TripIt turns chaos into order by making it easy for anyone to:

• Organize trip details into one master online itinerary — even if arrangements are booked at multiple travel sites
• Automatically include maps, directions and weather in their master itinerary
• Have the option to book restaurants, theatre tickets, activities and more right from within the online itinerary
• Safely access travel plans online, share them, check-in for flights, or print an itinerary

Automatically get itineraries with all your plans, weather, maps, restaurants and more since the site adds information to your itinerary from various sources like:

Google for maps and directions

NOAA for weather information

Seatguru for airline seating information

Wikipedia for city information

Eventful for local event information

Flickr for city photos

Opentable for dining reservations

Visit www.tripit.com and sign up for a free account. The site will send a confirmation email asking you to validate your email address. Once you click on the confirmation link, you will be asked to add additional information about yourself. At this point make sure you enter any email address that you may forward travel plans from. The email addresses you enter will help the site identify you when you forward your travel plans via email.

Forward any travel confirmation emails that you receive from your airline, hotel, rental car, or online travel site with the details about your travel bookings. You will forward your travel plans to plans@tripit.com via email.

Tripit works by automatically organizing all your travel confirmation emails into your master itinerary.

Access your travel itinerary via the web or login via your mobile device. From the website you will be able to review a number of key points in your travel plans.

You can drill deeper into your itinerary and review the details. The deep dive will provide you information like, seating information, weather, and recommended restaurants for dining.

You can also share your travel plans with your contacts from multiple site and links. Placing a check mark in the check box next to the contact will allow you to forward your itinerary to the selected contacts.

TripIt Mobile - m.tripit.com

TripIt Mobile is a slimmed-down interface that’s designed specifically for mobile phones. You simply point your mobile device to m.tripit.com. TripIt Mobile works with Apple iPhone, Palm Treo, RIM Blackberry, or any mobile device with a web browser.

TripIt Mobile also displays Closeness Matches and Activity Alerts so it’s easy to stay on top of what’s going on in your TripIt network.

The iPhone view is much nicer a display than the Blackberry view although both will provide the much needed information when and where you need it.

TripIt To Me - email query

TripIt To Me is a feature that lets you get your trip information from anywhere you have access to email, including laptops and mobile devices.

Just email a command to plans@tripit.com and TripIt will respond right away. For example, if you email “get trip” to plans@tripit.com, TripIt will email back your trip itinerary.

The Tripit To Me pocket card available in .PDF for here - Pocket Card, provides you additional features when requesting you trip information from Tripit.

Tripit is a great site to help the traveler organize your itineraries and provide you a deep dive of information for all of your travel plans.

This is one great site and gets 5 stars from me!

In the May 2008 issue of Laptop magazine, Everett Potter points out an 11-point checklist to help take out the sting of flight delays, airport chaos, and long security lines. I decided to review these, select the best, and add a few comments and points from my experience as well as the shared experiences from my fellow travelers.

Stay in the clear

Several airports have begun to implement the new Fly Clear card found at www.flyclear.com.  The Fly Clear program is a pre-screening process that allows you to access the fast lane at airports that support the Fly Clear process. The first-year price for Fly Clear is $100 and a $28 TSA fee. Currently the Fly Clear process is operating in Albany, N.Y.; Cincinnati; Denver; Indianapolis; Jacksonville, FL.; Little Rock, Arkansas; New York City (JFK & LGA); Newark, N.J.; Oakland, CA.; Orlando, FL.; Reno, Nev.; San Francisco and San Jose, CA.;  Washington, D.C. (Dulles and Reagan); White Plains (Westchester County), N.Y. 

While the Fly Clear program would save you time moving through a long line at the airport, I found that regular business travelers have special programs offered by the airlines to help them speed through most of the delays.  American Airlines offer Gold, Platinum, and Executive Platinum programs that allow business travelers to speed through the first class security lines and allow pre-boarding, which the Fly Clear process does not offer. 

My suggestion is to save your money. If you frequent an airport and truly are a business traveler, you already have most of the features with a frequent flyer program offered by your common carrier that Fly Clear wants you to pay for.

