Online Photo Editing for Travellers
Don’t you have having to download your photos twice for displaying on the web?
You know what I mean. You take your photos, then you need to download them to your computer for editing, then download them again to a photo sharing/display service like Flickr.
Well, I’ve found a neat little online web 2.0 digital photo editing site called Picnik which can save you one time consuming downloading step.
Picnik is online photo editor that can grab your photos from Flickr, do some basic editing like contrast, brightness, red eye removal and cropping and resave it. Granted it’s no Photoshop, Picnik does not have the complex and exacting aircraft like control of the professional photographer tool. Often though, the regular shutterbug simply do not need all the bells and whistles plus the $700 price tag.
I usually find myself needing to fix the brightness, do a little sharpening or contrast and crop. That’s pretty much it and Picnik does the job plus it has about 14 filters and special effects.
Picnik should be a great time saver for travellers like me who use Flickr to store and display photos. Travelling light means keeping things simple and minimizing. If your laptop crashes on the road you no longer have to worry about finding a computer with a photo editor. Go to any internet cafe, download photos to Flickr and edit away in Picnik.
I am a big fan of online software services for travelling and this fills a hole on the road to smooth travelling.
Right now the software is in beta and is free to try so why not give it a shot?
Rugged and Portable Verbatim 12gb Store n' Go
We like small drives here at portabletraveller, the smaller the better. With USB flash drives only reaching 4gb for the mainstream at the moment, it’s nice to see manufacturers like Verbatim pushing the envelope.
The confusingly named 12 gigabyte Verbatim Store n’ Go USB Hard Drive is most likely flash based (it is made by Verbatim after all). Twelve gigabytes in a 3 inch by 1.4 inch case with flip out usb connector gives us portable travellers one more storage option between the 4gb, soon to be 8gb flash drives and the 20gb and up 1.8” hard drives.
An extra benefit of the flash medium is the low power usage and more rugged reliability, always a plus when you are quickly tossing things into your laptop bag before leaving.
The Store ‘n’ Go USB HD Drive appears to be a U3 drive which includes Verbatim’s own Windows software, Mobile Launchpad, allowing you to carry applications, personal data, email settings and browser preferences with you wherever you go. You can plug the drive into any USB port capable computer and run applications.
Any U3 application like Skype, AOL IM, Thunderbird email app, and others can run off it.
At $179 US, it’s not cheap but wait about six months and let Moore’s law take care of the price for you.
We recommend
these folks for more conventional usb flash drives.
Cordgo MP3 Player Headphone Cord Winder
Cordgo has developed a nifty little headphone winder to prevent your headphone cords from tangling as you move about during the day.
The device is a just a little bit larger than we like but it still beats having extra cord lengths whipping you and tangling in your clothes.
You simply wrap the cord to the spindle inside and rotate the outer face to retract or extend the cord. The cordgo can hold approximately 6ft of 1.5mm cable (approximate thickness of earphone cord).
The clip on the back of the little plastic puck like holder is handy for clipping onto your belt, backpack, arm band or lady’s bag strap.
You can also use it to house your extra usb or firewire cables or PDA docking station cords or just tidying up the extra length of peripheral cords attached to your PC.
Small, portable and clutter remover for $9.95.