Tech Toys
to Go

Technology has changed my life as a traveler. Thanks to electronic products and Web-based services that have come on the market over the past five years, I can travel lighter, faster and smarter.

By: Everett Potter

I own a quiver of devices that help me make or change travel plans quickly and get from point A to point B with the least amount of trouble and confusion. I also subscribe to a handful of affordable tech services that make travel even more effortless. So here are my picks, which will save you the trouble of sorting through dozens of catalogs, Web sites and product reviews.

Phones with Brains
At its most basic, a smart phone is a device capable of sending e-mail as well as making phone calls. I happen to have a BlackBerry, which is especially user-friendly for e-mail, but you might also consider a Treo, an iPhone or one of the others out there. A critical requirement for choosing any smart phone is considering how you travel and how you plan to travel over the next couple of years -- the length of time for most cell phone contracts. If you think you’ll be going abroad, you’ll need a GSM phone, which will work in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa.

Your smart phone can become a travel address book with toll-free and local phone numbers, as well as e-mail addresses, for airlines, hotels and car-rental companies. You can add similar information for your car and health insurers and travel insurance providers. Then store your policy numbers as well as hotel, airline and car loyalty-program account information.

The ability to check your e-mail is very liberating. It means you don’t have to lug a laptop along, or find and pay for an Internet connection, or plan your day around the hours of a local Internet cafe. You can check it anywhere, anytime in the United States. And if you bought a GSM phone, you can use it abroad to check e-mail as well. Note that you’ll pay more for this, usually around $65 a month above the cost of the domestic phone and data usage plan. But if you live by e-mail, it’s a lifesaver.

The newer smart phones come with GPS systems, which require an additional monthly charge to activate. But how wonderful to have a GPS on your phone when you’re doing a walking tour of a new city. Both AT&T Navigator and Sprint Navigation ($10 per month) are powered by TeleNav, which also offers real-time traffic alerts and more than 10 million points of interest, from sights to restaurants to hotels. The Verizon Wireless VZ Navigator Service ($10 per month or $3 per day) enables users to locate more than 14 million points of interest while on the go.

Fully Loaded MP3 Player
Whether you own an iPod or another brand of MP3 player, you already know how soothing it is to have your own music with you when you’re stuck in seat 27B on a six-hour flight. But that same player can act as your tour guide when you download a walking tour podcast, guidebook information or even a novel set in your travel destination. Ricksteves.com offers free podcasts for touring Italy and France, and nationalgeographic.com has free “Walks of a Lifetime” podcasts. Lonelyplanet.com and Frommers.com also produce a wide range of free podcasts. They can open your eyes to the local culture before you even land in Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo or Seattle.

Traveling Hard Drive
Have you ever needed something on your hard drive at your home or the office while you’re traveling? A new service makes it a snap to access your computer’s hard drive or even multiple hard drives, if you have more than one computer. It’s called SugarSync, and for $50 a year, you’re covered for 30GB of memory. Once you’ve joined and uploaded your files, it automatically updates your files, photos and music every time you sign on to the Internet. And the best part is that you can access SugarSync on any computer, anywhere, and download any document you choose. It can even work with a smart phone.

Pocket-size Video Camera
If you’d like to record your wife’s first surfing attempt in Hawaii or videotape your niece on horseback in Colorado, you don’t have to drag along a bulky and expensive camcorder with more buttons and options than you’ll ever need. Credit the Flip, which came along about 18 months ago. The Flip weighs only a few ounces and fits into a shirt pocket. It has a digital zoom and 2GB of memory, runs on two AA batteries and comes with a USB plug. The camera stores 60 minutes of VGA-quality video, which can be downloaded and edited on any laptop, played directly on a television or uploaded to YouTube or AOL. It costs $129 at amazon.com. There are no tapes or additional memory cards required. Now say “cheese.”

Personal GPS
While I love to read maps, it’s amazing how hard it is to do so while I’m driving. Which is why I’ve come around to GPS systems. The sexiest one right now is probably the TomTom ONE XL 4.3-inch widescreen Bluetooth portable GPS navigator with maps of the United States and Canada. That widescreen display offers a good viewing area for maps. Pony up for the optional RDS-TMC radio-based real-time traffic information and you can steer your way out of most traffic jams on an alternate route. The system is portable, weighing less than 10 ounces, so you can bring it with you when you rent a car. Better yet, it has a USB port and a cable, so you can use your PC to add your own points of interest. Amazon.com sells it for $142.

Powerful Charger
Tired of traveling with a snake’s nest of chargers for your various devices? Then look at iGo products, like the iGo everywhereMAX ($140; igo.com), a single device that you can use to recharge your laptop, phone, iPod and other gadgets.

No-Noise Earphones
Noise-canceling headphones are terrific on long flights, but the popular models tend to be cumbersome and expensive, around $300 in the case of Bose. Earbuds, like Ultimate Ears’ super.fi 4 earphones ($130; ultimateears.com), have a noise-isolating design, and they come with an assortment of ear tips to ensure a tight fit.

Computer Call Box
It’s great to have a GSM phone, but the per-minute charges can add up quickly. On a recent trip to Brazil, my AT&T service ran $1.29 per minute. So if you intend to make a lot of long-distance or international calls on the road and don’t want to drop a lot of dough, download Skype (skype.com) to your home computer and set up an account. You can then phone from any computer with an Internet connection, say, from a hotel room or an Internet cafe, using your own headset. Usage plans start at $3 per month (for unlimited calls to the United States and Canada). The Unlimited World package, which offers unlimited calls to landlines in 36 countries, costs $10 per month. Or you can pay as you go. But buy a good headset, like the Logitech Premium Notebook Headset ($48; logitech.com).

Instant Translator
If you don’t have time to study Russian or Mandarin before your next trip, consider getting the Lingo Navigator ($69; amazon.com). It can translate 9,000 phrases in 12 languages: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. The unit measures 4.3 inches by 2.3 inches and has a backlit LCD display and a circular spinning navigation wheel. Set your home language and your target language. It’s preprogrammed with common sentences that address situations such as accommodations, dining, directions and emergencies. And you can store 25 of your most frequently used phrases in the unit. You put in your sentence and the device utters it in the foreign language, though not surprisingly, the tone is more than a little robotic.

Keep the Kids BusyThe Sony DVP-FX820 eight-inch portable DVD player retails for $180 and has six hours of battery life plus an LCD monitor.