travel

Brace yourself, pyromaniacs. Put away all the matches before you watch the below video of SpaceX's new SuperDraco engine spewing flame.

Elon Musk's space exploration company released the video of a successful test-firing of an engine from a test site in McGregor, Texas. The SuperDraco could be used to propel SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft out of Earth's gravitational pull, and Musk claims it will be the safest such system in history and also capable of more accurate landings. As if to prove the point, there are plenty of completely flammable trees in the background of the test-fire site in the video.… Read more

You know the deal with most bargain laptops: lower-end processors, weak graphics, smallish hard drives, and so on.

If you need a little more power than the average low-end lappie affords, check this out: MacMall has the refurbished HP Pavilion g6-1c58dx 15.6-inch laptop for $384.99 shipped.

That price buys you a quad-core AMD A6-3400M processor, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and a 15.6-inch LCD. As my dad often says, that oughta keep you out of mischief.

(Interestingly, OnSale has a 17-inch model, the Pavilion g7-1237dx, for the exact same price--but it has a dual-core … Read more

If you're traveling, your mom (or any loved one, really) is probably going to want to know the moment you have arrived safely, and let's be honest, you don't always remember to tell her.

A new Web site, Hash tag Mom (#mom), will automatically alert her for you by sending her a text, or calling her, once you check in to an airport on Foursquare.

Setup is simple.

Visit Hashtagmom.com and enter your mom's phone number (or a loved one's), as well as select whether you want a text message or call to be … Read more

Even an airline geek like me wouldn't call an airport "homey."

"Exciting" is a word that I would use and I may even say "comfortable" depending on the airport, but I won't deny that an airport is the opposite of home. Either you're on way to somewhere else or you still have a flight between you and your own bed.

Check in at Helsinki's airport, though, and you'll find a new lounge that is trying to bridge that gap. Now open in Vantaa Airport's Terminal 2, the Almost@home Lounge goes beyond far beyond the utilitarian furniture and simple snacks that you'd find in a standard airline lounge in the United States. … Read more

If you love sharing your travel stories and photos, road-tripping app HipGeo recently got a redesign that lets users document and share their experiences with remarkable ease.

The free iPhone and iPad app from Los Angeles-based HipGeo passively records your location as you travel. It can then mash your pics and comments into an animated map and travel diary for sharing.

The app tags photos, adds captions, and pinpoints its location on a map. You can share by logging on to the HipGeo site and clicking on "create and share trip." Dead simple. … Read more

We've all been there, right? Your flight's delayed, your entertainment gadget of choice is running low on juice, and all the outlets are taken. So what's a weary, tech-deprived traveler to do? Go drum up some power with your rolling suitcase, of course!

Designer Jung Inyoung has come up with a pretty cool concept of a rolling suitcase that provides power to your devices using kinetic energy. … Read more

So you decided not to spring for the in-dash DVD player and flip-down screens. No problem: your passengers can still watch movies on the road, using your iDevice as the source.

Launching at CES, as reported by Ubergizmo, the Philips PV7002i and PV9002i come with a pair of LCD screens designed to be mounted behind car-seat headrests. Meanwhile, your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad sits up front in a specially designed cupholder dock, which also charges the device.

The PV7002i will come with two 7-inch screens, two sets of mounting straps, the aforementioned dock, and the single cable that connects them all. The screens have built-in stereo speakers.

The PV9002i is identical, but with 9-inch screens. The kits will be priced at $169.99 and $199.99, respectively, and are due to ship in April.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--BlackBerry OS 7.1 wasn't the only thing RIM announced today. Three of the most popular apps on the BlackBerry platform also got some major work done.

First, BBM 6.1 is here, and it adds some sexy NFC flavor to its feature set. Now, friends can invite each other to connect on BlackBerry Messenger by simply tapping their NFC-enabled phones together, which, let's face it, is a hell of a lot easier than inputting those crazy BBM PINs. Also, BBM 6.1 gets the powerful message and profile customization options--animated avatars, emoticons, and colored chat … Read more

The innovative travel search service Hipmunk is ringing in the new year by adding powerful hotel search capability to its mobile apps.

While hotel search has been available on Hipmunk's Web site for quite some time, users of the native Android and iOS apps are only getting the function starting today.

For those not familiar with Hipmunk, it's a travel site and mobile application, similar to Kayak, that offers a unique way of searching for flights by "Agony." Using an algorithm to factor in things like departure time, arrival time, stopovers, and price, Hipmunk returns search … Read more