I recently spent a lot of time traveling, both as a tourist and as part of my job (in my line of work, there isn't really a clear line between the two). The more I travel the more I discover that, thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet and the advanced capabilities of smartphones, traveling hasn't changed this much since Columbus set sail (ok, maybe since those Wright kids got bored with just biking around their backyard).


Preparing For Liftoff
It starts off even before I embark on my adventure, while organizing all my plans. I use a great (free) service called TripIt which easily aggregates all my travel information (flights, hotels, rentals, etc...) and lets me access them from one spot both on the web and my phone. Adding all of my information is a cinch, I just forward all those flight confirmation e-mails (and such) to TripIt and they take it from there (they even have a Gmail plugin that does that automatically if you want). Using the TripIt app on the iPhone lets me easily check my flight status and gate changes, right before my flight. Very useful.


Getting Online
In my day to day life I rely on the Internet quite a bit (anybody say addiction?) but once I land in a foreign country it becomes my lifeline to learning about my surroundings, making my way around, connecting to people who have experience in the new wilderness I've been flung into, and sharing and documenting my experiences.

Once I land in a new country my first order of business is getting online (how else am I supposed to checkin on Foursquare at the airport?). Cellular roaming costs are a biiiiatch, so I would stay far away from that, but I've had different experiences with getting online in different countries. The best being in London, just walking in to a T-mobile store and £5 later I had a working cellphone with unlimited bandwidth for the month. In other countries the experience was less seamless (especially depending on the people's competence in English) but after some running around I always manage to get a local SIM (in Europe you usually want to ask for a "pay as you go" SIM with a data plan, but they don't always understand the "data plan" part). The prices vary but they usually have deals where you can get more than enough bandwidth for pretty cheap.

What I usually do is try to find some offline map apps for my iPhone before I leave home so that I at least have a map at my fingertips when I land and have yet to setup a reliable Internet connection. There are many different apps for this depending on where you're going, a quick Google from home will do the trick to find reviews about the best ones for your destination.


Then the Fun Begins
Being constantly connected with a smartphone while abroad used to be a fantasy (those are the kinds of the things I fantasize about :) but now it's a necessity.
It affects many aspects of my travels:

• Getting around - whether it's how to get to a conference venue, finding out where the hell I am, or locating the nearest subway station or nearest McDonald's (a man's gotta eat). Google maps is the killer app for this on the iPhone and Android. If you're in a major city like New York it will even show you public transportation times as part of the walking directions it gives you.
• What sights to see - when in tourist mode you don't really know what to see and where to go when planning a trip in a new city. I discovered that there are TONS of great iPhone apps for doing just that - many of them free. The best experience I had was with mTrip (specifically their app for London but they have guides for other cities). Although it's not free ($6, which is less than any travel book you'd buy) it gives you both offline information about tons of different places to see in your city of choice plus an awesome automatic day planner. What you do is tell it where you want to start your trip (your hotel for example), what kind of things you want to see (sight seeing, shopping, churches...), and how many days you have, and it automatically sets up your schedule for the entire trip. You can then manually edit your schedule (add/remove spots, rearrange stuff...) and it gives you transportation instructions from each spot to the next. It's like your own personal travel guide, the easiest way I could think of to getting to know a new city.
• Connecting with people - whether it's asking for tips and recommendations from friends or getting help with something when stuck, always being connected to your Twitter and Facebook friends is something that we will increasingly be relying on. I got great recommendations for restaurants and cool exhibits while in Amsterdam and even got a few people searching for me in real time for what settings I need in my iPhone in order to connect to the Vodafone network in Amsterdam (it's kinda hard to search when you don't have Internet :).
• Sharing and documenting - the reason people take cameras on trips with them is to both document the experience for themselves and to share with others. I find that by using services like GoWalla and Foursquare I can do both in real time. Ok ok, so GoWalla wont replace my camera entirely, but it's a great way for me to be able to look back and see exactly where I was at what time (and I get information about the place while checking in). And all my friends/followers can see where I am and share their experiences from that place. Invaluable (plus my mom keeps tabs on me this way).

Now I can hear all you naysayers saying "can't you disconnect from e-mails", "I go on vacation to get away from being connected",...

I think that attitude will disappear in the future as we cease to perceive e-mail and IM as work (actually future generations will probably only use Facebook, but that's another post) and the Internet becomes an even bigger, integral part of our lives.

Nobody forces me to answer emails or IMs while on vacation, even if I am connected, and it's up to me when to reply and at what length. It's like turning off the phone while you're away. Feel free to do it, but when you need the phone you turn it on.




What's Next
The two improvements that need to come next stem from the two biggest problems I had when travelling like this:

• Battery life
• Getting online

During my day to day I'm usually 1 hour away from a power outlet at worst. Most of the time I can plug my iPhone in and not have to worry about its abysmally short battery life (all smartphones currently suffer from this problem). However, while traveling I'll be away from power for at least 8 hours at a time, sometimes it can get up to almost double that. And these are not normal days where I use the iPhone occasionally (is once every 10 minutes considered occasionally?), while traveling I'll be using the phone every few minutes at times: to look at the map, open a travel guide, checkin to a location, take a picture, god forbid even upload a picture... All these things suck the battery like Snoop Dog’s toilet when the cops come.

Battery life needs to improve significantly so that we get to a point where we can do all of these things without having to worry about them killing the battery. Just like the good old days when your Nokia phone used to hold up for a week between charges.

