Frequent Flyer Master — A product review

by Grant Martin on

If you’ve ever heard of the brand The Art of Non-Conformity you may have heard of Chris Guillebeau. Self described as a man who “writes, travels and helps people take over the world,” Guillebeau is a frequent traveler, speaker, entrepreneur and all-around social maven out in the blog and Twitter sphere. Among his claims to fame are a host of online guides for purchase, speaking on topics from successfully working at home to how to make money as an artist.

His latest is called Frequent Flyer Master, and it’s a guide to maximizing your earned frequent flyer miles, or as he puts it, “democratizing free travel.”

Earlier this week Mr. Guillebeau asked me to take a look, so as a frequent traveler myself I accepted a free copy of the $49 guide for a review.

Am I now a frequent flyer mile guru? Has my life changed? Has abject foreshadowing already ruined my review? Find out more below.The $49, 40 page, downloadable Frequent Flyer Master is separated into three major sections: Strategy, earning and spending miles. Throughout the course of the guide, Guillebeau patiently educates the reader on how frequent flyer mile programs work, pointing out numerous strategies, tips and tricks of the trade and then following up with a significant Q&A and onward reading section.

Much of the content focuses on how to best earn your miles, from on-the-ground activities such as skymall shopping to airline promotions to credit cards. Once rife with miles, Guillebeau continues onto best strategies for redemptions, speaking on booking technology, airlines and other travel tech.

It’s a great wealth of information and without a doubt would be extremely useful to an everyday, pedestrian traveler looking to get educated on the industry.

The predominant suggestion of getting miles and travel for practically nothing, however, is a bit misleading. It’s true that subscribers to this guide will have the means to earn 25k miles or a free plane ticket, but this miles don’t appear out of thin air. Yes, one can get a pile of bonus miles from Lending Tree without setting foot in the airport, but one needs to get a mortgage (and at what rate?). Similarly, one can earn 90k miles from applying for multiple Citibank credit cards, but that requires multiple credit cards, purchases and subsequent cancellations.

Most frustratingly, almost all of this information is publicly available. At the end of the document, Guillebeau openly lists Flyertalk as a resource for further reading, and it’s true: the patient reader can find almost everything in the above 39 pages among those Flyertalk threads.

What Frequent Flyer Master really serves is a pinpoint demographic, a host of readers who only need a shortcut to a compiled list of best deals and strategies for the frequent flyer — all without sifting through sheafs of threads out on the web. Admittedly, to a novice traveler this $49 is a decent investment.

For the patient, ardent, frugal traveler who’s looking to get started in the frequent flyer mile game, an alternative recommended investment would be a trip over to Flyertalk.com.

Boingo introduces Blackberry connection app and $7.95 global Wi-Fi plan

by Scott Carmichael on

Boingo is no stranger here on Gadling – the Wi-Fi company was one of our top 25 best travel products of 2008, and they are continuously making Wi-Fi on the road easier to use.

Yesterday, Boingo announced a new plan specifically for Blackberry users. For just $7.95/month, customers with a Blackberry Curve 8320, Curve 8900 or Bold can access any of the 100,000+ Boingo Wi-Fi hotspots around the world.

This means you will no longer have to deal with pricey roaming charges or other nasty surprises when you get back home.

To make the connection process easier, Boingo has created a Blackberry connection and authentication application. This program tells you when you are in range of a Boingo hotspot, and it takes care of the entire login procedure.

You can even sign up for the service through the software, or if you prefer, you can enroll on your own PC. The $7.95 plan is only for mobile devices, but this also means anyone with an iPhone, Android powered phone or any other Wi-Fi enabled mobile device can sign up. If you’d prefer to connect using your laptop or netbook, you’ll pay $9.95/month for a US plan, or $59 for a global plan. With hotels regularly charging up to $20/day for Internet access, this can easily be a money saving product.

Gadling gear review – ThermaPAK HeatShift notebook cooling pad

by Scott Carmichael on

There is one thing the current generation of laptop computers has in common with fast food coffee – they are both extremely hot. Especially in computers with an advanced processor, the heat coming from the exhaust fan can reach well above 140F, and while that may not be enough to give you burns, it really does become uncomfortable about about an hour.

There are a lot of different cooling products on the market. Some are as simple as providing a gap between your lap and your computer, while others use powered fans to draw the heat away. Cooling fans have one major disadvantage – they draw their power from your laptop battery, so while they may help cool things down a little, they’ll also take away valuable battery run time from you.
In this product review I’ll introduce you to a smarter way to keep your machine cool, without draining your battery. The ThermaPAK HeatShift is a mat that uses several technologies to keep things cool. The first is the easiest – it uses bumps and ridges to provide room for air to flow under your machine.

The second is the smartest – inside the HeatShift mat are organic cooling crystals. When cool, these crystals are hard and rigid, and when they start to heat up, they change to a gel, absorbing heat in the process.

So, how well does this work? I’m not a thermal engineer, but as a geek, I did find a reliable thermometer in my gadget assortment. In my entirely non-scientific test, I measured the temperature under a laptop after running the machine for one hour (no heavy applications were running, and the machine was set to balanced power, with sleep timers disabled). At the 60 minute mark, the temperature under the laptop was exactly 100.00F.

