Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Making the Unbearable Slightly Better: Holiday Traveling Tactics



We all know how excruciating air travel can be: we all have tales of endless delays, horrid seatmates, unhelpful help, expensive carb-laden airport food and general misery (watching a $70 jar of tiny face cream deemed a liquid being tossed into the trash certainly qualifies!), so why belabor them here?

While airports and flights are more to be endured than enjoyed these days, there are a few tactics that I've founded in my million plus miles that might help this holiday season.

Tip #1: Drown it Out
Top of my list is avoiding actual contact and conversation with everyone possible. My must-have? Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones. I prefer the over the ear version, Bernard prefers the on the ear version. Just believe us: they really work. And don't cheap out and buy imitations, these are the ones that you need. Expensive, but worth every penny.

Tip #2: A Well-Stocked IPod
I always carefully plan my traveling playlists. My preference on long flights are books and podcasts rather than music. Somehow it makes those 8 hour flights fly by. Audible's got the widest selection of book downloads, and manybooks.net has the widest variety of FREE downloads (mostly classics that are in the public domain). My favorite podcasts to travel with? This American Life, without question.

Tip #3: Real-Time Flight Status
Lifehacker offers several great ways to figure out what's going on with your flight. My favorite are text alerts: test either Google (466453) or 4INFO (44636) with the airline and flight number to get the status texted back to you immediately.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Making it All Work: A Sneak Peek at David Allen's New Book




BNET just published a preview of David Allen's new book, "Making it All Work," which will be released at the end of this year. Allen, the "Getting Things Done" guru, is a personal favorite of mine, and his GTD principles help keep me organized and on track (my incredibly messy desk nonwithstanding). His earlier books, "Getting Things Done" and "Ready for Anything," are must reads for anyone interested in figuring out how to deal with all of the "stuff" in our work life and personal life. Check out the excerpts here, and let me know what you think.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Stuff I'm Loving Right Now


Online: my new favorite source of news, gossip and information is The Daily Beast, who's motto is "Read This, Skip That." Uber-Editor Tina Brown's foray into the online world, after stints at Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and the ill-fated Talk magazine, seems to have a winner here. It's a singular combination of snarky gossip and snippets, thoughtful yet short(!) articles, lots of financial and political commentary. Just my cup 'o tea and I can breeze through it in a couple of minutes. Can't decide though, how I feel about Alexandra Penney's blog, "The Bag Lady Series." Penney, a former magazine editor-turned-artist and one of the many victims of Bernie Madoff, is equal parts annoying and sympathy-provoking. She lives in NYC, for god's sake, but hadn't ever taken a bus or cab? I'm quite adverse to public transportation in Chicago, but you really do need to use the subway in NYC. Read a couple of her posts and let me know what you think. I think that my sympathy for her is wearing thin.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

End of the Year Reviews...


It's a little early for end of lists, however my two favorite ones are out now. The Time Magazine List Issue, and the New York Times Magazine Eight Annual Year in Ideas Issue. What I love about these issues is everything I missed...

From Time, which offers its top ten on many topics: Apparently I missed some of the top buzzwords of the year: "nuke the fridge," and "topless meetings.".

Time on Food Trends: how did I miss the Clover? The best coffee machine in the world? Guess so, since Starbucks purchased the company. Anyone know of a Clover in Chicago? Next, the Mex-Italian trend? Haven't found it anywhere in Chicago yet, but it can't be far away.

Their top ten gadgets I can't wait to try? The Optoma Pico PK-101: a projector for IPods and IPhones. Tiny, powerful, totally cool. Several boys in our family are getting the Flip MinoHD(an incredibly small, hi def camcorder that's idiot proof and comes with its own editing software (please don't tell the boys!). I'm also hoping for a Kindle for myself under the tree.

From the New York Times Year in Ideas: Ideas that I hadn't heard of: Automated Anesthesia, Gallons Per Mile (not miles per gallon), and moonvertising.