So you are packing up and heading out for a trip, and want some laid back joints for the flight. That’s awesome, but did your know your iPod can do way more for you than serenade your ear drums?
1. Learn a language:
The latest version of iTunes allows you to download educational podcasts that can teach you the language of your destination. This is basically passive learning, just download, and throw those white buds in your ears. Listen to these on the flight over and you’ll be asking for the bathroom and ordering water like a local in no time. Best of all it’s free!
2. Familiarize yourself with your destination:
Also in the world of podcasting are destination guides. As a traveler I’m sure you have all heard of lonely planet and know the quality of their advice. Well they produce a comprehensive podcast also, download these and you will know what the real deal is in your new host country. These guides and reviews sometimes have real insider information that can’t be attained anywhere else. These are iTunes freebies as well, so freeload that’s what they are there for. Another noteable source for tour guides is iToors.
3. Record your experience:
Make a podcast of your own and email it to your friends back home or post it on your website. The iPod has accessory microphones that you can pick up for about $20. These mikes will allow you to capture sounds anywhere you go, whether it’s the hustle and bustle of a Hong Kong market or the sweet calming waves crashing in Byron Bay Australia.
4. Store your shots:
Running low on memory card space and don’t want to delete any of those precious memories? Just get the photo cable and you can use your iPod as an external hard drive, making room for more of your memories to be captured.
5. Pack a map:
You can upload subway maps from all over the world to your iPod so you won’t be a lost tourist at the subway station. iPodSubwayMaps.com has come with a free download that enables you to get the maps on to your iPod.
Hey everyone long time no post from me. Firstly thanks everyone who continues to read, comment and write me. I plan on bringing you at least one post per week from here on in, except in hellish mid term weeks like the one I just got over. School has been going well, but it’s a lot of work.
I’ve been day dreaming about where to go next in class at least once a day. Where I would go, what I would do and what kind of pictures and stories I could bring home and post here. I’ve started to think about going back to South East Asia this summer, possibly Vietnam or even back to Thailand. The biggest restriction is the funds, I need to save up at a regular old student job for the first 3 months of summer, then on the last month go away without spending all of the summer savings.
Where would you go if you wanted to get away for 4 weeks and had a budget of say $2500-$3000 USD? I’d love to hear about ideas, as well as past trips that fit in to this category!
Hey everyone, I’m back at school this week. I want to keep this site up to date and hope to have regular updates and new and excellent articles for you all. However I do know that school eats up more time than I expect every year. So here’s the deal:
I would like to have another person who loves to travel and has a thing for writing to give me a hand with this site. Drop me a comment and I’ll get back to you if you think blogging about travel/ tech gear is for you!
I tend to waste time when I’m sitting down at the computer “working”. I look around and surf the net quite a bit, and I want to share my 3 favorite sites that are semi related to travel. If you are a travel blogger these sites will probably appeal to you as well!
Flickr: Flickr is the new kid on the block in the photo hosting world. You can upload all your travel shots here while traveling which is an awesome feature. You can also look at other people’s photos of destinations or just anything and everything. There are some very talented photographers on this site, and tons of regular old pic snappers.
If you have digital travel photos I suggest signing up for flickr and uploading them, people can view and comment on your pics so you can get a bit of feedback and be part of the community. You can also add your backpacker or travel photos to different groups. A group is like a pool of photos where each member of the group can add their own photos to the pool. I set up a group for Blogging Abroad, so come and drop some of yours in our group. If you have any and you are on flickr or sign up for flickr, come by and let us all see some of your shots!
Here’s my flickr account, feel free to add me as a friend!
43 Places: What are your top 43 destinations you would like to visit? Why not make a list and start adding to that list, and check them off when you visit your choice locals, let others around the world know where you have been as well and see who else has been there. Read reviews and see pictures generated by a community.
These are all the functions of one of my favorite time wasting site www.43places.com (they also have www.43things.com ). I have been on here for a few months just adding away slowly I now have 7 places I want to visit, but don’t get me wrong I want to go everywhere.
