Travelistic

by Erik Olsen on

With the explosion in online video, it’s a bit of a surprise that we’ve seen so few companies dedicated to travel vids. There’s Travel Channel which for the most part repurposes stuff that they’ve put on TV. There’s Turnhere, which is a fine site, but also hit or miss when it comes to quality. Also, their films…a generous term…focus on specific cities and destinations. Other than these two, not a lot of serious players have emerged.

Until now? (yes, that’s a question)

It looks like the former CEO of MTVi (MTV‘s former dot-com division), a gentleman by the name of Nicholas Butterworth (of the syrup dynasty?), says he is in “stealth mode” (meaning it’s not ready yet) to develop a new online travel channel called Travelistic that he describes as “YouTube meets the Travel Channel meets YouTube”.

Whether that sounds exciting depends, I suppose, upon how much you enjoy watching people’s lousy home movies or the Travel Channel, and whether you believe that a mix of these two things creates “synergy”, to use a little industry vernacular. Personally, I sometimes find the Travel Channel unwatchable, and YouTube’s offerings work for me about .056 percent of the time. But the online video thing is changing damn awful fast, and someone is going to score big in this arena, so we’ll keep an eye on this one.

Last Best Places

by Erik Olsen on

We post a lot here about various things to see on the net that we know will be of interest to those with a passion for travel. And occasionally those posts contain some activist aspect since, let’s face it, travelers tend to be curious, passionate people who share an interest in preserving the wondrous places around the world that always inspire us. Well, I’d like to direct you to one of the better sites I’ve seen in a while that mixes travel with environmentalism. This wonderful interactive and educational series over at the Minneapolis Star Tribune should be viewed by travelers with a green sensibility.

Called The Last Great Places the site offers vivid photography, audio slide shows, and thoughtful commentary on three places that best represent a specific type of ecosystem. They are: Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the Grand Canyon. You can spend a solid spot of time here, and I suggest you give it a spin, as you will undoubtedly learn a few things you didn’t know about each of these places, including insights into science, travel and policy. It’s been a while since I’ve come across something so well put together, not to mention inspiring from a travel point of view.

Best American Travel Essays

by Erik Olsen on

I blogged a bit about a story in this book the other day, but realized the entire book itself is worthy of a quick post. I haven’t actually got my hands on it yet, but every year I do, and always I find it the most wonderful reading. I am talking about the series called Best American Travel stories. It is part of a much wider series of Best American books that cover essays on everything from science to mystery to crime and sports. In the case of the Best American Travel Stories, it is basically a hand-picked compendium of what the editor decides are the travel essays published in a particular year.

Last year’s book was edited by Jamaica Kincaid and featured contributions from luminary scribes like Jim Harrison, Madison Smartt Bell, Pam Houston, Simon Winchester, and John McPhee. This year’s promises to be a real treat. It was released just a week or so ago.

Edited by the always entertaining (and talented) Tim Cahill, the book features wanderlustful tales by the likes of Gary Shteyngart, George Saunders, Alain de Botton and (always funny) P.J. O’Rourke. The 2006 edition also seems to place special emphasis on food with an essay by Chitrita Banerji’s about a Calcutta wedding feast and Calvin Trillin’s New Yorker piece about spending a week in Ecuador indulging his love for “thick and hearty” fanesca soup.

I recall reading a couple of these stories over the year in mainstream rags like the New Yorker, but the cool thing about the Best American series is that they usually select a number of essays from spunky little literary mags that you’ve never heard of. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to get my hands on it ASAP.

Space Tourist Anousheh Ansari Blogs

by Erik Olsen on

What does space smell like? That is a question that Einstein himself may have pondered. His equation is one of the lesser known, but certainly important ones of all time: S=fb2, where Smell (S) equals a universal funk constant (f) minus one’s body odor (b) squared. It is a brilliant piece of Einsteininan mathematics that has been used in the development of high energy particle physics and odor eaters.

OK, I took some scientific/poetic license there. It wasn’t Einstein who came up with the Universal Funk Quotient, it was Enrico Fermi. He was Italian. So what’s this got to do with anything? Well, here I was perusing the Web today, wondering what in the world…or out of it…would interest gadling readers, and then I came across the blog of the first woman space tourist.

Anousheh Ansari just got back from her most amazing trip to outer space aboard the Soyuz TMA-9, and boy is she happy. And why wouldn’t she be? For a mere $20 million, she was able to float around planet earth with little or no work to do (she was a tourist, remember) and then returned on Friday after 11-days aboard the international space station. She said, finishing up my thought from above, that space smelled like burnt-almonds. Of course, that may have just been the burnt-almond flavored air freshener that hangs in the windshield.

No matter. There are videos and photos and written words on her site ,and, of course if you Google her, there are a gazillion stories about the trip she made. But most of all, I suggest you take a look at the video and make note that she issues a personal thank you to YouTube. If that isn’t the most 21st century thing you’ve heard this year, I don’t know what is.

It’s World Tourism Day Today!

by Adrienne Wilson on

I figured we couldn’t let the day breeze by without acknowledging World Tourism day. No, no! But what exactly does World Tourism day mean? Are you and all your friends planning extravagant vacations somewhere? Anyone just return from Tonga, Finland or Zambia? I’m not 100% sure, but I’m sure the folks at the World Tourism Organization have a clue. This year’s theme is Tourism Enriches and without reading much one can already guess that a theme like that goes in both directions: it enriches the country and the tourist.

Anyways, happy World Tourism Day!