Check your battery

Regulations went into effect on January 1, 2008 that state you may not carry spare lithium batteries in your checked baggage.  However, you may carry as many lithium batteries in your carry-on as you like as long as they are less than 8-grams or a maximum of two 8-25 gram batteries.  Most cell phone and laptop batteries are below the 8-gram limitation, but you can find more details at safetravel.dot.gov

Another suggestion would be to invest the money by purchasing a combo air-power charger in lieu of a spare battery.  These combo chargers/power sources allow you to connect to a power seat outlet (12-15 volts) on most airplanes today, as well as 110 power sources.  When making reservations ask for a seat with a power outlet.  The travel agent or specialist should be able to confirm if the plane is equipped with a power seat outlet and assign a seat for you.  

Note: While some seats have the power outlet there are occasions where the power inverter does not work.  Keep this in mind when making a decision to purchase a dual power supply or spare battery.   

Consider Flying Southwest

While business travelers are not huge fans of Southwest airlines because of their cattle call approach to flying, they have begun to implement a new business traveler program.  In may cases for an additional $10-$30 more you are able to confirm a spot in the “A” group of passengers to board, a free cocktail, and extra frequent flyer credits.  

Keep in mind that Southwest as well as other airlines offers the ability to check-in 24-hours in advance.  You could log in and check-in to beat the mad rush and get a better chance to drop into the first group of cattle-car loading.  You do not have a printer, no problem.  Search the Internet for a free PDF program.  These programs allow you to create a PDF file by selecting the PDF creator instead of your printer.  Then when you do get to a printer you can connect to, you can print your boarding pass before your flight.  

There has also been discussion about a paperless check-in process that some airlines would use in conjunction with your PDA, Smartphone or Blackberry.  You would simply download your boarding pass with a bar code image.  This image could be scanned at the gate and confirm passage.  Great, now instead of waiting for the guy in front of you to unfold his boarding pass, we can wait for him to shift his carry-on to the other hand, place his call on hold, open the email, display the image on his phone to move through the gate.  Can we add this to the security checkpoint too?

Use an agent

Anyone can go online and find what they may think is the lowest fare; travel agents still have ways to not only find a great fair but offer assistance in other areas.  Travel agents can help with last minute changes, cancelations, and understand the waivers, discounts, and upgrade certificates.  Most agents charge 8-10% but that could be money well spent.  Ask your friends for help in finding a travel agent that they recommend.  You can also check out www.asta.org for more recommendations.

Consolidate expenses

If you have a small company and are bent on controlling expenses (who isn’t) check out this site, www.americanexpress.com/axiom.  Developed by American Express Axiom estimates that 41% of travel expenses today are not controlled.  The goal of the company is to rein them in.  Axiom cannot only address air, car and hotel, you an also arrange UPS, FedEx, DHL shipping, dining reservations, park and fly, and arrange event tickets from Ticketmaster.  You need not be a card member to use the service and charges vary based on the size of company and travel budget.

Getting a good seat

So, you can’t get an upgrade because a more elite frequent flyer has beaten you to the punch.  The consolation prize is a good seat in the back of the plane, because not every seat is equal.  Check out www.seatguru.com, or www.seatexpert.com, both allow you to study diagrams of various aircraft configurations by carrier.  Some airlines like United are aggressively selling their Economy Plus seats, which can offer up to 5 more inches of leg room.  This could make a difference on operating more comfortably with a laptop or not.  United does the same with exit rows and you might pay an additional $44 one-way at the gate for the privileged space.   

Another tip: As you study the live seating chart, try to refrain from choosing an entire empty 3-seat row, as couples often seek the two seats that are left. Instead, look for an aisle seat when a window seat has been taken, or vise versa.  This will increase your chances of having a little more space if no one sits in the middle.

