The Connected Traveler

Veterans Day Shrine - London (Inset enlarged from frame)

Review: The Panasonic FX100 Digital Camera
by Russell Johnson

I have never been very much for boxy things: Humvees, large suitcases, Wagnerian contraltos. I own two boxy cameras, both antiques: a 1950s Brownie movie camera and a vintage Crown Graphic, a bulky machine with bellows once favored by cigar chomping, flashbulb-popping guys who sat at the edges of boxing rings and Eisenhower-era CSI agents. In fact, the Graphic was given to me as a teenager by a friend of my father, an ex-boxer turned photographer named Ed, deaf from too many blows to the head and always reeking of stogie. My mother hated him, thought he was a bad influence. Ed taught me photography and a couple of punches with which I wasted the neighborhood bully. I hung up my gloves at age twelve but stuck with photography. I have always favored precious little Leicas with squinty viewfinders handmade by the Good Elves of the Schwartzwald, cameras with smooth, precision gears, burnished surfaces and shutters that click with the uninvasive self-confidence of European maitre d's.

Where's Waldo Lane? Telnav Screen

Telenav Phone GPS Sniffs Out The Neighborhood
...and Beyond

Pat Meier-Johnson

I often don' t know where I am going, but most of the time I know where I have been. Most of the time.

Telenav GPS Navigator, a service and Bluetooth device that let you get voice and graphical GPS directions on your mobile phone has become my driving pal over the past few weeks. I installed it on my Treo 650 and my husband and I left our home in the woods, winding our way down the mountain as we have several days a week for the past nine years. The Telenav voice spoke the turns and the display showed the names of streets. "Hey, did you know there's a Cape Court here," Russ said. I had never paid attention to it. Nor had I noticed Seymour Lane after passing by well more than 4,000 times.

talkplus

Hello from Anywhere

Playing "Where's Waldo" with TalkPlus

Pat Meier-Johnson

I've always had delusions of grandeur, of having offices all over the country. Well, I do now. I hung out my shingle in New York and Los Angeles in just a few minutes without leaving my desk in Northern California, or so it appears to anyone with caller ID. TalkPlus is a service that lets you add a multiple lines to your mobile phone to make and receive calls. You can mirror your existing office or home number on your mobile phone plus select and add secondary numbers from pretty much anywhere in the US and make calls on your mobile through a TalkPlus web page, making it appear as though you're calling from those other locations.

It's almost too easy.

Nikon D80 Digital SLR

Russell Johnson

Nikon's D80 digital single lens reflex camera offers 10.2 megapixels and may, with its kit 18-135mm lens, be the ideal travel camera. If you don't mind the size and weight it is much more user-friendly than your typical point and shoot and oh, the thunk it makes when take a picture is sooo satisfying.

Blurb: Fast Pass to the Realm of the Literati

Blurb

Watch out National Geographic, Smedley’s Amazing Auspicious Adventures in Full-Color is nipping at your heels. You, yes you over there with the dorky photographer’s vest and the bazooka lens…you can publish your own coffee table book for just a little bit more than the price of a pound of Starbuck’s finest.

Almost There: The Handbag Computer

by Pat Meier-Johnson

SamsungQ1

It’s a close call every time I try to get work done on a plane on my laptop. The guy in front of me gets a sudden urge to snooze. Back goes his seat, threatening to catch the top my laptop in the tray well and snap it off into oblivion. So when I saw two slim, small devices that run Windows XP, one from TabletKiosk and the other from Samsung, I thought, now well there’s a nice size…5.5” high as opposed to my 10.5” laptop height, and 9” wide, but can I get any work done on it?

Meet the Ultra Mobile PC, a size and format alternative to the PC that looks like a small tablet (imagine a mini Etch a Sketch) that Microsoft has been trying to get off the ground for some years.

Still fraught with a slow start in the market, as it has no keyboard, no mouse (though you can add these) the UMPC is part business, part entertainment in a size that fits into a handbag.

I recently took a look at two UMPC devices:

NOW HEAR THIS!

The Sennheiser PXC300 are small enough to fit in a purse

By Pat Meier-Johnson

Probably a dozen or so airline freebie headphones have seen the dreaded inner sanctum of my briefcase and come out a mess. So it doesn't break my heart to plug these flimsly mangled contraptions into the TV jack of the cardio machines at the gym then hand them off to another sweaty news junkie, never to see them again.

But the Sennheiser PXC300 noise-cancelling headphones are in a entirely different class. Unlike the typical large noise-cancelling phones that look like earmuffs fit for Nanook, these comfortable phones collapse into a deceptively small, attractive cordura fabric-type zipped clamshell and deliver an impressive range and richness of tones.

PALM TREO 650

by Pat Meier-Johnson

I stared at the Blackberry and the Treo 650, and back again. I hefted one and then the other, felt my fingernails skid off the rounded keys of the Treo. While the light weight and flat keys of the Blackberry seemed practical, the Treo won my heart.

The Treo 650 I have is based on the Palm operating system. Today, models of this phone run Windows Mobile and promise to be even faster on the Verizon EV-DO network. Corporate IT managers who are issuing the Treo to their peripatetic workers as a remote email device are looking forward to support just one operating system, but I found no problem working between a Windows laptop and a Palm smart phone. Networks speeds are improving too, and Master Bill Gates claims the future Treos will run at DSL speeds.

The Audiovox SM5600
by Russell Johnson

STORY IN MP3 AUDIO 4:10

I have always been intrigued by the notion of a do-everything personal device. My military career (roughly paralleling the heroics of George W. Bush) exposed me to the M1 steel helmet. The "pisspot" as it was called, was a wash basin, cooking cauldron, latrine, shovel and, if caught with your pants down, you could bonk somebody over the head with it.

I thought the Swiss Army Knife was a cool idea but I rarely had use for a screwdriver and a corkscrew on the same day. Mine ended up in the "unclassified" drawer in the kitchen along with the half-dead batteries, rubber bands and expired lotto tickets.

Same for the PDA. My wife bought one, found it fiddly and a waste of time, and sold it on E-Bay.

And, call me strange, but I have always hated cellphones: carried one as only as a necessity. I could never figure out the menus. I panicked the first time someone sent me a SMS message, thinking it was either a virus or a testy message from God, and shut the phone off.

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