2010 › May

TBEX ’10 Speakers & Schedule Announced

by Mike Barish on

Gadling is a proud Media Partner of this year’s Travel Blog Exchange (TBEX). And we’re stoked that the schedule and speakers list has been announced for the June 25-27 event. Not only will some of the sharpest, most well-traveled and entertaining travel bloggers from around the world be attending, but some of the best and brightest writers in the industry will be speaking on the various panels. And, lest we all run out of things to talk about, there are two night of parties to keep the conversations flowing.

After a kick-off party on Friday night that attendees will find via clues tweeted by speakers, the event begins in earnest on Saturday. The big names are rolled out early, as World Hum founders Jim Benning and Mike Yessis join Gadling’s David Farley, travel writing legend (and Gadling team member) Don George and Alison Stein Wellner in leading a session on improving your travel writing skills.

From there, topics include shooting video for the web, how to work with public relations firms, branding, travel writing ethics (a can’t miss session with Mary Engle of the Federal Trade Commision, Kim Mance, Spud Hilton of The San Francisco Chronicle and others), search engine optimization and podcasting. The event wraps up with the Community Keynote, which will feature Pam Mandel of Nerd’s Eye View and yours truly reading some of the best travel blog posts submitted by writers (the deadline to submit a post is June 1, so send yours in now).

In between the business, there will be parties hosted by American Express Gold Rewards, BootsnAll and Eurocheapo and Diamond PR. All that talking will surely make us thirsty.

TBEX ’10 is going to be a fantastic event for travel bloggers, writers and all lovers of travel. We can’t wait to see everyone, talk shop and, yes, have a few cocktails. Hope you’ll be there!

Nashville landmarks remain closed after historic flooding

by Leigh Caldwell on

After a weekend of torrential rains and flooding, sunshine is predicted in Nashville, Tenn., today. Officials at many of the city’s landmark spots for visitors will be assessing the damage and starting the clean-up process.

Here’s a look at what’s open, what isn’t and what won’t be for some time:

The Gaylord Opryland Resort is closed. At last report, many of the hotel’s common areas were flooded with up to 10 feet of water. The resort’s 2,800-plus hotel rooms have not been damaged, but the company says it will take months to clean up and re-open for business. Reservations for the Gaylord Opryland have been suspended, and Gaylord officials said they are seeking alternatives for the conventions scheduled at the complex in the coming weeks. The Gaylord contained 12 percent of the city’s hotel rooms, and The Tennessean reports today that some larger conventions are being directed to Gaylord properties in other cities.

Next door, the Grand Ole Opry House was also damaged in the flooding. Officials have not released details on the extent of the damage. Tonight’s Grand Ole Opry performance has been moved to Nashville’s War Memorial Auditorium. Weekend Opry performances have been moved to the Ryman Auditorium. Other Grand Ole Opry attractions, including backstage tours and the Grand Ole Opry Museum, have been suspended.The historic Ryman Auditorium downtown has not been damaged and was never threatened by the flood waters. The Ryman is the former, longtime home of the Grand Ole Opry. It’s likely that many Opry performances will be relocated to the Ryman as long as the Grand Ole Opry House remains closed.

Mega-mall Opry Mills is closed because of the flooding and power outages. Mall officials have not released damage information, but the mall is adjacent to the flooded Gaylord Opryland Resort and Grand Ole Opry House. Nashville news stations are showing helicopter video of flood waters surrounding the mall and parking areas.

The basement of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is flooded. Fortunately, none of the museum’s collections are housed in the basement, so the exhibits have not been affected. Museum officials say they expect to re-open right away.

The honky-tonks and shops in the popular LoBro area (along Lower Broadway and Second Avenue) are a mixed bag. Some, including larger venues the Hard Rock Cafe and Wildhorse Saloon, are closed because of basement flooding, but other business remain open. The streets and sidewalks are not flooded in this area.

Schermerhorn Symphony Center will be closed for about a month, officials told The Tennessean. The concert hall’s basement has flooded, and essential equipment, including two Steinway grand pianos, has been lost. A note on the Nashville Symphony’s Web site informs visitors that “the status of all upcoming events remains uncertain.”

LP Field, home of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, is underwater. There’s no word on whether the stadium’s locker rooms, offices and other facilities have been damaged.