Pay close attention to the 3-1-1 rule

You may be familiar with the 3-1-1 rule (as many 3 ounce containers of any liquid that can fit into a 1-qt bag, one per passenger) at the security checkpoint, but some TSA agents can give you a hard time for generic or unmarked containers or bottles.  It may not be worth the hassle when you can just invest in the commercial toiletries you can purchase today.  Keep in mind that most hotels, even the cheap ones provide shampoo so don’t bring it with you unless you have to have that favorite avocado scented shampoo.

Another tip is to keep the bag handy.  You may want to place it in the same pocket as your laptop to make moving through the security checkpoint less painful.  

Carry vital information with you

Smart business travelers program all common tool free numbers to hotels and airlines as well as any airline rebooking numbers into their phone.  Blackberry users can download WorldMate Live from www.mobimate.com and use their free service.  The service allows you to manage your itinerary and makes it accessible on your mobile device.  Receive travel alerts, weather forecasts and access to world clocks. Additional features are available for a fee and an Outlook add-in is available.  The Outlook add-in makes this one a favorite of mine.  

Handmark’s Pocket Express at www.express.handmark,com is another travel application that offers additional features for a fee but no Outlook add-in at this time. 

But if $12.95 is just not in your budget and you have a Mac, you could use Alarm Clock 2. Similar to Awaken 4, but lacks the nice user interface and a few less bells and whistles. However, for a free program, it will do the job and do it well.

For my Windows friends out there, iSnooze is a free windows application similar to Awaken 4 and Alarm Clock2. Providing similar functionality for the Windows platform.

These programs all offer multiple alarms, increase voluming, visuals, and sleep timers. Now you have no excuse when your traveling and your alarm clock does not go off.  You can download anyone of these applications and it can become your main or backup alarm.

Microsoft Outlook has what is referred to as Smart Date Logic. I know what you’re thinking… Wow, fancy words, but what does that really mean to you? It means you could enter the following entries in the cleared start date field and Outlook with update appropriately.

Try these entries:

Two weeks before Christmas

3 weeks before 1/1/2009

3rd Tuesday in August

40 days before December 25th

In this example I entered two weeks after Christmas:

The result after pressing enter was:

Once you press the enter key or move to the next field, Outlook will automatically update the start date field with the date.

You can use the same approach for the end time.

You can use entries like:

Two weeks after

30 days after

1 month after

The system will update the field with the proper information. The Smart Date Logic works with Outlook 2003 and 2007.

Now if you are a BlackBerry or iPhone user, well that’s different.. It is much easier to respond with an SMS message to the person who lets face it, is saying, “I need my answer and I really do not want to waste time talking with you on the phone.” But responding via an SMS message back on my little cell phone is not my idea of communication.  It’s really more like frustration.

I thought to myself there must be an easier way to send an SMS message.  I have this powerful computer and big keyboard with all those keys to allow my stubby fingers to pres them in just the proper sequence to make sense, or at least I hope.  What I miss, well spell check will pick up and offer me a solution to my fat fingering the keys.

On to the meat of the subject, sending SMS messages to your friends and family via email.  Most major carriers have an email address established for you that allows people to use the feature of sending an email to a phone.  Keep in mind that carriers can charge per text message unless you have some unlimited daughter message usage plan.  I picked up this plan when my daughter racked up a $1,000 phone bill because of the 2,400 text messages she decided to send her boyfriend.  But alas, off subject again.

Just simply enter the address in the to: field and type in your text.  Keep in mind that you want to limit the amount of characters you use.  Most systems will restrict a message that steps beyond 115 characters.

Cingular: phonenumber@cingularme.com

Nextel: phonenumber@messaging.nextel.com

Sprint: phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com

T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net

Verizon: phonenumber@vtext.com

Virgin Mobile: phonenumber@vmobl.com

where the ‘phonenumber’ is = your 10 digit phone number

Example: 4081234567@vtext.com

Well, there you go… No need to type in the funky little keypad to send your messages out to the world.  Of course, you could just pick up the phone to speak with the person.

If you are like most business users running Microsoft Outlook for work, you have a real problem.  Your company is using Microsoft Exchange and sharing calendars outside your company network is next to impossible, or at least it was up until a few weeks ago.  Recently, Google has made available the Google Calendar Sync application.

