Spot Cool Stuff: Websites

The Cool Comics of The Oatmeal

Spot Cool Stuff — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:00:08 +0000

What’s the proper way to use a semicolon?

- and -

How long could you survive after kicking a bear in the balls?

These and other burning questions are answered in fun graphical form on a Spot Cool Stuff website favorite: The Oatmeal.

The site is the creatively genius work of a Seattle graphic designer who never seems to explain the origin’s of his site’s name. Not that it matters. The Oatmeal would be engaging under any moniker.

Our favorite pages on Oatmeal are the oversized comics, the ones full of detail that require quite a bit of scrolling to get through.

Some Oatmeal comics are absurdist, like the depiction of how everything goes to hell during a zombie apocalypse—turns out things wouldn’t be too bad if the non-zombies simply decided to stay home with shotguns pointed at their front doors.

Other comics are more real world informative, albeit not in a life-changing sort of way. Pilgrims on the Mayflower stopped at Plymouth Rock rather than continuing on to Virginia because they ran out of beer? Who knew?

In addition to its full-fledged comics, Oatmeal has several fun quizzes, a shop for buying related books and posters and a collection of snarky emails the site creator has received.

Everything on the site is creative fun. Making Oatmeal a tasty treat any time of day.

published: Mar 2010

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Click on the image to see the entire page on Oatmeal:

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Best Spot Cool Stuff Website Reviews of 2009

Spot Cool Stuff — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:33:16 +0000

We spend nearly every day searching out cool websites. And nearly every day we are amazing at the possibilities the world wide web offers.

Our favorite website review posts from the past year:

#10: Cool Websites For Home Remodeling & Redecoration

Our choice websites for locating a quality contractor, finding home furnishings and (perhaps more important) being inspired.

#9: Strange & Wonderful Maps

Our review of a blog collecting all manner of funny, fascinating and fantastic maps.

#8: Eight Cool Flickr Photostreams

The Flickr photo sharing website has drawn tens of thousands of photographers to share their camera-lens view of the world. Here are eight of our favorites.

#7: Book Dog- and Cat-Friendly Hotels Online

In partnership with our travel blog we tested every hotel booking website we could find for their prowess at finding pet-friendly accommodations. Here’s our review of those sites we found to be best.

#6: Eight Free Websites For Expanding Your Music Horizons

The internet opens up a world of music possibilities the days of radio dominance could never offer. Our eight favorite sites for finding new tunes.

#5: Cool Websites To Use While Traveling

Most people know websites where they can book or plan a trip (like, to take a random example, Spot Cool Stuff’s travel site). Here’s a collection of websites you may find useful during your journey.

#4: The Best Online Dating Site For You

An online yenta showdown between Match.com, eHarmony, Just For Lunch and Lavalife.

#3: Five Incredible Photoblogs

We absolutely love these photography-filled sites, including one that bills itself as The 100 Year Old Blog

#2: Best Website Hosts for a Wordpress Blog

These four website hosts offer low prices and high reliability. They are also designed to make setting up a Wordpress blog easy! (If you are proficient at Wordpress, or are planning to set up some other sort of website, check out our review of the best eco-friendly website hosts.)

#1: 8 Weird and Wacky Items Sold on Amazon.com

Land Cruisers, coffin beds, wedding chapels and uranium ore are among the bizarre items you can buy on Amazon.com. Really!

Coming in 2010

A few of the posts we have planned for the coming year:

• a look at online-only museums;

• a review of the best websites for printing creative & unusual business cards;

• a comparison of Netflix v Blockbuster.

And, of course, we’ll continue to bring you humorous blogs, the best travel websites and reviews of cool online stores.

Stay updated on all our website posts by following us on Twitter, subscribing to our RSS feed, signing up to receive our posts by email (in the brown box at the top right of every SCS Website page) or simply returning to our cool websites blog often. Thanks!

published: Jan 2010

Where to Watch Classic TV Commercials Online

Spot Cool Stuff — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 01:43:18 +0000

Television commercials. Watching them today is an annoyance. But there’s something about seeing commercials from 30~40~50 years ago that can provide a nostalgic and interesting look into bygone times.

