More office time killers: Lufthansa’s Virtual Pilot

by Grant Martin on

If you’re tired of reading through election coverage during your lunch hour, flex your brain a bit and give Lufthansa‘s Virtual Pilot a spin. It’s a geography quiz similar to the UNESCO game I posted late last year, loosely based around the cities and hubs from which Lufthansa flies. Despite being an obvious ad for the German product, it’s a fun way to kill a little time and brag to your friends about how high of a score you got. If I didn’t have a friend who was a geography genius I’d send the link out among my so called “travel society,” but I know his mental database of cities and countries will run all of the fun. Alas, there are worse impediments.

The fun thing about this quiz is that it’s given in three stages. In the first, you get countries and city locations from which you can can choose. In the second you only get country borders, while in the final you only get continents. Make sure you click the destination you want — even though the jet is heading in the direction of your cursor it won’t land unless you select a region.

My first score was 25399. You shouldn’t have any trouble beating it, but I’m only taking your first score.

Gap year resources

by Neil Woodburn on

If the new year has come around and hit you in the gut with the reality of facing another 12 months chained to a cubicle, you might want to explore your gap year options.

A “gap year” is nothing more than a gap in your career where you bugger off and travel the world, live abroad, or otherwise engage yourself in experiences far more worthwhile and rewarding than simply working for the man.

Gap years, which have become quite popular in England, are slowly gaining ground in America where I live–although most professionals I know would still consider taking a year off as nothing short of career suicide.

There are others, however, (and you know who you are) that sit around and daydream of the possibilities, mulling over what they’d do and where they’d go if they were to ever summon up the courage to take that first step out the door.

As a public service to those of our readers trapped in this purgatory of travel lust, we’d like to provide you with some motivation in the form of a very detailed Telegraph article, A comprehensive A-Z of gap year options from Arizona to Africa.
This great resource provides purpose and meaning to the Gap Year so that your wanderings are not aimless and hollow. In other words, you won’t be a bum. Instead, you can travel the world while bettering yourself or the community at large through a variety of programs such as teaching in Ghana, conservation projects in Africa, language classes in Guatemala, volunteer work projects in Cambodia, science fieldwork in Greenland, and a ton of other options as various as the world is large.

In addition, the Telegraph directs would-be travelers to a handful of helpful, sites designed to aid those seeking that elusive gap in their professional careers. Just make sure you don’t surf them at work; GapYearForGrownups.co.uk is not the site your boss wants to see on your computer screen when he barges into your cubicle.

Google Earth: Zooming in on the forbidden sites of North Korea

by Neil Woodburn on


It sure is tough to be a hermit kingdom these days with Google Earth constantly peering into your business.

Take North Korea, for example. Just a few years ago, it was impossible for Americans to visit this reclusive country and Kim Jong Il was happy. Now, a few hundred Americans are let in each summer to view a small sliver of the country. It thought I was pretty special being one of them. It turns out, however, that armchair travelers can sit at their computers and do a much better job of zooming into all those secret airfields, bases, and palaces which our guides kept hidden from us on the ground.

One of the most outstanding things I’ve ever seen on Google Earth is an extraordinarily exhaustive mashup detailing countless military installations, concentration camps, monuments, palaces, government buildings, and other “off limit” sites throughout North Korea. I’ve just spent most of the evening zeroing in on all the places I visited in Pyongyang and then backing up the view to check out the surrounding areas we were prohibited from seeing.

Most unnerving are the rows and rows of work camp barracks located in the north of the country (above) that are clearly visible. All the cleanliness and order of Pyongyang almost makes one forget such atrocities exist in North Korea.

If you’ve got some time, spend a few minutes surfing through these enthralling yet bizarre satellite images of North Korea; because when things look off from outer space, you just know they’re far worse at ground level.

Why you should ALWAYS use online checkin

by Grant Martin on

It strikes me that while most people these days know what online checkin (OLCI) is, many people still don’t use it. Largely it seems that this is because people have concerns about how or when they’re going to check their luggage in and are worried about its integration into the system. A few people are even still afraid of the technology altogether.

Besides the obvious benefits of having your boarding pass up to twenty four hours in advance though, there are other benefits to using OLCI.

The most important is that it tells the airline that you’ve thought about your itinerary and that you’re coming. This prevents them from kicking you off the flight and selling your ticket at the last minute to someone else. See, most airlines have a rule that you must be checked in thirty to forty five minutes prior to departure; if you’re not there before, then they have permission to boot you from the flight and cancel your itinerary.

By checking in online, however, the airline can’t close the flight and move on without you. Even if you make it at the last minute or even if you don’t make it at all, they should hold your seat until the very last second. Only then, if you haven’t showed up at that point and they need the spare seats will they substitute someone else in.

This is particularly handy if you’re only traveling with carry-on luggage. You can show up well inside the forty five minute window, blitzkrieg through security get to your gate five minutes before pushback. As long as the jetbridge is attached and the door is open they should let you on. This is the only way that I’ve made several of my flights.

10 tips for smarter flying


You don’t even have to print your boarding pass. If you haven’t got a printer around prior to departure, you can always scoot online and check in without printing your particulars. Once you get to the airport you can reprint it and go on your merry way. Last week on a return flight from New York to Cleveland I showed up at La Guardia 10 minutes before pushback (in my defense the M60 was crawling). Asking the Continental Airlines gate agent to print my boarding pass she refused, saying that it was too close to departure. I told her that I was already checked in and she reluctantly agreed to reprint the pass. Result? I made my flight by about 30 seconds.

But what if I am checking luggage, you ask? When time is critical, checking in online still holds an advantage. Most carriers have separate lines at ticketing for “full” versus “luggage only” check-in. The “luggage only” line always moves faster because all you have to do is scan your boarding pass, drop off your bags and head through security. And when you’re close to that forty five minute cutoff (it applies for luggage as well), a fast moving line is critical.

And if you lose or forget your boarding pass? No problem. Just ask an airline agent to reprint it, give them your ID and they’ll oblige. Really. I lose boarding passes all of the time.

Another advantage to checking in online is the flexibility in seat assignments. The last seven days prior to departure are full of seat changes, as travelers jockey around the plane getting upgraded and finding the best seats. At the twenty four hour window (when OLCI opens), better seats on the plane can also open up. So if you’ve been pining to sit in the exit row or even next to your travel companion, you can do this from your home computer early rather than begging an airport agent to help you out later.

So take it from the frequent traveler. It’s always a good idea to check in online before you travel. That faithful day that you run into traffic, a parade or a revolution on the way into the airport and make it to ticketing at the last second with your boarding pass you’ll thank yourself.

Are you Yelping yet?

by Grant Martin on

If you, like me, believe that San Francisco is the cultural barometer for technology, then buy shares in Yelp right now. Visiting my friend Paul this weekend in preparation for a meeting out in Hayward, I realized how ubiquitous the software is. Among the friends we made at the bar that night, I think it came up a dozen times, each time with the speaker raving.

In case you, like me, come from the humble roots in the Midwest and haven’t heard of it, Yelp is a simple online tool that lets you locate, map and rate business around wherever you are. So if you’re out on a business trip in New York on Broadway and 92nd and want to get a good coffee, you can type “cafe” and “Broadway and 92nd, New York” into Yelp and it will pop up with a half dozen cafes within a set radius around you. It then plops everything onto a Google map so you can easily navigate you way across town, ratings included.

Though the software has been out for a little while now, Yelp is exponentially spreading across the great States of America. Checking with a few friends in NYC they seem to be warming up to the technology, while friends in Michigan are still oblivious. Keep an eye out. They’ll sneak up you pretty quick.