travel tips

Podcast #118 — Danger In the Travel Bubble; Switching Back to Apple

A bit less of a random walk than the last episode, we talk about safety, physical safety, when traveling. While we sometimes put ourselves in the midst of dodgy surroundings, we usually feel safe when we retreat back into the “travel bubble” What about when the bubble is no longer safe? Smartphones are the frequent…

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Podcast #117 — Random Thoughts About Eggs, Scotland & Car Rentals

Apologies in advance because this is pretty much a stream-of-consciousness episode, with semi-strung together thoughts about eggs, car rentals, seeing the Pope, travel food, and stuff from my September trip to Scotland.  I talk about how handy I found the new Revolut service for spending and sending money in Europe; recent good and bad experiences with Hertz…

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What’s In My Briefcase – 2015?

It’s spring cleaning time, which for me means it’s time to wade through my briefcase. Within every frequent traveler is the desire to carry everything you could possibly need on the road — to make your briefcase into the road warrior version of Batman’s utility belt, letting you amaze your travel companions by pulling out just…

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Travel Tips — Holiday Airport Etiquette

Coming into the holiday travel season, every travel news outlet publishes their top travel tips. Rather than repeat the typical “pack light” and “give yourself extra time” nostrums, I decided to create an advice list of what’s really the problem during holiday travel — airport etiquette. The challenge of holiday travel isn’t necessarily the crowds;…

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Top 10 Holiday Travel Tips

Snow, ice, and cold temperatures have hit North America a lot earlier this year. With the crush of Christmas/New Years travel starting this weekend, here’s the TravelCommons’ top holiday travel tips… Fly Direct — This is the top tip every time I put this list together. Holiday travel stacks up problems —  high passenger load…

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Managing travel itineraries — Digging Deeper into Trip Management Apps

In the last podcast, I did a side-by-side comparison of the free versions of the leading trip management apps. In an article on the Tnooz website, I dug deeper, expanding my comparison to the free and paid versions of TripIt, TripCase, and WorldMate. My conclusions didn’t change much. THE TCRITIC TAKE: TripCase for smartphone only;…

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Podcast #95 — Holiday Travel Tips; Bad Spirit In The Air

Once again skipping the mayhem of the busiest travel week of the year, though it’s getting more difficult as the Thanksgiving travel crush seems to start earlier each year. Good listener comments about last episode’s story of a rare prop plane flight sitting next to a “passenger of size”; then my own thoughts on USAir‘s…

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Podcast #92 — Not-So-Upbeat Traveler; iPad 2 vs. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Into the summer travel rhythm with a mix of vacation and business travel. Using an Apple iPad 2 and Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet during this mix gave me enough real world experience to make some recommendations. A couple of recent web links describe this podcast as “not as upbeat as others” which…

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