Here’s our selection of websites where you can watch classic television commercials for free:

AdViews

When the students and faculty of Duke University aren’t busy watching basketball they apparently spend their time collecting vintage tv commercials. The commercials on their AdViews site are well organized by product, company and year. Unfortunately, you can’t watch them in a web browser. Instead the commercials on AdViews must be downloaded via iTunes.

YouTube

Unsurprisingly, YouTube has a huge collection of vintage TV ads. The problem is that they are completely uncategorized. Some of the videos are titled something like “classic TV commercial” but generally you need to know what you are looking for. Happily, some sites have tried cataloging old commercials on YouTube. Our favorite of these is Retro TV Ads. Another is Classic Commercials though that site’s design is rather frustrating.

USA TV Ads

This site has the largest online collection of TV commercials—more than one million! Most of the ads here are from the last few years but there is a special section for older commercials.

Library of Congress / Coca-Cola

The United States Library of Congress has microsite devoted to the advertising of that most American of products: Coca-Cola. In addition to viewing vintage Coke ads you can get some of the history behind them and see a timeline of Cola-Colas advertising themes going all the way back to 1886.

Retro Junk

There’s a nice little collection of vintage TV ads on this site organized by decade: 1970s, 80s and 90s. This is probably the easiest site of all those on this list to have fun browsing around though we wish Retro Junk included ads from the 60s and 50s too.

Super Bowl Ads

The era of special Super Bowl advertisements haven’t been around long enough for those commercials to be considered “vintage.” But how could we not this site to our list? It not only has every Super Bowl ad since 1998 but also related articles and info.

More About Vintage TV Ads

Classic TV Commercials: Ones We Never Forgot

If you are truly a fan of classic commercials—or aspire to be—there’s an excellent 3-disc collection on DVD with 337 of them.

Hiya Kids! A 50’s Saturday Morning Box

Howdy Doody, Flash Gordon, Lassie, Ding Dong School, The Roy Rogers Show—episodes from these and 15 other vintage shows are collected on this 3-disc DVD set.

The Golden Age of Advertising

A series of books by Jim Heimann that offers a fascinating behind-the-scens look at advising in a particular decade.

Air Wars: Television Advertising in Election Campaigns

If vintage American political advertising is your special interest there’s no better book than this one by Darrell West; it looks at ads from every major (and some minor) election campaigns, 1952 through 2008.

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The Website Where Kids Design Their Stuffed Animals

Spot Cool Stuff — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:43:01 +0000

Spot Cool Stuff laments the general direction children’s toys have taken away from requiring imagination. Surely, part of the issue has been the proliferation of online gaming websites aimed at kids.

But if websites have been part of the problem maybe they can be part of the solution? That’s the idea behind the Israel-based start-up Shidonni.

Shidonni has a variety of fun, imagination-enhansing online games for children. Kids can draw animals, for example, upload the drawing to the Shindonni site, and then have their animal creation roam around the virtual Shindonni world for others users to see.

And here’s our favorite part: On Shidonni you can take a child’s drawing of an imaginary creature and then turn it into a real life stuffed animal!

It’s easy: Simply create a free Shidonni account, have your child draw their animal (either a profile or straight-ahead picture), then go to the website’s “One-of-a-Kind Planet” area and place your order for $80. A stuffed, three-dimentional, 12-inch (30cm) high rendition of the animal in your child’s drawing will arrive in the mail a week or two later. Check out what Shidonni’s animal drawing and manufacture process looks like in the video below.

Shidonni has won a Parent’s Choice Gold Award and is unreservedly declared a Most Excellent Choice by Spot Cool Stuff. But the most important endorsement will come from your children.

published: Dec 2009

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Light In The Box: Wholesale Bargains From China

Spot Cool Stuff — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:50:33 +0000

If you’ve traveled to China and been to an electronics or fashion market there chances are you’ve been struck by two facts:

1) How cheap the prices are (relative to North America and Europe); and

2) How many products are available there that aren’t in your home country.

