Archive for January, 2010
Get a Free No-stink Wicking Shirt
There’s a company called Agion that supplies antimicrobial treatment to a lot of brands (Adidas, Columbia, Motorola, Logitech) and they want to give you a free t-shirt. No contest, just sign up and they’ll send it to you.
Go to the site StinkAtNothing.com and click on “get a shirt” at the top or “start sweating” partway down the left column. Or just click here. Fill in your info and they’ll send you a split shirt like the one pictured above: half of it is untreated, the other half is treated with Agion’s silver ions odor-elimination technology. The company thinks this treatment is better than anything currently on the market out there and they want to prove it. So sweat in this shirt for a while and see how it goes. If you submit a good enough story afterwards you can also win more prizes. Get the full scoop at the website.
You should be seeing branded wicking shirts using this technology starting this summer, but you’ll have one first. Well, half of one anyway…
(While you’re in the mood to score some free stuff, put a comment on this reading and task light post from a few days ago. Then sign up for Perceptive Travel’s monthly newsletter, where a new gear item ships out to a lucky winning subscriber every month.)
Posted by Tim L. in Adventure Gear, Travel Light on January 31st, 2010
idox Accessories for iPod nano, iPod touch & iPhone
Here’s a product that pulls double duty for Apple products: it’s a hard case that fully encloses your valuable electronic device that also flips open to serve as a stand so you can watch movies on your iPod nano, iPhone or iPod touch. I sampled the idox for the 4G nano and found that my iPod slides securely into the case. I like that the case snaps closed to keep it safe when I toss the iPod in my carry-on bag. (You do need to store earphones separately, otherwise they just hang loose if they’re plugged in while it’s in the case.)
As a stand, the angle is great for watching movies, say, when it’s perched on the tray table on an airplane; a rubber bottom helps it stay in place — even during mild turbulence. Not that I used the idox on my recent plane flight to Nevada: I don’t have any movies stored on mine. But my 7-year-old (who has now decided the idox belongs to him) has used the stand to watch the lone video on his playlist — Michael Jackson’s Thriller – over and over and over again. (Usually at the kitchen table before he needs to do his daily after-school math worksheets.)
At $24.95, the idox case for the iPod nano definitely isn’t the cheapest on the market. But it is sturdy and functional. And if you typically download new movies to watch while you travel, whether it’s on an iPod nano, iPod touch ($34.95) or iPhone ($34.95), you might get more use out of it than I have.
Related gear reviews:
Otterbox cases
iHome mini travel speakers
X-mini portable speakers
Posted by Kara in Kids and Family, Travel Light on January 29th, 2010
Reading and Task Lights from Beam N Read
I’ve tried out a whole slew of reading lights and task lights over the years, from the Lightwedge to the Periscope to various brands of headlamp. I guess that’s why I got a call out of the blue from the president of the company producing these Beam N Read lights to try them out. These didn’t look like anything else I’d checked out before, so I agreed to put them through their paces. He set me up with an extra too, so leave a comment at the end to win one for yourself.
This is pitched more as a multi-function light than a reading light, which is a good thing because for reading it only works well if you’re in a sitting position. The light hangs on a strap around your neck and points downward, making it great for a bus or airplane seat, but lousy for when you’re lying flat in bed with a book above your face.
Depending on which model you get, there are either three or six LED bulbs that supply bright light and last forever. The three-bulb one promises that the four AA batteries will last at least 120 hours, or 48 hours for the LED 6 model.
The design is pretty basic and there’s no elegance to it, with a wide battery pack and the bulbs usually shining uncovered unless you put on a red filter (for the three-bulb one) or another color filter (my sample came with orange) for the six-bulb one. The latter also comes with a magnifier. But what matters is these lights do the job: shining on what you need lighted up. And bulky or not, you can easily find and travel with rechargeable AA batteries, but it’s single use only for those calculator-style ones many reading lights use.
These Beam N Read lights would work well for any travel task where you need your hands free, from rooting around the backpack to reading on a train to writing in your journal at night. If you’re traveling with a baby you could change diapers in a hotel room without lighting up the whole room. And this would solve a problem I had a lot when backpacking: figuring out a way to play cards in a poorly-lit cheap hotel room. (Without the other person seeing your cards.) Plus unlike with a headlamp, you won’t blind anyone when you look in their eyes to talk to them.