The second road bump in my experiences (aside from losing my luggage, but who cares about that), is getting online in a new country. This needs to become entirely seamless at some point in the future so that you land, turn on your phone, and are connected (without the ridiculous roaming charges). Once demand increases, phone companies will need to realize that their services are a commodity, and as such we expect them to be readily available at our beck and call.

Until that happens, this will remain a luxury only for hardcore geeks.

I've been a big proponent of the Facebook Like button, ever since I saw Mark Zuckerberg announce it on stage at the last f8 conference. It seemed like a no-brainer, every site would add it and Facebook would take over the world.
There seemed to be no reason for a site not to add the innocuous little snippet of JavaScript code to every page/post.

Hell, within a week of announcing the Like button, Facebook stated that over 50,000 sites had already added it. According to Facebook, just a month after it was launched more than 100,000 sites had added it.

Of course I also added the Like button to this blog and was basically expecting readers to hit it if they enjoyed a post, thus telling their friends about it and maybe driving people back to my blog.

However, I think it's harming me! (well not harming me physically, but you get it)

Here's the deal: when I write a new blog post I also tweet about it and update about it on my Facebook wall.
Many people see my Facebook update in their Newsfeed and either comment there or hit like on the Facebook post.
This is what builds up as more people comment and like:



The more people comment on that and like it, the more it will appear in the news feeds for their friends and therefore gives me more exposure.

(bear with me here, I have a point)

When people click on the Like button at the bottom of an actual post on my blog here's what may appear in their news feed:



Much less appealing, ah?

Not only that, it also dilutes my "likes" (splits them into two groups, likes for the original post and likes for the update on Facebook about my post).

What I would like is a way to combine both groups of people who like my content into one group so they'd all promote the same thing, which would make it appear more in Facebook Newsfeeds.

I tried to manually add the Facebook Like code to each post, after I updated about it in Facebook so that the Like on my original post actually likes the Facebook update. It's a manual process that takes much more time but I was willing to do it. (I need to post to my blog, update about it on Facebook, quickly go back to edit the blog post, and manually add the Like snippet of code to the post).
The big problem is that Facebook for some reason (I'm guessing technical) doesn't allow adding their Like button to facebook.com URLs.

So I'm thinking about removing the Like button entirely from each post (until Facebook allows liking of facebook.com URLs).

My reasoning behind this is that if I remove the Like code from each blog post people may go back to the original Facebook update and hit Like there. No more diluting of likes and the updates that appear in people's newsfeeds will be the richer kind, not those puny ones that you get from the Like button.
For users who didn't come to my site from Facebook I'd ideally want to keep the regular Like button, at this point, but that's too much of a hassle.

So should I remove the Like button?

Let's start with a confession: I'm a Foursquare addict. The minute I arrive somewhere, I pull out my iPhone and check in on foursquare to let my ‘friends' know where I am. I also use Blippy when I buy stuff and I send pics of what I'm eating to Fiddme. My Last.fm account broadcasts to everyone what music I'm listening to, in real time.
Oh, and I tweet at least 30 times a day.

What's my point? Well, it's like this: A few years ago, I wouldn't even upload my photo and put it online, for fear of exposing myself to potential unwanted evils. Spyware had reared its ugly head and was out to get us.

But, enter the age of modern spyware, and we're all sucking it up. Why? Cuz it's fun, it's entertaining, it makes us feel important to have an audience. Besides, it's no longer perceived by the masses as being spyware. Hell, it's become weird NOT to do it – we're opting in, en-masse, to let companies spy on us. We're willingly and excitedly spying on ourselves and reporting in as often as possible, letting the world know pretty much everything there is to know about us.

And the more, the merrier, is the goal here; not only do we want an audience, but we follow up on who's following us, how many - we want numbers and we publish those numbers with pride: "I have 20,000 followers on Twitter!!"

So the question remains, WHY? Why do I spend so much of my time checking in and tweeting and posting? Why are so many of us unwilling to put down our smartphones before sticking the fork in our steaks, or getting on the treadmill? Is this a massive case of world-wide narcissism? Are we that attention-starved, or are we all just trying to stretch our 15 seconds of fame as far and wide as they'll go?

I've pondered this long and hard, and here's what I've come up with:

1. I guess the number of followers I have somehow makes me feel more significant than the four real-life friends I'm sitting to dinner with in ten minutes. Yes, dammit, I need to feel important.
2. I like the idea that I'm logging my life and can keep track of what I've done, where I've been, etc. For both me and for future generations who'll be able to look back and see that grandpa bought an iPad when it first came out (assuming they'll give a damn).
3. There's something comforting in knowing that while the big, scary, chaotic world around us expands and accelerates, I'm part of a global community that's getting closer and cozier with knowing more about one another.
4. To accelerate serendipity - when I arrive someplace, like a restaurant, I can immediately know if somebody I know is also there and connect with them.
5. To get a feeling for what's hot and what's not. When I see that lots of people go to the same restaurant (over time) it basically serves as a recommendation from my friends for the place. Same for bad reviews.
6. As a means of showing appreciation – if I get good customer service, have a tasty meal, find a great deal… I get an innate urge to share my happiness with the world and show appreciation for whoever/whatever was responsible for momentarily making me happy.
7. It brings people into my world and gets me closer to the people around me. This is probably the gist of it. I'm no longer alone when I choose not to be.

Shit, Foursquare just let me know that my friends are already at their table, and I'm clearly late for dinner.
Gotta run...