To take advantage of these facts you could travel to China with extra room in your suitcase. Or, you could shop at what might be Spot Cool Stuff’s single favorite online store: Light In The Box.

From its name you’d think Light In The Box was some sort of lamp store. In fact, it’s a e-commerce business that sources products direct from wholesalers in China and sells them to consumers in 50 countries around the world. Light In The Box’s price is the same no matter what country you shop from.

Being gadget lovers, we have a special fondness for Light In The Box’s electronics section. Some of the products there are Chinese versions of Western items. Like the phone in the photo to the right. It isn’t an iPhone. It’s a hiPhone. The touchscreen on this phone isn’t quite as fluid as it is on its Apple counterpart and it doesn’t sync up with a Mac as well. On the other hand the hiPhone has some advantages over the iPhone: it can accommodate two SIM cards at once, it is unlocked (eg. doesn’t require an contracts or specific service providers) and best of all it costs only US$80!

Other electronics at Light In The Box don’t have any direct counterpart to a product in your home country. There are all sorts of Chinese designed MP3 players (that ship for free through this Spot Cool Stuff link) and cell phones, for example, that you won’t find anywhere else. This makes Light In The Box a great source for gifts—it’s easy to select an item you can be certain your giftee doesn’t already have.

At the other end of the spectrum, Light In The Box sells items that are identical to those found in, say, America, Austria or Australia. At Light In The Box you can buy a Mac Laptop for around 30% less than you could at your locally. The Mac bought in your local Apple store is made in China too, Light In The Box simply by cuts out the middle man.

But there’s more to Light In The Box that gadgets. The store has an impressive selection evening gowns and wedding dresses. A formal dress of the sort that, you know, you might actually wear costs as less as $50 at Light In The Box. There’s also a large selection of home items (faucets, for instance), fashion apparel, jewelry and sporting goods.

Browsing through the items on Light In The Box might not be quite the adventure and bargain offered by markets in China. But it isn’t far off.

GO TO THE SITE | SEE LIGHT IN THE BOX SPECIAL DEALS |

A few Light In The Box items that caught our eye:

7 inch – Touch Screen – 2 Din In-Dash Car DVD Player With DVB-T Bluetooth GPS Ipod Function – Dual Zone (SZC800)

