Walk Down Memory Lane

How about the original Hard Rock Café’ in Orlando. 

Did you know that the building that housed the Original Hard Rock Café’ in Orlando is still standing?  It is located to the West of the main building of the Hard Rock Hotel, on the border of Universal Studios behind the Woody the Woodpecker Rollercoaster.  The building was a replica of Graceland sitting atop a large guitar.  The guitar's neck has obviously been removed, and it appears a staircase has been added in its place. Although it may look like a small part of the patio was also removed, it's still there, just covered in overgrown foliage and hidden among the trees.  The current Hard Rock Café is located as part of CityWalk and also houses Hard Rock Live under the same roof.

Traveler’s Bill of Rights

Enter The Coalition for Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights
A one-woman juggernaut named Kate Hanni was on the American Airlines flight that was grounded in December, and has taken her story all the way to Congress. Hanni formed the Coalition for Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights, which is calling for a passenger bill of rights to be written into law; the organization's Web site is worth a look.

The Coalition's proposed Bill of Rights reads thusly:

All American air carriers shall abide by the following standards to ensure the safety, security and comfort of their passengers:

·  Establish procedures to respond to all passenger complaints within 24 hours and with appropriate resolution within two weeks.

·  Notify passengers within 10 minutes of a delay of known diversions, delays and cancellations via airport overhead announcement, on-aircraft announcement and posting on airport television monitors.

·  Establish procedures for returning passengers to terminal gate when delays occur so that no plane sits on the tarmac for longer than three hours without connecting to a gate.

·  Provide for the essential needs of passengers during air- or ground-based delays of longer than three hours, including food, water, sanitary facilities and access to medical attention.

·  Provide for the needs of disabled, elderly and special-needs passengers by establishing procedures for assisting with the moving and retrieving of baggage, and the moving of passengers from one area of airport to another at all times by airline personnel.

·  Publish and update monthly on the company's public Web site a list of chronically delayed flights, meaning those flight delayed 30 minutes or more, at least 40 percent of the time, during a single month.

·  Compensate "bumped" passengers or passengers delayed due to flight cancellations or postponements of over 12 hours by refund of 150 percent of ticket price.

·  The formal implementation of a Passenger Review Committee, made up of non-airline executives and employees but rather passengers and consumers -- that would have the formal ability to review and investigate complaints.

·  Make lowest fare information, schedules and itineraries, cancellation policies and frequent flier program requirements available in an easily accessed location and updated in real time.

·  Ensure that baggage is handled without delay or injury; if baggage is lost or misplaced, the airline shall notify customer of baggage status within 12 hours and provide compensation equal to current market value of baggage and its contents.

·  Require that these rights apply equally to all airline codeshare partners including international partners.

Is this a fair response to years of shoddy treatment of the flying public? You bet it is. And is it better than what we have now? Absolutely. The current Customer Service Initiative mostly says "we'll try our best, but we don't really promise anything." It contains nothing whatsoever setting benchmarks, meeting deadlines, setting compensation amounts, requiring notifications, or just about anything hard and fast. It's all squish and slip.

For example, read American's policies regarding "Essential Customer Needs During Extraordinary Delays"; it's clear that these promises rang extremely hollow in late December 2006. The biggest change in the new bill of rights is that these "policies" will become law. It will no longer be enough to say "it's not our policy to starve our passengers on the tarmac" and have the issue just go away.

Is it unreasonable to ask this of the airlines? I don't think so, as, for the most part, the proposed bill simply holds the airlines to their own policies.

Cool Aps or Sites to Help Keep You Fit

MP3 players serve many purposes in our lives. They drown out the crazies on public transportation, keep our road rage in check during rush hour, ensure that we're entertained on long flights, and help us stay motivated at the gym. In fact, one of the top reasons why people buy portable audio devices is to have them as fitness companions. And you may not know it just by looking at them, but the iPhone and iPod Touch are excellent tools for watching your weight and keeping in shape--you just need the proper enhancements.
First and foremost, if you're going to be exposing your skinny little iPod to the indelicate environs of the gym, make sure you wrap it up in a nice, protective case. Then it's onto the fun stuff: apps. The iPhone and iPod Touch have a vast array of third-party applications tailored for just about any purpose you can put your mind to, and that includes fitness. But rather than letting you wade through the sea of options out there (and, in fact, maybe ocean is a more appropriate metaphor), we've rounded up five of our favorite fitness apps right here. OK, OK...actually, there are seven--we just couldn't resist throwing in some tangentially related selections.

