think differently big

Couple of thoughts on traveling

Don’t plan anything around the estimated arrival time. Trains, buses, subs are usually on time. Unfortunately I cannot say the same about flights that involve connections. Or at least not about the flights operated by British Airways. I thought I am quite a lucky person, but every time I’m flying BA, they figure out a way to make things go wrong. It doesn’t matter if it is the online check-in not working, or the fact they are delaying your baggages (sometimes even for 4 days), or that they are not flying to the schedule, there will almost always be something going wrong. So, be sure that you are not planning for anything important for your arrival time and definitely not schedule any important meetings.

Check your data roaming usage and costs. This is probably a classical by now and I think everybody has heard those stories of thousands of dollars worth invoices for data roaming services. You should also make sure that there’s a way you can check how much data have you used (be aware that some carriers may not include up to date reports).

Don’t always trust hotel concierge. I am not the kind of traveler that spends lots of time planning. I usually have a vague idea of what I’d like to do while visiting a new city or area and then ask for advise. While hotel concierge is usually a good source of advice, you shouldn’t always trust what they are saying as you might have some bad surprises. In my case, one time a hotel concierge recommended a car rental service that was practicing 3 times more expensive rates than the normal (their explanation: the service was recommended because they weren’t sure I would be able to get a car from the well known car rental services on such a short notice. The internet showed that they were absolutely wrong). Other time they send me for a dinner to an italian restaurant even if I was explicit about non european food and especially non italian. Anyways, most of the time they get it right though.

I am planning to follow up with a post about what iPhone apps I have tested and found useful while traveling. Such a post would most probably fit better this blog considering the iPhone apps for Geeks series.

Meanwhile, I’m wondering if you have any other traveling advice?

Everything Is Now Augmented Reality

These days if it’s not about real-time web or the next iPhone killer, then it is definitely about augmented reality.

Maybe I am not reading correctly the ☞ ReadWriteWeb post about the junaio iPhone app, but my impression is that the app is just a pure photo enhancing app. And that’s not new at all if you consider apps like Captions ( ☞ AppStore link) have existed for a while.

VMWare Releases Fusion 3

VMWare has announced the release of a new version of its desktop virtualization for Mac OS: ☞ Fusion 3. The list of new features available in Fusion 3 can be found ☞ here.

VMWare Fusion is probably the most well known and also the best desktop virtualization solution for Mac OS. While Fusion has a couple of competitors, like ☞ Parallels, ☞ VirtualBox or even ☞ HXen (nb Xen’s strongest point is not desktop though), I’d say that overtime VMWare’s long experience in virtualization has been visible and also made the difference.

I am looking forward to testing the new version. I’ll start with the trial version, but I’ll definitely try to get a free license ;-) (wink).

Update: You can also download for free the book ☞ Take control of VMWare Fusion 3 (direct download link: ☞ here).