Overview:This car entertainment features touch-screen technology, DVB-T, built-in GPS, Bluetooth,Ipod and many more great functions. When you are on the road, this is best choice to entertain your passengers and help kill time. The 7″ TFT LCD wide-screen display provides information for whatever source you are watching or listening to, and retracts when not in use. Excellent 16:9 aspect ration, stereo, USB port, and compatibility with multiple formats including JPEG, DivX and so on. Purchase this excellent Car DVD Player with one year warranty now!Highlights GPS Touch Screen Multi-Language Select Ipod Support Remote Control TpyeDVB-TSpecifications: GPS Operating System Windows CE 5.0 GPS Processor Samsung S3C2440A-40 Main Frequency 400MHZ Store Space 128MB,Max support 4GB Support Map Finean,IGO,Route66,TOMTOM GPS Map Language English , French , Spanish , German , Portuguese , Polish , Greek Voice Guidance Cruise Yes GPS Antenna 1 GPS antenna interface on the back GPS Dual Zone Yes , you can enjoy music and radio while navigation System Form Factor In-Dash Enclosure Type 2 Din Security Features Detachable Faceplate Features GPS,Dual Zone,Built-in Bluetooth,TVFunction,Radio Function,Subwoofer Output,Support Ipod,DVB-T Display Display Mode 16:9 Screen Size 7 inch Touch Screen Yes Screen Resolution 480*234 Display Type LCD-TFT Brightness Control Yes OSD Language English Radio Radio Tuner FM, AM Station Preset Qty 30 Support RDS Yes Radio response bandwidth AM: 520-1700; FM: 87-110 DVD Video Output System NTSC, PAL,SECAM Video Output D/K.I.B/G.M Media Type CD , DVD-R/RW , DVD-RAM , Video CD , Mp3 , Mp4 , WMA , JPEG Signal-To-Noise Ratio 85 dB TV tuner Digital TV or Analog TV DVB-T Amplifier Form Factor In-dash unit integrated Amplifier max output power / channel qty 50 Watts x 4 EQ mode Classic Bluetooth Version V2.0,support AD2P(Bluetooth Stereo Music),can play stereo music through Bluetooth Built-in microphone Yes Received Call Yes Dialled Call Yes Missed Call Yes Remote Control Remote Control Technology Infrared Interface A/V Input 2 Channel A/V Output 4 Channel Connector Type 1 x A/V IN , 1 x A/V OUT , 1 x BRAKE CHECK , 1 x REARCAMERA , 1 x CONNECTERS (POWER ETC) ,1 x IPOD USB/SD Card Port USB Port, SD Port Ipod Control Yes Direct Connection Cable for Ipod Included Yes Additional Features Portable HDD Compatible Yes Built-in Speaker Yes CDC(CD Charger) No Subwoofer Output Yes Motorized slide-down Face Yes Anti-Shock Yes General Color Black Dimensions/W*D*H 180X170X100 mm Operation Temperature -10?-50? Storage Temperature -20?~75? Warranty 1Year What’s in the box 1 DVD Host, 1 Remote Control, 1User Manual, 1 Cable, 1GPS Antenna

Phisung HDV990 5.0 MP CMOS Digital Camcorder with 3.0-inch TFT LCD(SZW681)

Features 1/2.5” 5.0 Mega Pixel CMOS Sensor Build-in 32 MB,SD / SDHC Class 6 can support 5 X Optical Zoom 3.0”TFT LCD (960 x 240 Pixel) NTSC/PAL/ Aberration Output Specifications Image Sensor?1/2.5” 5.0 Mega Pixel CMOS Sensor Storage Media?Build-in 32 MB,SD / SDHC Class 6 can support ISO Sensitivity?Auto Color Effective: Color/B&W/Classic Lens : 5 X Digital Zoom Wide Angle? F/3.2, f=6.26mm Telephoto? F/6.8, f=30.75mm Focus Range: Normal? 45cm ~ inf. ;Marco? 5cm ~ 45cm Video Resolution File format? H.264 (MOV) Resolution? CIF, D1, HD (1280 x 720/ 30 fpts) Quality? Fine?Normal Data Transmit Speed? Max. 30fps. Image Resolution File format? JPEG (DPOF, EXIF) Resolution? 3MP?5MP?8MP (Fireware Interpolation) Quality? Auto Zoom Video Camera and Recording? 5 X Digital Zoom Video Camera? 5 X Optical Zoom Image Play? Max. 8 X Digital Zoom LCD Screen: 3.0”TFT LCD (960 x 240 Pixel) LED Flash: Effective Distance? 0.5m ~ 1m Mode? On/Off Flash (Camera): Effective Distance? 1m ~ 1.5m ; Mode? Auto/Off/On White Balance: Auto/Sunshine/Cloudy/Tungsten/Fluorescent Exposure: -2.0 EV~+2.0 EV Self- Timer: Off?5?10 Seconds Interface: Video Camera? USB 2.0 (High Speed) MSDC? USB 2.0 (High Speed) TV Output: NTSC/PAL/ Aberration Output Shutter: 1 ~ 1/ 2000 sec. Power Saving: Off /1 Minute /5 Minutes Power Source: NP-120 Li-ion Battery Dimension: 57 (W) x 70 (H) x 129 (L) mm Weight: 292+-5g (absence battery) What’s in the box Phisung HDV990 HDMI cable (1.2m) AV cable (1.2m) USB-cable (0.9m) NP-120 Li-ion rechargeable battery Power adapter CD (w/ video codec, AP, and user’s manual) Camera Bag