I then let the laptop cool down until it was back to ambient temperature. I placed it on top of the HeatShift pad, and put it through the same test as before (same power settings). After 60 minutes, the temperature under the machine was just 84.5F. The thermometer sensor was in the same location as before.

Now, as I mentioned, I am not an engineer, and my simple thermometer may not be the most accurate way to determine whether this product works, but in a real hands-on test, the difference between a hot notebook on my lap, or a hot notebook on the HeatShift pad on my lap was considerable – none of the scorching heat from the notebook made it to my lap.

The pad itself is covered in a layer of felt on the bottom, which makes it quite comfortable to use. Because of the air channels on the HeatShift Pad, you also reduce the risk of blocking air vents in the bottom of your notebook.

The TermaPAK HeatShift pad is available in three sizes – 13″, 15″ and 17″, and in three colors – black, pink and white. Prices start at $27.99 for the 13″ version. If you are already using a laptop cooling product, you can take advantage of a generous upgrade offer. By sending in your current product, you get access to upgrade pricing starting at just $13.99.

PROS: Works exactly as advertised, does not require external power, comfortable

CONS: Fairly heavy, pricier than some powered cooling pads

The HeatShift Pad can be rolled up, and weighs about 24 ounces. You can find the ThermaPAK HeatShift pad on their site, or from one of their various resellers.

Enjoy free Gogo inflight internet on your next American Airlines flight

by Scott Carmichael on

If you are lucky enough to be flying an American Airlines aircraft outfitted with the Gogo Inflight Internet service, then how about trying it out for free?

The service is live on the entire AA 767-200 fleet, select MD80’s and is slowly being rolled out to their 737 fleet.

To get online for free, simply connect your laptop, PDA, smartphone or other compatible Wi-Fi device to the Gogo signal. Once you have signed up for the service, use promo code AATRYGOGO in the payment field.

Once online, don’t forget to check out the latest news from your favorite travel blog, or to follow what we’ve got to say on Twitter!

For more information on the AA inflight Internet service, or this promotion, head on over to the AA Wi-Fi on board information site.

Gadling gear review – IPEVO S0-20 WiFi Skype phone

by Scott Carmichael on

In this product review, I’m going to introduce you to the IPEVO S0-20 WiFi Skype phone. The S0-20 is a very compact phone, weighing in at just 80 grams/ 2.7 ounces.

The S0-20 connects to Skype over WiFi, and allows you to make and receive calls, manage your Skype contacts, view call history, listen to voicemail and even search for Skype users. The entire user interface looks and feels just like Skype on your desktop, so operating the phone couldn’t be easier.
Connecting to a WiFi network is simple – you let the phone search for available networks, enter any network keys (if required). The WiFi system can connect to any 802.11 B or G network, and it supports WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption, which means it’ll work on almost any WiFi network you can fine.

Sadly, the phone does run into a problem when you connect to WiFi that requires you to log in through a web page.

Voice quality is fantastic – I tested the S0-20 in a variety of situations, and each time I made a call, the connection was established right away.

This speaks well for the quality of Skype and of the S0-20. Of course, the phone supports Skype to Skype calls, as well as Skype In and Skype Out calling. When calling “out” to a landline, Skype sent my user ID as the Caller ID name – a very cool feature.

The S0-20 comes well equipped – inside the box is the phone, battery, desktop charging cradle and an AC charger.

The phone and desktop cradle use a MiniUSB charging plug. On the side of the S0-20 is a 2.5mm headphone jack, and a headset is included.

I also tested the IPEVO S0-20 in two different situations. The first allows you to connect the phone to a wired network. For this, I used a Trendnet TEW-654TR pocket WiFi router. With this setup, you simply plug the router in a wired network port, and then connect the Skype phone to the wireless network being broadcast by the router.

The next setup is even cooler – it allowed me to create my own WiFi hotspot anywhere I was in range of the Verizon Wireless broadband network (which covers a huge portion of the country).

With the Verizon Wireless MiFi 2200, I was able to make a Skype call with perfect quality in the middle of a forest preserve. Of course, I could have also installed a Skype client on my smartphone, but being able to use the S0-20 with the MiFi does show how flexible the device is.

Final thoughts

I love that the S0-20 features a very familiar interface – it looks and feels just like the desktop version of Skype, down to the connection sound. Connecting to a hotspot is simple, though some users will run into problems with browser login enhanced sites. Call quality is excellent, which speaks well for the phone and for Skype itself.

Of course, readers with a phone or PDA that supports Skype may not see any need for the IPEVO S0-20, but there are still plenty of people without a smartphone. One major advantage of the S0-20 is that it doesn’t require any monthly charges, like you’ll find on most smartphones (for their data plan).

PROS: Excellent interface, good hardware, good sound quality

CONS: Security key entry can be cumbersome, no support for browser login on hotspots

The IPEVO S0-20 WiFi Skype phone costs $139.99, and is available directly from IPEVO. Shipping is free (promotion till October 31st).