Practical Hacks

Mrs. Hacks: Europe for a week and a half, no checked luggage – how I did it

Pat — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:00:34 +0000

A few readers have asked how my wife managed to travel for 11 days in Europe, with stops in Rome, Sorrento, London, and (on our return) Chicago, without checking any luggage. After spending several weeks cajoling, pleading, and downright groveling (I exaggerate slightly), she finally agreed to write a brief post about her packing method; [...]

Indispensable Travel Tool #3: Smartphone

Kevin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:00:12 +0000

In a recent post I mentioned that there were several travel tools that were absolutely indispensable during our week and a half-long trip to Italy. I suppose the trip would have been possible without them, but they made it much easier and more enjoyable. In this series of posts, I’ll examine each of those tools [...]

Flexible travel dates? Score a deal with AirfareWatchdog’s Fare Alert feature

Kevin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:28:14 +0000

I’ve written about AirfareWatchdog before; here’s the quick summary which appears in my Ultimate list of top travel sites post: Are you a procrastinator? Do you occasionally have to travel on little notice? If you answer “yes” to either of these questions, check out AirfareWatchdog. The site has a solid record of posting bargain, fire sale [...]

How to turn a cup into a customer

Kevin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:00:33 +0000

An unexpected alchemy, certainly. A week ago I ordered a set of cappuccino cups and saucers from cooking.com, and they arrived yesterday. I should note, incidentally, that I’ve never ordered anything from cooking.com before. Unpacking them, I discovered that one of the cups was chipped, and called the firm’s Customer Service department. (I hoped they’d be [...]

Links Roundup: iPad edition

Kevin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:00:42 +0000

For the last several days I’ve been playing with a 32GB 3G iPad. It’s a marvelous device, perfect for entertainment (movies, music, podcasts, book reader), but I’m not sure how well it’ll work for mobile computing (MS-Office type tasks), and blogging. I’m composing this post on the iPad, but the iPad’s touch screen keyboard is [...]