4-pc Avon River Purple Charm Cotton Duvet Cover Set – Free Shipping (9S200005S)

Specification Brand Cozzy Set Include 1 duvet cover, 1 fitted sheet, 2 Pillowcase Material Description 210 thread-count, 100% cotton Actual Dimension 200cm*230 cm(Duvet cover); 230cm*245 cm(Fitted sheet);48cm*74 cm( Pillowcase) Washing Method Washable Shipping Weight 2.8 kg FeatureHigh quality fabric material and filling material make sure the bedding items perfect for you.Fashion designs by Famous designers, your selections will be elegant bedding collections.All of our bedding items are ready in our warehouse and can be shipped out in 7 days.Bedding Size GuidePlease kindly note that this is just a standard size guide for customer reference. Please look carefully about the actual dimensions before you make a decision.

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Cool Websites For Home Remodeling & Redecoration

Spot Cool Stuff — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:45:00 +0000

House remodeling and decoration has been part of owning a home for as long as there have been homes to own. (Even back in the caveman days we can imagine Mrs. Caveman working to remodel the fire pit area while Mr. Caveman sought to improve his spear storage area.) In today’s real estate market fixing up a current home is an especially desirable option when compared to the difficulties of selling your house and buying a new one.

Here are our favorite websites for finding a contractor, finding home remodeling inspiration and finding new home furnishings:

Find a Contractor

By far, the most important step to remodeling project you aren’t doing yourself is finding the right contractor. The difference between a bad contractor and a good one is the difference between your home remodeling project being completed slightly late and over budget and it being very late and over budget.

There are several sites designed to help you find a contractor. The best two:

Angie’s List is one of Spot Cool Stuff’s favorite sites of any sort. Essentially, the site gathers reviews of home contractors in every conceivable category (along with reviews of car mechanics, dry cleaners, hairstylists, doctors, lawyers and the like) describing their experience and giving each a grade from A to F. Unlike some other vaguely similar sites, these reviews are not anonymous and contractors do not pay to be listed on the site (meaning that Angie’s List has no stake in whether the reviews are positive or not). Angie’s List also allows contractor’s to reply to negative reviews and runs a complaint resolution service. More than 40,000 new reviews come into the site every month. The service is not free but the higher value, higher quality, contractors you’ll find because of Angie’s List will make the site fee pay for itself many times over.

Service Magic is a free contractor finder service. Unfortunately, the website is currently limited to the United States but anyone in the U.S. with a home construction project—anything from repairing a fence to building a major home addition—should take five minutes to type your zip code into this site and answer a few basic questions about your project. Do that and Service Magic will email you a list of suggested available contractors along with a ballpark quote from each for your project.

Find Inspiration

At Spot Cool Stuff we are, not surprisingly, partial to our own design blog where you can browse our posts featuring living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, home office, dining room and patio items. Once you looked through that . . . and bookmarked it . . . and subscribed to our Design newsletter or RSS feed . . . and followed us on Twitter . . . there are several other excellent blogs for finding home remodeling inspiration:

Remodelista is a clean, minimalist-looking blog that’s all about home redesigns. The writers include many photos of their own homes, which gives this site a nice personal touch. Start with the 10 Easy Pieces section that reviews the “best of” home remodeling items.

The Style Files is based in the Netherlands and so it makes sense that this blog would have a European bent to it. What we like most about this site is that it’s photo-rich. Peruse through the photographic examples of great design to come up with ideas for your own.

The Kitchen Designer is all about kitchen design. (Go figure). Kitchens, we think, are the most difficult rooms to design because there are so many features—the refrigerator, the oven, the counter space, etc—that have to be included. The Kitchen Designer blog is full of ideas on how all the aspects of a kitchen can fit together beautifully. We especially like how many of the featured kitchens are modest. This is the sort of site you can look through and think to yourself Hey, I could do something like that in my kitchen.

