Motorola Droid 2 Global: Further notes

On it's second trip to Europe, the Global version of the motorola Droid2 is still performing admirably. I have been to the tops of mountains, and by rail all over Switzerland and can't complain much about performance. One gripe is battery life. I don't think I quite make it a full 8 hour work day without getting dangerously low on battery. Charging options can be quite frustrating since carrying a charger everywhere one goes is not ideal. Nor are the battery options.

My wife picked up from Ebay or Amazon a charger and battery for the Motorola Droid line of phones. However it should be noted that the battery pictured shows a battery with Motorola logo, but the battery you will receive is not authentic. Of course it should stand to reason that if the USB charging cable from MOTO cost $8 why would the battery cost less?

No now I started shopping for those rapid battery chargers, that use USB cable to charge the phone. These chargers allow you to pre-charge a larger high capacity battery using your USB cable. Then you carry around what is supposed to be around 3 iPhone charges.



From what I can see. There is quite a range of possibilities. Prices are quite variable but it looks like one has to buy in the $50 range to insure that you have a battery with 4000-5000 mAh (3-4 charges of the DROID by the numbers) The Duracell seems to be the better bargain at only $20 but only 1100mAh. which may get you going once per reload.

The so-called powerhouse by Duracell runs the price up to nearly $45 for only 2000mAh. So the brand is adding some price (but who knows how much value). The size of these things is a little daunting considering that our pockets are getting more and more packed with gadgets. So I guess I will try the GUM Plus or the Splash intense. Each of which have slightly less than obnoxious form factor and are at least no larger than the phone itself.

    
     

RoadWarriors unite: 5 things we could all do to make OUR airport experience nicer

As a hardened road warrior, I often feel trapped behind the folks who are only just now discovering the "Magic Flying machines" after living in caves for the last 9 years or so.

1. READ and follow the rules, they are posted EVERYWHERE! i.e. 3-1-1, no shoes, no belts, no knives, C'mon!
2. Get your poop in a group: Empty your pockets into your carry-on before you get to the belt. We stand in line for about 20 minutes average to get to the belt. It should be no surprise, what is supposed to happen when you get there. So don't just dump your coin collection loose in the bin. Duh! Take of the shoes or at least loosen the laces, and stow your stuff.
3. Grab you shit and go: If you had your poop in a group, then you can claim it easy and get your gear out of my way. Even on a bad day I grab 3 things off the belt, the bin with the laptop, the laptop bag (which has all my loose items stowed in pockets, and my shoes.
4. If you are having trouble, look around and let people with their act together get by.
5. Did I mention get out of the way?

Road-HO and Techni-ho travelblog

We techni-HOs tend to do a fair amount of traveling as well, so a needed thread here is business travel tools review and blog. Among indespensible tools of the trade are:

• http://www.onebag.com/
• http://www.worldmate.com/
• http://ekit.com/ekit/MobileInfo/Service/ekpassport_dual
• www.kayak.com

One-bag

I still have not fully converted to the one-bag philosophy to be honest, but most of the hints here are still useful if used piecemeal. I tend to travel overseas alot and have not fully committed to only one bag-- I always get 2 free checked bags (platinum elite after flying 90,000 miles before the end of August this year). The does and don't of packing in this case and the checklists have really been a good reality check for me. I still aspire to be a one-bag kind of traveler, but since I tend to travel two weeks at a time and don;t really like the idea of washing my socks and drawers in the hotel sink, I will stand to carry a slightly bigger bag.

Worldmate Live

This so far has been a life saver. The idea behind Worldmate is that after you book a trip, you email the itinerary from your registered email account to trips@worldmate.com. When the automated system receives the email from your account, it automatically adds it to your list of trip in your itineraries. I have tried other services like Tripit.com, but soon found Worldmate more to my liking since it had a free Blackberry app (also for iPhone, Nokia, WindowsMobile, Palm, and UIQ). The app for most platforms enables you to keep sync'd with the online itinerary (edit online or mobile), get maps, find nearby businesses.

The online itinerary manager also allows merges itinerary and hotel confirmations from the same time period into a single trip. So even if you booked the flights, hotels, cars, trains, buses, and even meeting via separate sites; they all land on the same trip and are therefore viewed in the same timeline. This has been a life save since often when overseas, I hope from one airline to another (booked separately for cost) and if I had to track the printed itineraries separately it would increase the chance of a missed connection.

ekit passport sim card

A phone that can make and receive calls at reasonable rates for most "civilised" countries is also a fine tool. Using my Verizon Crackberry overseas is hit and miss regarding the rates, and worst of all the airtime for roaming is very high making and receiving calls. In the EU and other European countries to receive calls is free with the ekit phone, that reduced my phone costs by more than half. Outgoing calls to the US is not too bad about 2/3 or less of using the Verizon phone.

Another option they offer is to assign you both and UK (+44) and US (+1) number for your friends and family to call. This makes them calling you cheaper, but will make you have to pay a 0.19 surcharge for in the incoming received call (as opposed to them paying long distance to the mobile phone 0.25-0.35/ minute). The ekit also includes a per-per-use data service, something that many low cost pre-paid local sim cards won't offer.

On the down side, outgoing calls made while overseas are programmed as a "call-back" service so it can be a pain, and the people you call won't be able to recognize your caller-id.

Kayak

Y'all should already know about this popular travel rate crawler. It trolls the internet to identify the best travel sites for your trip. I continue to use this even though my current employer requires we book through their travel agent. I use the site to force the favored itinerary onto the travel agent. Still nice.

So that's all for now. Maybe more comes to me later.