Make-a-route

With this tool from Google Maps, you can plot a walking or running route, and distance is calculated as you add waypoints. Very cool, but one word of caution: The maps make all paths look tidy, all streets clear and all neighborhoods harmless. So before you head out for a bit of exercise, check with locals to determine the safety of your proposed route.

Lose It!

Like a digital diary of calories eaten and calories burned, Lose It! helps you create a diet plan and then stick to it. You just enter your weight, height, age and sex and then let the app know your goal weight. The app sets up a daily budget to help you reach your goal at a rate you decide.

As you eat and exercise each day, you tell the app the calories in and the calories out and the app monitors your progress to help you stay on track. You even can create recipes and share you information with friends.

Lost It! is available for free for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, and it's coming soon to Android.

CardioTrainer

Available only for Android users, CardioTrainer takes full advantage Android phones' beautiful screens and GPS technology. It's one of the most popular free fitness apps in the Android Market and it's easy to set up.

After you enter your weight, height and other key information (so that it can figure out your calories burned), you just start your workouts.

Like several of the fitness apps, it uses your phone's GPS to map where you've been, but it also has a pedometer to record your progress is case you lose your GPS signal. In addition to running, you can use CardioTrainer for biking, walking, rollerblading, and a bunch of other activities. The app uses a built-in music player, so you have access to all your playlists while you're exercising, and it includes a free calorie counter to help you keep track of your daily food intake.

If you want a cheerleader, the app even provides verbal encouragement as you work out. When you're done with a session, you get a calorie count of how much you've burned, as well as a food example of how much that is.

For example, after a morning walk, it might tell you that you've walked off two strawberries.

The app also wants you to share information with Facebook friends, so if you're not interested you'll want to disable it pronto.

IMapMy

From a company called MapMyFitness, IMapMy is a free fitness-tracking application for Apple products, Android phones and BlackBerrys that uses your phone's built-in GPS monitor all of your fitness activities.

You can record your workout details, including duration, distance, pace, speed, elevation, calories burned and route traveled on an interactive map. The app lets you sync with a heart-rate monitor to save and upload your workout data to the MapMyFitness website.

The company also offers specific similar apps for running, riding, walking, hiking. You can sync with a heart-rate monitor to save and upload your workout data to the MapMyFITNESS website. Share the details of your fitness activities with friends and family via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter. You can sign up for the free version or pay $4.99 for an ad-free version that also stores more rides and statistics.

Daily Burn

A great one for newbies, this app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, which is backed by the Web-based fitness community DailyBurn, helps you manage your diet, fitness and exercise.

But what makes it especially helpful is its ability to make a training plan, complete with detailed instructions on how to properly perform a given exercise.

You can tailor your plan based on your goals: weight loss, cardio training, muscle building, etc. Once you begin working out, you can track your exercises on the go, and select your favorite ones for a custom workout.

Data from your phone is automatically synced to the website for analysis and tracking. It will also track your daily caloric intake to help you meet your weight loss goals.

If you're willing to upgrade for a fee, you can use a food scanner to access the food database, with more than 350,000 foods. Once you scan the barcode, it provides pictures and full nutrition information.

Fooducate

If you're looking for an app that might help you shop and eat a little more healthfully, check out Fooducate. Sure, you already read food labels, but Fooducate helps you figure out what they mean, and whether or not the product is up to snuff, nutritionally.

Simply scan the product's barcode and it will return the name, a grade and the methodology behind the grade.

It also offers another helpful feature: It shows you how your item compares to other items.

For instance, if you scan your favorite yogurt, it might tell you that it scores a B+ and is a good source of calcium. Under "alternatives," it might also show you which brands score even higher and why.

So this app might let you know that when a food item claims to be "organic" or "all-natural," it also has excessive sugar and sodium, or controversial food colorings.

The app also boasts a compare feature that lets you scan two products side by side. If a product doesn't scan, you can enter the numbers manually. It's available for the iPhone and the company says it has more than 200,000 unique food products so far.

Travel Gadget

When the first iPad came out just over a year ago, we were sure it would transform travel: Apple's tablet computer married work and play utilities so well, it rendered a laptop excess weight on a vacation. Thirteen months later, our computing behavior has already evolved drastically. Everyone from VPs to restaurant sommeliers to preschoolers are using iPads everywhere. It did not take long for the tablet to find a place in our lives.