This Young House is like an ongoing reality series in which a young couple, Sherry and John, document the trials and tribulations of their own home improvement projects. Their practical advice is all grouped together in the How To section but, really, it is their personal ongoing story that will keep you returning to this blog.

decor8, the blog of hip German interior design consultant Holly Becker, is packed with tips and ideas. Finding your way through the past posts can be a bit confusing. Start by clicking on “categories” in the right column or by going directly to the inspirations section.

Hooked On Houses is the website of woman who really is fixated on all things house-related judging both by the passion of her writing and the frequency of her blog updates. Check out the before and after comparisons and the Five Changes section in which blog readers chime in on how they’d remodel a specific house.

Charles & Hudson has much more of a do-it-yourself aspect than the sites featured above. This isn’t where you’d go for design ideas. But if you want to fix a leaking bathtub faucet, for example, Charles & Hudson is your online helper.

Punch! is not a website as much as it is a software program that lets you virtually test out your various home remodeling ideas before committing to them. It is rather incredible how easily you can come up with a 3D rendering of your home without any specialized design or computer knowledge. Check out the intro video below and see their website for details. Highly recommended.

Find Supplies, Appliances and Furnishings

There are, of course, hundreds of places to buy furnishings and equipment for your home remodeling project. Here are a few:

Amazon.com is associated more with the sale of books and electronics but they have surprisingly low prices on a surprisingly large selection of home furnishings, power tools, appliances and general home improvement items.

All In One Decor is exactly as the name suggests. Here’s you’ll find quality items for every room in your house at discount prices.

Home & Garden Fountains has a collection of garden statuary and beautiful running water sculptures.

eFaucets has a HUGE selection of sink and tub faucets. They have sinks and tubs too.

InhabitLiving is another Spot Cool Stuff favorite store, especially for bedding. Read our review of their Wall Flat textured wallpaper.

Lumens has a superb collection of contemporary lights, fans, and accessories. Free shipping on orders over $50.

Overstock Art Is a source for inexpensive, reasonable quality art. They specialize mostly in oil paintings. Type in the coupon code WEL10 at checkout to receive on additional discount.

Homeclick is an enormous online store with all sorts of home furnishings and accessories. They run a lot of liquidation sales and special bargains so it’s worthwhile hunting around on their site for the best prices.

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Related posts:
Rotating Dome Houses
Shipping Container Architecture
Coolaroo – Not Your Grandparent’s Patio Umbrella
The Best Box Spring
High Design Hotels

Cool Websites To Use WHILE Traveling

Spot Cool Stuff — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:31:29 +0000

There are thousands of websites where you can research trip ideas (Spot Cool Stuff’s own travel blog not least among them) and hundreds of websites where you make your trip reservations—from general booking engines like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz to niche sites like Cruise Direct, Mr & Mrs Smith and HostelBookers, to a site like Tripology that will hook you up with a travel specialist for free.

But what after your accommodations are booked, after your travel guidebook is bought, after your general itinerary is set and after you’ve left for your trip? What are some useful sites for while you are traveling?

Here is a selection of our favorites for doing the following from the road:

Send your photos as postcards	Fly with more safety and comfort
Stay in touch	Find the best nearby restaurant or bar
Share your travels	Get the weather
Get advice from others

Send your photos as postcards

Even in the age of email, people love getting postcards. Next time you are on a trip don’t settle for sending a postcard with an impersonal photo hastily purchased at a hotel gift shop. Send a postcard with a photo you took. At the Hazelmail website you can upload a photo, enter the address of one or more recipients, type a brief message, and click SEND. Hazelmail will automatically print your postcard with your photo, put a stamp on it and mail it out. The Hazelmail user interface is extremely simple and intuitive. And the cost of a single card is only US$1.50—less than the cost of buying your own postcard and stamp in many places.

