Instant travel tales: Share your vacation in real-time
Keep family and friends up to date on your adventures
By Liz Metcalfe
Sharing a special moment of your vacation with loved ones back home has never been easier.
Thanks to a growing number of free blog, photo-sharing and social networking web sites, such as Windows Live Spaces and Where Are You Now? (WAYN), friends and family no longer have to wait until you get home to hear about your vacation.
Free and easy
Most social networking sites are free and easy to use. Some, such as Flickr and Photobucket, specialize in hosting photo or video galleries and slide shows. Traveljournals.net is a free service that provides travellers with a place to post their photos, share stories and keep friends and family up to date on their location. Users can have multiple travel journals, upload unlimited photos, and pass on their individual URL to friends who can check on their travels any time they want.
Many sites send out alerts when you’ve posted a new blog entry or photograph. Some social networking sites, such as Windows Live Spaces, provide you with the ability to tell your friends what you’re doing, post up to 500 photos per month and blog about your adventures. The little star icon (called a “gleam”) that appears next to contacts in Windows Live Messenger lets friends know you’ve recently updated your Space.
“The real-time aspect is very nice,” says Sam Javanrouh, whose Daily Dose of Imagery photo blog has won numerous awards, including the 2006 Best Art/Photo Blog from the Canadian weblog awards.
“It changes the dynamic,” he says. “People have already seen where you’ve been and the conversation (when you return) starts from that.”
User-friendly
When you’re on the road, travelling through different countries or soaking up the sun, it’s common to take tons of photos and want to share them with friends and family. But the last thing you want is technical difficulties. Because these sharing sites are so user-friendly, you don’t need to be a computer whiz to use them.
Here’s what you will need.
- a digital camera or camera phone
- a computer (either your laptop or a computer located in a hotel, library, cyber café, cruise ship — the options are increasing daily)
- a media card reader, if your laptop doesn’t have one
- for travel outside of North America, a power adapter for recharging your cell phone or laptop
You might also want to pack a battery charger if you use rechargeable batteries.
If you prefer to pack light, as I did on a motorcycle trip through Europe, some sites (such as Windows Live Spaces) accept text and photo posts from cell phones. Under Settings, enable “e-mail publishing.” You will then be given an e-mail address just for blogging. You can e-mail blog entries and photos right from your cell phone to this address from anywhere in the world your phone has Internet access. Your friends and family just have to check your Windows Live Space to see exactly what you’re up to — as you’re doing it!
It can be helpful to have a Wi-Fi phone for easy access to the web when you can’t get to an Internet café. I had a Hewlett Packard iPAQ camera phone with Wi-Fi capability that allowed me to access the Internet anywhere I could find a wireless signal. During my trip to Europe, I even found free Wi-Fi hotspots at inexpensive hostels.
Photo-editing on the fly
If you want to modify images, there’s a wide range of photo-editing software to choose from. Windows Photo Gallery comes free with the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system. Its Auto Adjust feature can automatically lighten and sharpen a too-dark photograph with just one click. You can also fix red-eye, crop photos and change colour photos to beautiful black and whites — with just a few clicks of your mouse. You can also use online photo-editing services at sites such as Phixr, GIFworks or Picnik to make quick changes.
Where to find wireless access
Web access is available everywhere these days. Most hotels and cruise ships offer wireless services that allow you to access the Internet from a laptop in your room. If you don’t want to pack your laptop, many places provide Internet facilities with computers.
Free Wi-Fi is available at many cafés and some restaurants, including many Starbucks and McDonald’s locations. If your laptop has a wireless card, just click your wireless icon and ask for a display of available wireless networks. You can find a directory of free Wi-Fi locations on the Wi-Fi Freespot web site.
On my motorcycle trip, I favoured full-out Internet facilities, which provided computers and even webcams. Full-size keyboards are definitely more comfortable than cell phone keyboards. Sites such as Easy Internet Café provide links to Internet cafés in several cities in Europe and the United States. Simply search for your city and get a map and contact info for the closest café.
When booking your hotel or other lodgings, you might want to ask about Internet access. “An Internet connection is part of my criteria when I book a hotel,” Javanrouh says.
Technology has helped make travel a shared experience. Not only can you e-mail family members back home, but you can also show them what you’re up to at any given moment and where you’re off to next. For many people, it adds a new and exciting dimension to travel.