Gmail: Google’s email service that pretty much kicks the crap out of the other free email services out there. You get more than 2 gigs of space so you never really have to delete anything and you can search through your emails with google’s powerful search tools.
The spam filter catches all those penis pill and other junk spam, which saves you the headache of sorting it out yourself.
What are your favorite sites out there that are in someway, or not at all related to travel? I’d love to hear about them.
You have made the decision to put your life on hold. No more boss breathing down your neck to get your work done, or no papers due or exams to stress over. You are going to drop all that and get the best experience of your life bouncing around the globe seeing what our world has to offer; and you want to share your traveling tales and photos with all of us on the world wide web.
What are you going to need to do this?
1. A camera: Get a camera that you are comfortable with, something that is capable of capturing all the new sights you see and something that you actually will carry around with you. There is no point in getting a $3000 SLR camera if you don’t know how you use it and it’s too big for you comfortably carry around all day!
2. Laptop: Get a good portable laptop that you can use as your communication home base. Smaller the better, lugging around a 17” wide screen laptop isn’t going to be something you look forward to. 12-14” laptops are perfect for travel, they have all the features of their larger counterparts. A laptop is not necessary if you are going to be able to post from internet cafes.
3. An open mind: If you travel the world you are going to realize that the whole world doesn’t have all the niceties that you may be accustomed to. There is nothing worse than reading a blog dedicated to complaining about everything from a bad smell in the air to non English speaking Mcdonalds workers. So before you get over where ever you are going, keep an open mind and by all means comment on these differences.
There is no greater treat than reading a well focused blog. A well focused blog entry is when you pick one or two topics and writes about them in depth. Talk about your bbq squid lunch at a stall in the middle of downtown Bangkok and the sights and sounds around that meal that made it a special even worth writing about.
Or talk about your day on the waves learning to surf and everything leading up to the one time you were really riding the wave.
Blogs that are scattered and unfocused aren’t interesting to the reader because it takes a lot of effort to read and understand. Smooth one or two topic posts are fun to read and let your readers feel like they are living the same experiences. Readers check blogs to connect to the material, so let them! There is no way you could pack even one full day in to a blog post, it would be information overload for the reader and would take a very long time on your part to write. So pick your favorite parts of the day and make your readers feel like they are there!
Appeal to your reader’s senses; smells, sights, sounds, feels and tastes. This really gets the reader into your writing and into your blog, pictures really work well in backing up your sight descriptions. Focused detail in blogs keeps me reading and it can keep your readers hooked too, give it a shot and let me know how it works!
Embedding youtube videos into wordpress blog posts is much more difficult than I thought it would be. I’ve done some digging around and found a solution so you can upload your travel videos to youtube.com and have them located directly in your posts on wordpress blogs in four simple steps anyone can do!
Step one: Sign up for youtube, and upload the videos you want to share. Copy the embed script by right clicking and selecting copy from the Embed box. Here’s a picture to help you locate more easily.
Step two: Go in to your admin area in wordpress and click on the users link, scroll down to the personal options and uncheck “Use the visual rich editor when writing” option.
Step three: In wordpress begin writing a post as you always would, you will notice the area where you type feels a little different (this is the rich text editor being turned off), paste the embed video script you copied from youtube and paste it where you want it in your post.
Step four: Save, publish and voila you now have your own video right in your post.
Here is an example I have embedded. (Note: this is not my video).
Heres Seth Godin’s 56 tips on promoting your blog 56 ways to get traffic to your blog. Have any of these tips worked for you or do you have any more tips for promotion? Let us know, we’d love to hear about it.
My name is Casey Bolton and I just started up bloggingabroad.com for a few reasons:
1. I absolutely love travelling
2. I love reading travel blogs
3. I love looking at travel photos
4. To give travel bloggers a place to showcase their blogs
We will bring you the best travel blogs out there, as well as information on how to start, create and promote your own outstanding travel blog.