Nashville Predators hockey venue Bridgestone Arena is also flooded. The NHL team says there has been extensive damage to locker rooms, TV production facilities and other venues on the arena’s lower levels.

The Hampton Inn and Suites Nashville – Downtown is completely closed because of flooding. The hotel across the street from the Country Music Hall of Fame has relocated its guests to other Nashville hotels.

Flooding has not affected air travel in and out of Nashville International Airport. It remains completely open.

But getting to and from the airport could be a different story. Dozens of road closures dot the Nashville metro area. The metro Nashville government is continually updating a Nashville road closure map online.

The HP Envy 13 – The ultimate in notebook style, speed and specifications?

by Scott Carmichael on

If you have ever seen those obnoxious TV commercials, then you’ll know that there are apparently people who consider themselves “a Mac”, and those that are a “PC”. Me? I’m a PC. I’ve got a lot of reasons to be a PC, but the main one is that I always want the best my money can get me, without having to compromise. Despite being a longtime PC user, one aspect of the Mac world always makes me jealous – Mac’s are gorgeous computers. Sure, they come with a matching price tag, but you always pay for style.

Thankfully, there are similar good looking options out there for PC users – and one of the best available, is the HP Envy 13.

The Envy line of machines is the top of the line in consumer laptops from HP – they sell them in 13″ and 15″ models, and this review will focus on the travel friendly 13″ version.

Lets get one thing out of the way – this is a not a budget computer. With an opening price of $1,499, you are well into Mac territory, and once you start adding options and other accessories, you can easily bring the final price towards $2,500. Obviously, this is not the computer you buy if you just want to do some simple browsing on the road.

Inside the machine Gadling got to review, is an Intel Core2Duo SL9600 running at 2.13GHz with Intel Integrated graphics and ATI Radeon HD 4330 graphics (more on that later).

The machine has 5GB or ram, a 250GB hard drive, Bluetooth, a 13.1″ HD LED screen (1600×900) and comes with an external Blu-Ray drive.

But enough about the insides – the real treat of the Envy 13 is on the outside. Built around a gorgeous aluminum and magnesium frame, the Envy is quite simply stunning. The screen features edge-to-edge glass, and the chiclet keyboard is one of the best I have ever tested.

On the sides are an HDMI video port, power port, 2 USB ports, a memory card reader and a combined audio input/output jack. Included in the box is an HDMI to VGA (D-SUB) adapter, which I found to be a nice touch. There is no built in Ethernet port, but a 10/100/1000 USB adapter was included in the box. WiFi access comes from an Intel Wireless-N adapter.

Performance is what you’d expect from a notebook in this price range – stunning. The machine blazed through everything I threw at it. It’ll be perfectly at home with some basic office tasks, but also very content with photo and video editing and even some of the more advanced games (though this is by no means a “gaming machine”). As delivered, the Envy 13 comes with Windows 7 professional 64-bit and a suite of image and video software from Corel. In addition to this, it also comes with the HP MediaSmart multimedia interface.

If you need quick access to basic applications, you can boot into the “Full web access” without having to start the main OS – which shaves a good 45 seconds off boot times.

The webcam in the HP is also very impressive – a 1.3 megapixel camera with HP’s awesome webcam software. Audio may have been my favorite part of this machine – the speakers and audio circuitry come from the Beats brand – and performance was great. Once you add a pair of Beats headphones (by Dr. Dre), you end up with an amazing combo.

The Envy 13 for travelers

All this metal and high performance makes for a fairly heavy machine, in fact – at 3.68 lbs, this may appear to be a very unfriendly machine for travelers. However, I’ve taken it on four trips now, and actually find the performance and battery life to be more important to me than the weight. One of the best options for the Envy 13 (and something not found anywhere else) is the optional “Slice Battery” – a super thin extra battery pack that slots onto the bottom of the machine.

The Slice Battery blends in perfectly, and with the exception of a tiny gap, the 2 merge together nicely. Best part of this $249 battery? It’ll bring the Envy 13 to a little over 11 hours of battery life (with a bunch of optimizations and screen brightness turned down). Bottom line is that the Envy 13 with its Slice battery make for a very powerful machine, with plenty of weight, but enough performance to get work done without any compromises. Yes – there are netbook computers that’ll outlast the Envy when it comes to battery life, but none of them have the same performance and specifications.