GO TO THE HAZELMAIL SITE | READ OUR FULL SITE REVIEW

Stay in touch

On international trips avoid paying expensive cell phone roaming charges or outrageous hotel telephone surcharges by popping onto an internet cafe and making your call through Skype. (Alternatively, if you have an iPhone or a Skype wifi travel phone you can call via Skype from an internet hotspot sans computer). The vast majority of public internet cafes already have the Skype software installed and many have headsets you can talk on. All you need do is log into your account and dial your number, landline or mobile, as you would on a normal phone. We suggest establishing your account and buying a few calling credits before you leave for your trip to avoid typing your credit card details into a public computer.

GO TO THE SKYPE SITE

Related posts: Best Skype Phones | MagicJack vs. Vonage vs. Skype

Share your travels

Want your family and friends to virtually follow along on your trip adventures? There are several sites that make it easy—and free!—for you to create a basic travel blog and to update it from the road—no technical or programming knowledge required. Two of our favorite such services are Map Vivo and TravelPod.

As its name suggests, Map Vivo places more emphasis on your mapping your travels; for every destination on your route you can write a little about it through the Map Vivo interface and upload a few photos. The site’s user interface is extremely well done.

TravelPod makes use of maps too, but the layout is more text-and-photo based. If you are planning on writing a lot in a single post, or plan on writing multiple posts on a single location, you’ll do better on TravelPod than Map Vivo. TravelPod blogs also come with a guestbook where people can comment on your trips.

If you want your acquaintances to follow your trip online without you doing the work of updating a blog then consider getting a Spot GPS Tracker and Satellite Messenger. The Spot comes with an optional package through which a password-protected website is created with a map that continuously updates your last known location via GPS. As long as you have your tracker device activated—and have a clear view of the sky—people with access to your website can know exactly where you are in real time! Very cool.

MAP VIVO | TRAVELPOD | READ OUR FULL REVIEW OF THE SPOT GPS TRACKER

Get advice from others

For proof of how helpful the Twitter microblogging site can be while traveling look no further than the @twitchhiker, aka Paul Smith, who traveled for one month, from England to New Zealand, using only transportation and accommodations arranged through Twitter on less than 72 hours notice.

You needn’t be such a travel extremist to make use of Twitter’s power to create instant connections. Looking for a shop on Bali that rents surfboards? In Paris and want a local to show you around? Put out a general call on Twitter and see what comes back. Or, write to a specific Twitterer asking for advice. If you are heading to northeastern Nova Scotia, for example, check out @AuthenticCoast. If you looking for lesbian-oriented travel advice try @Girlports. (And if you are a lesbian traveling to northeastern Nova Scotia, well, there’s probably somebody on Twitter than specializes in that too.)

As for good people on Twitter to follow for general trip advice, check out this list of our favorite travel tweeters.

A few of the tweeters worth special mention include Spot Cool Stuff friends @thetripchicks, @parisbao, @catekiwi, @WanderingEds, Keith (of Velvetscape) and @kag2u (of Travellious), travel writers/editors @wendyperrin, @Marilyn_Res and @TravelEditor, travelers @soultravelers3, @worldtravelista and @earthXplorer , cool tour providers @geoex, consumer oriented twitterers @travelrants, @AirTreks and @buycruises and bloggers @BrilliantTips, @BootsnAll, @awayblog, @kathika, @nileguide, @nomadicmatt, @OysterHotels, @thetraveleditor and @Gadling.

Also, on the 29 Travels website you can great a map of where you’ve traveled and send it out to your Twitter followers.

But if you aren’t established on Twitter, or if the very mention of the word “Twitter” makes you involuntarily convulse, check out Travellr, a social networking site where travelers and locals virtually meet and share advice. Ths site operates something like cross between a forum and a travel-centric version of Facebook—the idea is to make connections that translate into a better trip. Travellr is currently still in beta form; you can access it through the beta key “spotcoolstuff.”

