Travel, summer, rock walls and rasberries bring bittersweet reflection

by Jamie Rhein on

I’ve always loved reading Ellen Goodman’s columns when I’ve come across them. Yesterday, was another. Her recent column’s theme is one that anyone can reflect upon to divine the relationship to ones own life.

Goodman, while on vacation in Maine, notices the rock walls built in the 19th-century and wonders about the people who made them. She wonders if they knew they were done with a wall when putting one last rock into place. The walls are now in various states of remains. Seeing them prompts Goodman’s reflections on permanence and transience.

The walls are a symbol for our own lives. While thinking about Randy Pausch, the professor who recently died of cancer, but before he did, he created the video and book, “The Last Lecture,” Goodman sees how people have an urge to create permanent markers in their lives. But, the permanence, as seen by the walls, will eventually give way to transience.

She offers up taking pictures of grandchildren as an example. As if snapping a picture of a six-year-old will somehow hold him or her in place.

Along crumbling walls, though, Goodman notices, are sweet berries to be relished. That’s where the bittersweet comes in. With loss, gain can be seen, often in the same moment. Goodman points to a recent birth in her family that has happened at the same time a beloved family member is dying.

So, what have I reflected on through Goodman’s reflections?

I’m thinking about how when we travel to places that we will never see again, as long as we remember them, they will forever stay that wonderful find, that glorious meal, and a sky that was a vibrant blue when we sat at the beach looking out to the horizon.

(In particular, I have a certain few days in Skopelos, Greece the summer after I graduated from college in mind.)

Daily deal – D-Link DWL-G730AP pocket travel router for $43.99

by Scott Carmichael on

My deal of the day is perfect for anyone who is regularly stuck in a hotel room with a wired Internet connection. The D-Link DWL-G730AP is a pocket travel router with three different functions; access point, router and client.

In access point mode, it can turn any wired broadband connection into a wireless connection, allowing you to work wirelessly from the bed (or the pool), without having to unwind 40 feet of cable.

In router mode, it can share that same wired connection with others, you are of course in control of who gets access. This is perfect if you want to open your network up to more than one person (perhaps even just yourself and your husband/wife). Instead of having to share your laptop, you plug the router into the wired network jack, and you can instantly share the connection. This is also perfect for a conference room where there is often only a single wired jack in the wall.

The third mode is the wireless client mode; this turns the D-Link into a wireless network adapter, which is perfect if you are working on a laptop without built in wireless access. The device picks up a wireless network signal, and you can plug it into your laptop, and get online.

The D-Link DWL-G730AP comes complete with a carrying case, an AC adapter, a USB power cord and a network cable. You can purchase the D-Link travel router here, shipping is just $2.95, and you can pay with any major credit card and Paypal.

New travel service for private jets offers one way to get places fast

by Jamie Rhein on

There is a new travel service that operates out of Albany, New York. Javian Jet Traveler doesn’t own jets, but helps connect private jets with people who are looking for rides.

Frank Figliomeni, the owner of the company, thinks, as far as he knows, that Javian Jet Traveler is the only one like it in the United States.

According to this article in the Daily Gazette, although, primarily serving people living in the central region of New York, Javian Jet Traveler’s data base includes 50 private jet companies across the country.

In a nutshell, if Figliomeni finds out that a private jet is interested in carrying passengers, he creates a flight package to connect customers to the jet.

Taking a private jet isn’t cheap, but as Figliomeni says, if people join together with others, the price is doable–kind of. Making a tidy income would help. The example he presents is three couples sharing a twin turboprop plane to Martha’s Vineyard for a weekend trip.

The total cost is $3,000. I would guess this is the cost for going from Albany to Martha’s Vineyard and back. That makes the trip $500 per person.

If you can’t afford the plane to Martha’s Vineyard, drive. My friend who lives near Albany said that you can drive there in about six hours. But, then, if you left after work on a Friday, you’d miss out on dinner while overlooking the ocean. Instead, you’d be rolling in about midnight, and stumbling into your hotel room.

Kids-eye view of the Olympics

by Abha Malpani on

Scouring through what the blogosphere is saying about the Olympics, I came across a blog written by a 12-year old in Beijing. His name is David and he is National Geographic Kid’s correspondent for the Olympics.

He’s an American child who has been living in China since he was two; he moved to Beijing last year from Suzhou.

The blog is straightforward and has that wonderful child-innocence about it. He writes clearly and does a great job being informative. His posts so far break the Olympics down to basics where he talks about things like: The different cities where the games are being held and why, the mascots, and getting around in the city during the games.

What makes his posts interesting is what he chooses to share, and of course, that they are written from the perspective of a child thrilled to be at the Games. Certainly a novelty in the blogosphere and worth keeping a tab on.

Two weeks of embarrassing passport news

by Scott Carmichael on

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for passport designers. Several things happened that could alter the future of the technology used in our travel documents.

The first bit of bad news came from the UK, where a van was stolen containing 3000 “virgin” passports. These passports were on their way to an RAF base, where they would be flown to consulates all around the world (previously covered here on Gadling)

The passports were made in a high security printing facility owned by 3M, but of course, no amount of security helps against stupidity. When the driver of the van stopped at a store to buy a candy bar, his colleague (who was still in the unlocked van) was ordered to keep his head down while the thieves drove off, stopped in a dark alley, and unloaded all the passports into a waiting car. The passenger of the delivery vehicle has been arrested and released on bail.

The UK passport service said “computer chips embedded in the passports to store personal and biometric data have not been activated. The service says that means the documents, which are still missing, can’t be used as passports.“.

Turns out they couldn’t have been more wrong, which brings us to the next bit of bad news.

RFID (radio frequency identification) chips in passports have been a hugely controversial issue. Ever since the first trials were conducted, security specialists have warned that they are not the holy grail they are said to be. Back in 2006, right after the first chip enabled travel documents rolled off the printing presses, researchers showed how easy it is to read, and write to the chip in these passports. In a more recent experiment, a researcher read the information off one passport, and altered it, rewriting the data to a different chip, but with a new photo; Osama Bin Laden.

When the standards were developed for the RFID chips in travel documents, a system was put in place that could verify the information stored on the passport with a remote database of “public keys”. So far, only 10 of the countries participating in RFID passports have signed up for this new public database, and only 5 are actually using it. Once this system is in place, a scanned passport will be verified against the data it is supposed to contain.

This technology should eventually make it much harder to use a fake or altered passport at an immigration counter, but only in countries that have the systems in place for using RFID. Any other county will still have to rely on the visible data stored in the passport. Since the RFID technology is only intended for immigration purposes, a fake passport can still easily be used for other purposes, like banking or real estate.

In the meantime, there are 3000 UK passports on the market (worth about $3400 each), and millions of passports being printed each month with RFID chips that don’t really protect anyone.

With each vulnerability found in these RFID passports, the designers are pushed back a little closer to their drawing boards, where they will eventually have to develop an even better method of protecting the countries they work for. Of course, in the big picture of things, nothing can stop good old human stupidity.