travel

Quick housekeeping note: I'm taking a rare vacation day tomorrow, so this is it until Monday. Have a great weekend, and I'll see you then!

Apple's new MacBooks are getting lots of attention right now, but it'll cost you a minimum of $999 to get one. For that kind of money, you could literally buy three of today's deal.

While supplies last, Newegg has the refurbished HP Pavilion dv6-6c48us 15.6-inch laptop for $339.99 shipped. How good a deal is that? The same model sells new at Office Depot for $599.99.

The Pavilion … Read more

Every year, we engage in the same dance: Apple announces a new version of iOS, and we instantly start wondering how our devices will change as a result.

iOS announcements tend to work forward for phones (the new iPhone is expected this fall), but for iPads they work backward: the third-generation iPad with Retina Display came out in March.

A host of new iOS 6 features change some of what the iPhone can be. Will iOS 6 change the iPad, too? Yes, if you're thinking of heavily using Siri or own a 4G/3G third-gen iPad or iPad 2.… Read more

Google Translate for Android is a simple, versatile tool that supports more than 60 languages, offers an SMS translator, and even speaks some of your translations aloud.

The best thing about Google Translate is its simplicity. The app is decked out with a sleek, ICS-flavored Holo theme, complete with Android 4.0's signature action bar and drop-down menu. Altogether, the new skin is a marked improvement over the slightly clunkier interface developed for Android Gingerbread.

To use Google Translate, just select your input and output languages, then type in your text. For even faster results, you can set the … Read more

Although Facebook's initial public offering hurt investors and the social network's share price, there appears to be another victim of its troubles.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today, citing sources, that online travel site Kayak decided against holding its "roadshow" with would-be investors around Memorial Day as planned, due to issues with Facebook's IPO. The Journal's sources say that Kayak is trying to determine the willingness in the investment world to drop cash into another Internet IPO.

If investors are concerned, it wouldn't be such a bad idea. Over the last year, … Read more

iTranslate Voice lets you speak to translate in 31 different languages offering excellent speech recognition so you don't even need to use the keyboard. Great for learning new languages or acting as your personal translator when traveling, this app has a great layout for quick translations on the fly.

iTranslate offers a clean intuitive interface that only requires a couple of steps to translate in the languages you want. Simply touch the gear icon (settings) in the upper-left corner, then choose your spoken language and the language you want to translate to. You also have options for having the … Read more

As a self-employed guy who rarely leaves his basement, let alone his house, I've never had much need for a Slingbox. But, ho, boy, do some people love them. I've heard them discussed with the same kind of gushing admiration usually reserved for TiVos and Kindles.

Curiously, although they've been around for years, prices haven't dropped much. Indeed, Slingbox deals are pretty rare, which is why today's is something of a sellout risk.

Today only, and while supplies last, Best Buy has the Sling Media Slingbox Solo for $99.99 shipped, plus sales tax in … Read more

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

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

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