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER | FOLLOW OUR FAV TRAVEL TWEETERS | TRAVELLR | 29TRAVELS

Related posts: Best Twitter Apps | Best Online Dating Websites

Fly with more safety and comfort

For many travelers the most stressful part of any trip is the airplane flight. Three websites that help reduce, or preemtively guard against, the pain of air travel:

Priority Pass is a membership program that allows you (and your family members traveling with you) to use over 600 airport business class lounges no matter what airline—or what class of service—you are flying.

Trace Me Luggage Tracker provides their customers with a traceable luggage tag. If/when your bag gets lost in flight you fill out a missing luggage report with the airline that includes your Trace Me serial number. If/when airline agents comes across your bag they’ll scan the bar code on your luggage tag and you’ll automatically be sent an email and SMS text message with your bag’s location. Alternatively, if a security person or private citizen comes across your luggage they can let you know by entering your bag’s serial number on the Trace Me website. Of course, the Trace Me tag won’t prevent your bag from getting lost in the first place. But it will increase your chances of seeing it again.

PRIORITY PASS | OUR FULL REVIEW OF PRIORITY PASS | TRACE ME | CLEAR CARD

Find the best nearby restaurant or bar

You are traveling in an urban area and looking for a great restaurant or cool bar. Your guidebook might have a few suggestions but, chances are, it is out of date. Bars are constantly going in and out of business; a restaurant that was excellent a few months ago might not be now. For the most up-to-date recommendations on water holes and eating out spots a subscription to Zagat is powerfully useful. Recommendations are updated daily and highly searchable. Coolest of all: you can access Zagat on your cell phone, iPhone, PDA or Kindle.

GO TO THE ZAGAT SITE (save 40% now)

Get the weather

There are lots of sites that provide weather forecasts. Our favorite among them—especially while traveling—is AccuWeather. Their service has a strong international reach. They have versions of their site that are especially cell phone and iPhone/iTouch friendly. But what we like most about AccuWeather is that they break down their 48-hour forecast in two hour increments—if you want to know what the weather will be at 2pm, as opposed to noon, AccuWeather has that. Also, unlike almost every other weather website, AccuWeather has daily forecasts for up to 15 days in advance.

GO TO THE ACCUWEATHER SITE

Know of another great website to use while traveling? Visit our comments section, below

How To Make Free Phone Calls Via Twitter

Spot Cool Stuff — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:09:56 +0000

Spot Cool Stuff is fascinated by the ever expanding functionality companies are bringing to Twitter. Some hotels offer concierge services via Twitter. Some take-out restaurants allow customers to place orders via Twitter. And now at least one VoIP company, Jajah, is launching a service that places telephone calls via Twitter.

Here’s how Jajah’s Twitter calling works:

1) You sign up for a free Jajah account and input your Twitter username and your phone number (VoIP, landline and cell numbers all work).

2) The person you want to call must have a Jajah account with the same information. Also, you must each be following each other on Twitter.

3) You tweet “@call @_________”, with that blank filled with the Twitter username of whoever you want to call.

4) Your telephone will ring, your callee’s telephone will ring, and Jajah will connect your call.

The call is completely free and there’s no need download software or have any special equiptment. The catch—and isn’t there always a catch?—is that your call can be no longer than 2 minutes long. Also, because you are tweeting your call request you have to be okay with informing all of Twitterdom of who it is you are calling.

Given these limitations does Jajah’s Twitter calling service belong in the Cool But Ultimately Useless category?

Maybe.

There are already multiple ways to place phone calls for free or nearly-free (such as Skype). With a tweet you can plan out your 140 characters but it isn’t always predictable whether you want your call to last longer than two minutes or not.

On the other hand, there may well be people you don’t want to talk to for longer than two minutes. [Insert mother-in-law joke here]. Another advantage: Jajah keeps the phone number of all their users confidential, which might make their Twitter service idea for some form of phone speed dating or for issuing ransom demands.

As of September 2009 the Jajah Twitter calling service was in a beta testing mode. Any Jajah user can ask to take part by emailing twitter@jajah.com.

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