The new application allows Outlook users to sync their calendar to the Google calendar online. This small 628 kb file allows users to sync information to and from both calendars or select the option for a one way sync.

Once you install the application and configure the program (within minutes), it will sit quietly in your system tray and will sync automatically based on the time interval you select. A great little application making life simpler.   

To learn more and download this great little application visit: Google Sync/Outlook

To share your calendar by setting proper permissions you must go to the “Calendar” section in Outlook and look under the navigation pane.  Select, “Share my Calendar” and it will open up the calendar properties window.

 In the calendar properties window select the “Permissions” tab to choose the users that can access the calendar and what level of access they are allowed.  

Click on the “Add” button to search your company’s global address book for the user you want to provide access.  Make sure to set the ‘Permission Level” from the dropdown to allow the person selected to review, author, or contribute to your calendar. 

To view a calendar that has been shared, click on “Open” under the “File” menu and choose “Other users Folder” 

Click on the “Name” button and search for the person that shared their calendar with you in the company global address book.  You may enter multiple names to add any calendars that have been shared, then click “OK” to accept the chosen names. 

Then click on “OK” again to add the shared calendars to your calendar view. 

You may receive an errror if the person has not shared their calendar with you or has not set up the proper permissions.

Yes, that’s right, no scary tech words, just a simple and quick explanation on RSS Feeds/readers and how to use them. I recommend that you watch the video, but in a nutshell, RSS feeds are a way of bringing the web to you. Feeds are read using RSS readers. Outlook 2007 has an RSS reader built in and by simply adding the RSS feed link to your reader (explained in the video), you can receive updates just as you do email. Another nice RSS reader is Google reader, its free try it..

The information is delivered to your door step!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

Using tactics like, “good cop, bad cop”, “unable to afford payments”, “just shy about making the large purchase”, or the “it is not really the color I wanted…”, could leave a few more bucks back in your wallet.

Savvy consumers, empowered by the Internet and encouraged by a slowing economy, are finding that they can dicker on prices, not just on clearance items or big-ticket products like televisions but also on lower-cost goods like cameras, audio speakers, couches, rugs and even clothing  - Matt Ritchel - NEW YORK TIMES March 23, 2008

To read more of the story…. NEW YORK TIMES - Even at mega-store, hagglers find no price set in stone

Negotiating maybe acceptable at the store your at and it’s always worth a try.  After all, you have nothing to lose and much to gain.  A few things you should do before heading out into haggle city.  Do your homework on-line first, find out what the fair price from a notable reseller.  Weigh the advantages of working with an on-line retailer versus a brick and mortar store.  Many stores offer the best of both worlds like Circuit City (The City) and Best Buy.  Purchase on-line and return via the physical store if there is an issue. Keep in mind that almost all stores with match prices and some like Lowes will give you an extra 10% off if you find a lower price from a local brick and mortar store.

Begin to drop hints as you are working with you sales associate that the price is high compared to to other stores.  Prepare your face for the “eyes bugging out of the sockets” trick when you see the total price as it appears on the register.  This is also a point to put the squeeze on your pimple faced salesman into nervousness.  This adds just a little more stress as more customers are waiting, the frustration that they just spent 30 minutes of their life with you when they could have been listening to latest song by Usher and Young Jeezy.

Keep in mind that there is usually room to work with the associate on extended warranties. Use this to your advantage after you have exhausted all pockets of puff on the price.  When looking at applicances keep in mind that you need to take into consideration hook-ups, delivery, and removal of appliances.  While Best Buy may offer free delivery and removal, Lowes could be less expensive in the long run by taking advantage of the 10% competitive price discount (Lowes can offer rebates back on delivey charges).

So, ready set, start haggling….

I will tell you after being a PC guy for 27+ years I have made the jump over to a Mac. I am a convert.. The challenge is that I still have to use a PC in the business world.  But someday they will realize.. 

Check out the latest video and see for yourself.

Who comes up with these?     

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd1b8vLz9LA