Sadly, the Envy 13 uses a non-standard HP charger, and none of my universal chargers worked on it – the machine obviously comes with its own (compact) charger, but if you need a spare or a car/air compatible charger you may be in trouble.

The trackpad

The Trackpad on the Envy 13 deserves special attention – not because of how well it performs, but because how horrible it is. Button presses are often missed, and despite a bunch of integrated multi-touch gesture features, it fails at the most basic of tasks. Very disappointing, and something that usually just forced me to use a travel Bluetooth mouse instead.

Final thoughts?

Thankfully for HP, the bad trackpad is quickly forgotten when compared to the rest of the machine. Fantastic looks, super performance, a stunning screen and optional Blu-Ray player make for what I consider to be one of the best notebook computers on the market.

The “Envy Experience” is equally impressive – which starts with the box. HP clearly spent some time designing the computer, but also put a lot of effort into making the unboxing something that makes the steep purchase price a little easier to accept.

As I mentioned earlier – this is not the computer you’ll be considering if you just want basic – this is what you buy if you need performance, without settling for a laptop made entirely of plastic with lots of squeaks.

You’ll find the HP over at the Envy store, where you’ll also find exact prices and available accessories.

Clear speedy airport security lanes making a comeback?

by Scott Carmichael on

Last year, Clear abruptly shut down – but after a bankruptcy hearing last month, a large portion of the business has been handed over to new owners. And these owners are very serious about getting the service back online as soon as they can.

With Clear, passengers paid a yearly subscription fee, and were able to jump to the front of the line at airport security checkpoints. The service was fairly successful, but obviously not enough of a success to stay commercially viable.

The new company, called AlClear, spent $6 million to acquire the remaining assets of the company that operated Clear. Sadly, those assets did not include the individual contracts with airport operators, which means the new venture may not arrive at your airport as soon as you’d hope.

Within the next couple of weeks, former subscribers will be contacted, offering them the chance to reactivate their subscriptions. If airport negotiations go as planned, AlClear may begin service this fall. The fee for AlClear will be $179 – plus an additional $50 to convert the individual plan into a family plan. Customers that do not wish to reactivate their old Clear account will have their personal information purged from the database.

Whether or not AlClear will be able to overcome the hurdles that put Clear out of business remains to be seen – the price was not the biggest issue Clear faced. Lack of availability around the nation and a security breach probably hurt them more than anything else. Personally, I wish AlClear lots of luck – I’m a huge fan of airport biometrics, and have been ever since I signed up for the Privium system at Amsterdam Airport back in 2002.

Chase a solar eclipse in unique style this summer

by Kraig Becker on

On July 11th of this year, the moon will pass between the Earth and the Sun, creating a total solar eclipse that will cast portions of the planet in complete darkness for up to 4 minutes. The best place to view this astronomical phenomenon will be in the South Pacific, with prime viewing locations along a few atolls in French Polynesia and on remote Easter Island. Actually, those places will be the second best place to see it, as a once in a lifetime travel opportunity will give 41 lucky travelers a unique and very personal view of the eclipse – from the air.

The EFlight 2010 will set out from Tahiti and fly directly into the moon’s umbral shadow, while climbing above any cloud cover for a complete, unobstructed view of the eclipse. The flight will take place aboard a specially designed and equipped Airbus A319, which will allow its passengers to intercept the lunar shadow approximately 2500km to the east of their starting location. While traveling through that shadow, the travelers will have the opportunity to witness the totality of the eclipse for an unprecedented 9.5 minutes, more than double its length on the Earth’s surface.

The Airbus that has been specifically chartered for this flight has had all of the seats removed along the left side of the plane, the same side that will face the eclipse itself. This will allow the passengers to have the best view possible out of those windows, where they’ll not only be immersed in the darkness of the Moon’s shadow, but will also get a chance to glimpse the Sun’s bright white corona in all of its glory.

Make no mistake, a unique trip such as this one doesn’t come cheap, but with the limited number of seats available, you also know that it is a travel experience that few will have a chance to enjoy. The EFlight alone will set you back $9000 which ensures that you have your own window for the eclipse. If you don’t mind sharing that window however, the costs drop to $6500 per seat. That price is for the EFlight alone and doesn’t include the international flight to Tahiti or accommodations while on the island.

For more information about the tour itself, click here. And for more details on the EFlight than you ever thought possible, click here.