've sent - who did they get forwarded to with your email visible?
The Way Back Machine
- 19th Cen German travel-map
- Want to know what it was like to travel in Germany in 1852. Well you want have the smells or the feeling of a stagecoach in a rutted road but apart from that the maps have been replicated beautifully.
- When the travel industry had taste
- A collection of nostalgic early 20th Century travel advertising.
- Disneyland 1968 family holiday photos
- A cute picture showing that Mickey has grown up over the years too.
- Holiday snapshots from the '60s
- A great collection of b&w and colour shots.
- Fotos from Fiji, Postcards from Polynesia, Tidbits from Tonga, etc.
- Historical images of places I have travelled to, and would like to visit.
Making $$$ from Travellers
- Stan Robinson on adventure travel
- Stan looks at Adventure Travel and how it's become a target market which people buy into. Duh. The Thais have been doing it for years with their rafting trips, AJ Hackett has turned it into an artform with a bungee attached to anything higher than a house!
- Buy a phone there
- This is common practice these days - for all countries, not just the European continent.
- Virgin Galactic
- I'd travel on Richard Branson's space project - perhaps. Another business to fleece the wealthy who are looking for legal highs.
- The impact of the tourist trade in Antarctica
- How increased accessability to the area can have a detrimental impact. But given the chance, I'd love to go, who wouldn't? You just have to find the way to balance the power.
- Disney vacations getting cheaper as economy tanks
- Wow, they're giving it away?
Travel Necessities
These are items I've found through Boing Boing recommendations.
Keyspan ZIP-LINQ retractable USB Cell Phone Charge Cable - Samsung
Recharge your mobile phone from your laptop.
Amazon Price: (as of 07/26/2008)
Keyspan ZIP-LINQ retractable USB Cell Phone Charge Cable - LG Mobile
Amazon Price: (as of 07/26/2008)
Lonely Planet
India (Country Guide)
Amazon Price: $19.79 (as of 07/26/2008)
Thailand (Country Guide)
Amazon Price: $17.81 (as of 07/26/2008)
Europe on a Shoestring (Lonely Planet Shoestring Guides)
Amazon Price: $18.47 (as of 07/26/2008)
The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World
Amazon Price: $19.80 (as of 07/26/2008)
Peru (Country Guide)
Amazon Price: $15.63 (as of 07/26/2008)
BoingBoing Live
- Soviet-era Estonian meat commercial
- Check out this 1980s, Soviet-era Estonian commercial for meat and meat products. Now this is what advertising is about: echoing chants, meat slurry being extruded from a machine, and nervous chickens. Link (via Kottke) Update: This one originally appeared on BB in 2005, thanks to Xeni -- good catch, Mecredis!...
- Sysadmin of the Year nominations open
- It's time again for Sysadmin of the Year nominations: The SysAdmin of the Year Award shines a spotlight on the IT superheroes behind the scenes working tirelessly to troubleshoot, problem solve and fight fires to keep the world running smoothly. They save the day on a daily basis and we think it's time they got the recognition they deserve. It's easy - grab your video camera, web cam, or cell phone and bust out a short 1-2 minute video about how you saved the day for your organization or client. Make us laugh or make us cry, and you could win fabulous prizes including an Apple Laptop, a Wii, xBox or PS3. First 500 entries get a heroic SysAdmin of the Year t-shirt. Link...
- Commando Nerd Patches for iPhone scanning
- John Young has written some cool projects for Make, such as this helmet-mounted water gun. He just alerted me to another nifty thing he made: Commando Nerd patches, which can be scanned with an iPhone. Here's how he describes them: You have an iPhone. And that means you're just HOURS away from being able to put a QRcode reader on it (there's one currently under review at Apple.) Once you have a QRcode reader, what will you do then? Why, you'll wear a stylish Commando Nerd patch all around town, naturally! You can configure the patch to link to anything you want. People can scan your code to see your blog... or buy your art... or watch a YouTube video of you giving them the finger. Here's my blog post taking it out from under wraps. I have about five or six velcro-backed patches left in the prototype set before I start making and selling them For Real. This'll be fun; the iPhone provides a lot more, and a lot more interesting, opportunities for offline to online integration than just "here's a link to my facebook page." One thing I want to do is link the patch to a paypal "subscribe to me" link. You know, you could offer help-desk services right there in person: THEM: "Excuse me, could you install a virus checker on my computer?" YOU: "Certainly! Just take your mobile phone and scan my patch right here..." THEM: "What's that?" YOU: "That will subscribe you to my IT services. Only ten dollars a month for up to three incidents!" THEM: "Uh... how about I just take my laptop to the Geek Squad?" YOU: "Oh, gosh, okay." Or maybe: THEM: "Hey, man, what happened to your leg?" YOU: "I broke it in five places. Scan the patch on my cast with your iPhone and watch a YouTube video of me ALMOST making the jump!" Commando Nerd patch...
- House Industries "Studio Lettering" font collection
- My favorite type designers, House Industries, have a new set of fonts called Studio Lettering. The description is intriguing: Before the era of digital publishing, highly-trained artists in lettering shops plied their talents to give personality to advertisements, editorials and package designs. While the eye-catching beauty of hand-drawn lettering is still relevant in today's visual landscape, this bygone skill has sadly fallen to the wayside. Designer Ken Barber brings the lettering artist's sensibilities back to the modern designer's desktop with our new Studio Lettering collection. More than three years in development, these fonts use advanced programming to create living and breathing lines of text that escape the rigid constraints of traditional type to flow as they would from an experienced letterer's hand. The first 200 purchasers receive a free 64-page hardbound Studio Lettering book! Price is $160. House Industries "Studio Lettering" font collection...
- Monster Corner vintage hobby shop
- Coop alerted my to this amazing photo of "The Monster Korner" in a New Jersey hobby shop from 1964. Every square inch is a treat to the eyeballs. The only place a shop like this could exist today is Tokyo. The text from the photo reads: Rich Palmer ran the nation's largest volume hobby shop in Parsippany, New Jersey. Aurora hired him to organize its Monster Customizing Contest in 1964. Aurora received national television attention when the CBS Evening News visited his shop. Walter Cronkite and Palmer held a conversation in the "Monster Korner" of the store. Big Frankie occupies the top shelf in the Monster Korner. Monster Corner vintage hobby shop (toyranch's photostream)...