Since the second generation iPad was released a month ago, much has been said about the new lighter, smaller, faster model. And the fact that Apple has added significant new features to iPad 2—such as the front- and back-facing cameras—without raising the price (it starts at $499). Let’s consider what the iPad 2 does to further transform travel with its smaller size, new cameras, innovative new travel apps, and iMovie travel videos.

iPad 2 For Travel

1. Packable Size, Speed

Yes, the iPad 2 is light (33 percent lighter than iPad 1) and thin (thinner than the iPhone 4). It’s so fast—two times faster thanks to the A5 chip—that the graphics seem to fly across the screen as you use it. The sleek, skinny iPad 2 disappears in your handbag, tote, or backpack. And at the airport, iPads do not have to be screened separately in the security line.

2. Ample Battery Life

The ten-hour battery life means you can literally not worry about charging your iPad for days. Battery life is simply not an issue. The iPad also has its own voltage converter, so you just need to find a power adapter for your host country and you are all set.

Here are three ways to maximize your iPad’s battery life:

• Turn down the brightness of the screen.

• Limit the apps in your multitasking. Each open app is using a bit of battery. Close out of the apps you aren’t using.

• Turn off the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth settings when you are not using them. They soak up battery power.

3. Cameras for Video Chatting, Hi-Def Video, Photos

The much anticipated front- and back-facing cameras enable FaceTime chats from wherever you have a Wi-Fi signal—airport layovers, coffee shop chats, Madrid’s Plaza de Santo Domingo. More and more cities are publishing maps of their free Wi-Fi hotspots. Though the cameras' video is hi-def, the photos are less sharp than photos taken with the iPhone 4. But in reality, shooting photos and video on the iPad is a little strange. For my iMove travel video (below), I used my iPhone 4 to shoot photos and video, then synced to my computer, then to my iPad. You can also use the USB adapter to sync iPhone 4 photos directly to iPad.

4. Top Travel App Innovations

With the addition of the new gyroscope and cameras, and the existing GPS, the world of travel apps is about to take off. The gyroscope and GPS could enable some very cool virtual tour guides of favorite travel sites—say an iPad tour of Machu Picchu where you point your iPad at a feature and it tells you historical facts. Here are some of the more impressive new iPad travel apps out there:

• iMovie - $4.99

Optimized for the iPad, this app could transform you into a filmmaker. For travel videos, it’s amazing. It makes editing videos simple—little kids could do it. See the section below to read the full review.

• National Geographic National Parks Maps HD App - $4.99

This app pairs hi-res images of points-of-interest within National Geographic HD topo trail maps for 15 parks (Yosemite, Yellowstone, Zion, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, and ten others). The iPad’s Digital Compass will locate you within the park when you are ready to start exploring.

• JetSetter - Free

This visually stunning, content-driven travel app lets you discover travel destinations through a gorgeous layout and photography. The stories and editorial reviews will tantalize you to take a trip—and the app even allows you to book a hotel stay with a cool calendar feature. It also has “Flash Sale” limited-time travel deals.

• Word Lens - Free, $9.99 per language

This app utilizes the camera to photograph and translate text. Right now it only works for English to Spanish and Spanish to English. Still it’s a remarkable service on the iPad. It’s not perfect. I tried it on my friend Mark Adam's new book title, Turn Right at Machu Picchu. It came up with “Turno Correcto a Machu Picchu,” which is a little off, but the possibilities are exciting.

• TripAdvisor - Free

Thanks to the iPad’s digital compass, TripAdvisor’s vast database of user reviews are made available on Google Street maps. Simply locate yourself via the GPS, then read reviews of nearby restaurants and hotels positioned on a Google Street View map. What’s surprising is all the local information. I always considered TripAdvisor to be best for international hotels. But with the app, I located myself in my apartment in Brooklyn and it showed me all the restaurants and businesses on my street with contact info and user reviews.

• Fotopedia Heritage - Free

Brilliant photos illustrate the world’s UNESCO World Heritage sites in this app. The Machu Picchu slide show alone has 59 images.

• FlightBoard - $3.99

This app quite simply lets you see the Arrivals and Departures flight boards in any airport. Pretty handy if you are dealing with weather delays.

• AllSubway HD - $.99

This is the first collection of subway maps from the world’s great cities, from Moscow to Munich to Perth. You don’t need a Wi-Fi connection to use it, so subterranean navigation is possible.

Starting in May, Apple is going to offer free travel app workshops for consumers at their 200+ U.S. stores. At these workshops, Apple instructors will show the latest and best travel apps available.

5. iMovie: Geo-Referenced Travel Videos

iMovie ($4.99), which we loved for the iPhone 4, is now optimized for iPad and so easy to use. The added screen real estate allows for great control and precision while editing your trip video. You can trim video clips before you add them to your edited material, and then re-edit the cuts throughout the process with multiple video editing tracks. The app is so superior, it gives you the confidence to actually cut together a video you could be proud of.