travel

Motorcycle gets spacecraft propulsion parts

Testing spacecraft components is no cake walk. It's expensive and can require subjecting them to tremendous amounts of stress and wear and tear, but it's necessary. You can't just blast them up into suborbit and hope they work.

Spacecraft manufacturer XCOR decided to get a little more grounded when it came to testing out components of its new piston pump technology destined for the Lynx Suborbital Spacecraft.

XCOR modified a Triumph motorcycle with propulsion parts and sent it off on a massive road trip from Roswell, N.M., to Mojave, Calif.… Read more

MotionX GPS Drive for iPhone

In the face of a few solid free navigation apps for the iPhone, such as Bing or MapQuest, MotionX GPS Drive would seem to have trouble justifying its price, even at only 99 cents. But it has proven a popular enough navigation app that Pioneer integrated it with the AppRadio head unit.

Two features of MotionX GPS Drive give it an edge over the free apps, its destination search capabilities and the ability to preload maps. MotionX GPS Drive is a connected navigation app, meaning it relies on an iPhone's data connection to get its maps. However, it is … Read more

Translate on the fly with your voice

SayHi Translate is a surprisingly accurate voice translation app that could be the tool world travelers have been looking for quick translations. Using the app is easy. Simply touch the wrench icon to choose your language, then the language you want something translated to, then return to the main interface. From there you can either touch your language button to speak or touch the smaller keyboard icon to type a sentence and SayHi Translate will translate the sentence and speak it back to you (or whomever your trying to communicate with). It doesn't get everything right, but if you … Read more

Tweet 'buy' to purchase flights by Twitter

If you're a frequent flyer, there's nothing that sucks the fun out of travel like combing the Web for deals (apart from airports and economy class, that is). But what if buying a ticket were as simple as tweeting?

TweetAFlight promises to get you deals in ads you see on Twitter if you just tweet "buy" in response.

Steven Frischling of The Travel Strategist hopes to launch TweetAFlight in the next few months. It's aimed at giving you the best chance of taking advantage of Twitter deals on airfares -- before you can become distracted while you follow the ad link to a Web page. … Read more

Does it still make sense to buy a GPS?

A GPS is one of those things I don't know how we as a society ever lived without. Like Google. And cell phones. And Nutella crepes.

Back in the stone age of satellite-assisted navigation (I'm talking 2003, around the time my thoroughly inept book on GPS technology came out), you could expect to pay hundreds of dollars for a slow, bulky, cumbersome device that might get you from point A to point B -- provided you didn't so much as think about visiting point C. (Points D and E were right out.)

What a difference a decade … Read more

Headphones that ease the pain of public transportation

I sympathize with the hordes of urban dwellers who begrudgingly subject themselves to the purgatory of daily public transportation -- the screeching teenagers, sticky floors, and potpourri of smells are part of the reason I ride a bicycle. That said, there are things you can do to ease the pain of your commute.

First, don't look at anyone -- gawkers are universally creepy, so pick a spot on the ground and stare. Next, source a pair of headphones using the following criteria as your buying guide: durable, compact, noise-isolating, and "closed-back," meaning they won't betray your privacy and leak your music to fellow commuters.

This list includes both circumaural (over-ear) and in-ear, bud-style headphones. Both styles are suitable for noise isolation, though you may prefer active noise-canceling headphones if your ride is extra-annoying. If not, earbuds with well-fitted tips (silicone or foam) can be just as effective at muting the world around you.… Read more

CoPilot Live Premium Europe for iPhone

With so many navigation apps available, many for free, it may be difficult to imagine paying for one. But ALK Technologies makes a reasonable case for its CoPilot Live Premium app. Its most compelling feature are the full set of maps it includes, making it possible to navigate without a data connection.

Most people using a smartphone for navigation will be doing 95 percent of their driving in an area with data coverage. But the most critical times for a good navigation app come out on back roads, far away from cell towers. Likewise, high data roaming charges in foreign … Read more

Manned space travel, from Gagarin to SpaceX

The anniversaries this week of the first man in space and the launch of NASA's first space shuttle missions come at time when commercial spacecraft are ushering in a new era of space flight.

Thursday was the 51st anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's 108-minute orbit around the Earth, an event that shocked the world and ratcheted up the speed of the Cold War-fed space race.

And 31 years ago on April 12, the space shuttle Columbia lifted off, the inaugural flight of NASA's shuttle program which drew to a close last year.

Astronauts from different countries on the … Read more

Travelzoo's would-be buyers include Google, Amazon

Travelzoo might just be putting itself on the market. This 14-year-old Internet company, which helps travelers find deals on flights, hotels, and vacation packages, has seen a dismal past few months and therefore could be getting ready to sell itself, according to Reuters.

Prospective buyers include Google, Amazon, and online travel Web sites, according to Reuters. These tech companies might want to get their hands on Travelzoo because of its 24 million subscriber-base, its share in the daily deal world, and its advertising-generated revenue stream.

Currently the New York-based company has a market value of $336.1 million and once … Read more