It’s snowing in New York today. You know what that means

by Iva Skoch on

No, I don’t actually mean flight delays although those are inevitable this weekend. Better avoid any place east of the Mississippi.

What gets me is the news coverage. Gothamist is right. The minute it starts snowing in the city, all news channels have a tendency to report the same old cliches over and over. You know some poor struggling journalist is waiting for his big on-screen break so he/she is more than happy to report (ski cap and gloves on, of course) from the side of the Long Island Expressway, calling the “events” all kinds of ridiculous names and showing fancy alert graphics. And, there is always that footage of some dude skiing through Central Park or kids building snowmen in Greenwich Village. Oh, please, no!

While the snow is nice, white and fluffy right now, I am pretty sure it will turn into nasty slush by the end of the day. If you have a choice, don’t come close to the city this weekend. If you want to be a part of it, watch the breathless coverage of the “worst storm this season” online.

ExecutivePlanet: Know your business culture

by Justin Glow on

I’ve been on a Wiki kick lately. First it was the digital ode to Abbie Hoffman with Steal this Wiki, then the news about Wikitravel guides going to press. Now we’ve got Executive Planet: a Wiki aimed at traveling business people, but us common folk can get some use out of it too.

Executive Planet is dubbed the “guide to doing business worldwide,” and it offers up a host of locally-written cultural guides in nearly 50 countries. For instance,

  • In Jordan, “Quiet voices are a sign of respect and maturity.”
  • In Venezuela, “You are discouraged from eating and walking at the same time.”
  • In China, “Use your whole hand rather than your index finger to point.”
  • In India, “Standing erect with your hands on your hips is likely to be seen as an aggressive and dominating posture.”
  • In the United States, “The standard space between you and your conversation partner should be about two feet.” Got it, pal?

If you’re not traveling for business, many of the tips will be useless. (For instance, in Colombia, “For women, a suit or dress is appropriate for business, while a cocktail dress is a requirement for most social occasions.”) Even so, a quick glance over the guide before your next trip won’t hurt anything — especially if you plan on finding yourself in a more formal situation.

Track Zurich’s trains in real time at SwissTrains.ch

by Justin Glow on

I don’t live anywhere near Switzerland, but this Google Maps mashup from SwissTrains.ch makes me wish I did.

The map is a real-time visualization of public transportation in Zurich, showing exactly where all trains in the city are at any given time. Oddly enough, the system isn’t GPS-driven. Instead, it’s based on the timetables, “as Swiss trains are almost always on time.” Makes sense. Hovering over the icons as they zip around town shows the train’s name, next stop, and current speed. Eventually the system will factor in delays based on data parsed from the official website of the national railway company in Switzerland.

This home-brewed, unofficial tool should definitely be the model for other city’s public transportation websites. It’s fun to watch, and I can only imagine how useful it is for someone who relies on public transportation in Zurich on a daily basis.

[Via Grow-a-Brain]

Design your own sleeping bag

by Justin Glow on

It’s getting close to camping time here in the Midwest. I love camping. I love loading up the car with my tent, sleeping bags, coolers filled with various meats and beers, and heading into the wilderness. Had I not been recently gifted a pair of new, cold-weather sleeping bags, I’d consider building my own from the UK’s PHD Mountain Software.

The company’s website has a slick Flash interface for constructing your own sleeping bag, and offers two “trails” to getting it done: the “free route” — if you know what you’re doing — or the “guided route” for the novice. Since I don’t know the first thing about building a sleeping bag, I chose the guided route.

From there you’re given various features to choose for your future sleeping bag: minimum temperature, outer fabric, inner fabric, stuff patterns, width, length, colors, and many, many others. Make your selections, submit your order, and you’re done.

The prices, unsurprisingly, are not cheap. The bag I built was 270.00 GBP (about $530 USD), and I’m sure it could have been much higher had I selected more add-ons. But this might be the perfect thing for the hardcore camping or mountaineering enthusiast with some extra cash to burn. For now, I’ll stick to my Keltys.

Outsourcing: Get a personal assistant to help with travel needs

by Jamie Rhein on

One of the fine things about living overseas is the hired help. Hiring someone to clean house once a week was one of the perks in Singapore and Taiwan. In India we had three people work for us-not around the clock, but enough that I pine once in awhile for the days of our once well-oiled life. We also paid a travel agent to do our leg work when searching out the best deals and tickets were delivered to our door.

Now that we’ve moved back to real life, we’ve once more become pals with dust bunnies, various scattered belongings that never find a storage place, laundry in heaps, and figuring out cheap travel deals ourselves. Recently, a friend of mine said that she wished she had hired an assistant for a project of hers that involved hours of organizing and phone calls. As it turns out, it is possible to get affordable help even if you live a frugal existence. In India, people are at the ready to be a long distance personal assistant to anyone who hires their services through the company Get Friday.

Get Friday virtual assistants do a variety of tasks that range from calling a plumber to ordering flowers. Think of the possibilities for people who travel. Tasks could be having someone research the cheapest ways to get from an airport into a city, find out the range of ticket prices to various destinations to help you plan an economical vacation, find the closest hotel if you’re on a road trip and haven’t planned ahead, as well as, locate attractions and parking.

If you are on vacation and it dawns on you that you forgot to get someone a present, the Get Friday assistant can order something for you. You can also get him or her to do those small getting ready for a trip details like stopping and starting mail and newspaper delivery. Any work related tasks that are getting in your way of relaxing while you’re away, hire someone to do them. If it can be done without the assistant physically being present, Get Friday will find a way to meet your needs. Plans are flexible. You can either hire someone by the hour or pay a fee per month. It seems that hiring a virtual assistant is one way to increase vacation time. The business doesn’t make any distinction whether tasks are work or personal related. For more travel related Get Friday tasks, click here.