You can get the Beam N Read LED 3 at Amazon for $19.95 plus shipping, or the LED 6 for $24.95.
Or…get one for free! Leave a comment below on why you would want one and we’ll pick a winner at random in a week—on February 4.
Posted by Tim L. in General Gear, Kids and Family on January 28th, 2010
Multifunctional Screwpop Can Fly With You
I started Practical Travel Gear at the end of 2005 (see the archives here) to be an antidote to the splashy reviews I was seeing in magazines. I thought there needed to be a place where $5 items got more play than ones that were $5,000.
That hasn’t changed, so I present to you the $4.95 Screwpop. It’s simple, effective, multi-functional, and cheap. That may not get the folks at Outside magazine excited, but I think this is a great item for people who are average travelers and not cliff-scaling superheroes.
This ingenious little gadget gives you four things: a Phillips screwdriver, a regular screwdriver, a lug nut wrench, and then one thing for when you’re done using the others—a bottle opener. I haven’t had a need for the 1/4-inch hex nut part since the Screwpop people sent me this thingy a few weeks ago, but I have successfully used the other three items. I tightened a loose door handle with the Phillips #2 tip, put something together with the #2 screwdriver tip, and successfully opened six beers along the way.
The two screwdriver tips are on the same insert: you pull it out and flip it around to use the other. The part that surrounds it is the wrench. The bottle opener can also double as a keychain, though obviously you need a little more dexterity to open the bottles with a whole ring of keys on there. (If you can no longer get it to open a bottle, that may be a sign you’ve had too many, so think of it as a built-in tester too.)
Since there is no knife on here, even the most dim-witted TSA agent should let it through in your carry-on bag. It’s made of a chrome-plated zinc alloy, but is relatively light at less than an ounce and a half.
You can order these direct at Screwpop.com and they’ll ship five for the same shipping price as one. Or look for them at hardware and camping stores as the company ramps up their distribution.
Posted by Tim L. in General Gear, Travel Light on January 27th, 2010
Give Others a “Glympse” of Your Travels
Ever wish, on a long road trip, that your family could know where you are and when you’ll be home—without making phone calls along the way?
Or did you ever fly into a town, hop in a rent car and want to let someone know when you would arrive for a meeting?
Now, you can “share your where” with Glympse, a free app for GPS-equipped iPhones, Android, and Windows Mobile phones.
Glympse will send your location information over cell phone data channels and let you share it with anyone who has access to a desktop or laptop computer, or a mobile phone with a Web browser. Glympse will show your position on a map, along with travel speed and even an estimated arrival time, if you set a destination.
Testing the software on my AT&T Tilt2 smartphone, it worked amazingly well. The first step is opening the program and choosing who to share the information with and for how long. Then, Glympse will send them an e-mail or text message with a link to the company’s website. Whoever received the Glympse message does not need any special software or registration. The only thing required is a Web browser.
My travels showed there is a slight lag, about one block, from your actual location to the spot shown on the map. But that’s to be expected, since it does take a few seconds for the program to send the information and for it to update on Glympse’s servers. Still, it’s about as close to real-time as you can get.
The movement shown on the map is slightly jerky, not buttery smooth. But that’s understandable and the position updates are still very frequent.
I didn’t notice any huge battery hit when using the program on the phone. But it would be a good idea to hook up a charger if the program is running for a long time.
Glympse also addresses privacy and security issues. It’s not possible to “forget” you gave someone permission to view your whereabouts and thus allow them to track you 24×7. When you start the program, you choose who to allow to see your movements and then set a time limit, up to four hours. For longer trips, the time window can be easily extended.
The minimum age for using Glympse, under the company’s terms of service, is 14. It seems that would be difficult to enforce, though.
For many uses, Glympse is better than other location-sharing services such as Google Latitude. Latitude requires registration and a software download for everyone who uses it. But those who receive a Glympse invitation can track your travels just by following a web link, with no special software or log-in required.
If you’re using a Blackberry phone, help is on the way. The company plans to support Blackberry’s operating system in the next few months and is also working on versions for other popular phones.
There are many uses for Glympse—helping with busy business schedules, keeping up with friends and offering peace of mind to families. Just a decade ago, who would have ever imagined?
Posted by JohnG in Business Gear, General Gear, Kids and Family on January 26th, 2010
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