Outside Magazine Videos

by Neil Woodburn on

As if your life didn’t already seem worthless enough sitting behind your computer at work slowly getting larger, Outside Magazine is now featuring video on their website.

So, minimize that Excel spreadsheet, make sure your boss isn’t passing by, then click over for a selection of adrenaline-filled short films which will make you feel that you are wasting your life toiling away at the 9-5 when there is a whole world out there waiting to be explored.

You might want to start with Burning Time 2, a three-minute short featuring extreme kayakers braving the waters of China, Africa, and Turkey.

Oh crap! Your boss is coming! Minimize that video and get back to your spreadsheet, number-pusher!

Flying Manta Ray Video

by Erik Olsen on

OK, this is probably not what you were expecting. The video here has nothing to do with the graceful, broad-winged mantas we know and love from diving (notice the diving category is NOT selected).

Instead, what you will see here is yet another breath-takingly extreme sport from Oceania (I specify Oceania here because it seems a great many of these sports – i.e. Bungy Jumping, Zorbing — seem to come from both Australia and New Zealand). Anyhoodle, this video of a new flying behind a boat device is way cool. My guess is that no pilot’s license is required, but steel cojones are.

Flirting and Walking Tours of London

by Jamie Rhein on

Here’s a London walking tour with a twist. My tour brand a few years ago included a husband, a ten year-old and a toddler in a stroller. We walked (and rolled) all day to take in as many sights as we could. In another life, I might have taken this tour. It’s a concept that might make anyone traveling alone meet up with someone double quick.

Flirting and Walking Tours of London by Allure Seminars offers a way to see the sites AND learn the art of hooking up. Why head to a bar when you can head to an art gallery? Get culture and get kissed. Here’s a news clip that explains how the tours work, plus there’s some flirting tips thrown in. The clip is from 2006, but the tours are still happening.

Trivop — A Videoguide for Hotels

by Justin Glow on

Springwise is reporting on a brand new website, Trivop, which claims to be the “first online hotel video portal.” The website offers up a Google Maps-“videoguide” mash-up to provide the “next best thing to visiting the hotel in person.”

The selection is currently limited to 144 hotels in Paris and 11 in London, but there are plans to solicit you, the traveler, to upload your very own videos. If this takes off, and more cities across the globe are covered, it could be a very useful service.

Lost Bags. Lost Souls.

by Willy Volk on

Subtitled “Kang Yatse: A Skiing Misadventure,” Lost Bags. Lost Souls. is a mysterious, innovative, creepy, esoteric, snarling, thoughtful, electronic-moleskine webumentary. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but after you check it out, you’ll know what I mean.

Nominated for a Webby for “Reality Animation,” this travelogue relates the story of two American adventurers and their attempt to climb up and ski down the 21,000-foot-high Kang Yatse in the Indian Himalaya. Nothing goes smoothly, as their perfectly-planned vacation rapidly devloves into misadventure involving lost luggage, strandings, rolling blackouts, negotiation with cabbies, and surprises at the “global village.”

Is this the future of travel journals? I certainly wouldn’t mind if it were.