The Vacation Gals entreat the airlines and the FAA not to allow lap children.  The fares are cheap these days, but the costs add up.  Still, think about these issues before keeping your infant on your lap for your next flight.

Italy Mondo strike a chord near and dear to my heart, Italian food.

PlanetEye Traveler – Green Travel is talking about holiday travel.  Already!

Eyeflare has a nice primer on how to capture silhouettes in your travel photos.  Here’s one of the tips – turn off your flash!

Uncornered Market, making its first appearance in my list of favorites, lists the 7 habits of highly effective travelers.  How many can you count as yours?

Travel Savvy Mom, another first timer on my favorite list, tells why spending more money for an executive floor room can actually save you money.  I agree, and try to take that option whenever possible.

Intelligent Travel teases us once again with a very strange hotel, this one in a sewer pipe.

PlanetEye Traveler – London tell s the story of a neighborhood about to be demolished.  Residents of the building have put up portraits on the windows, a reminder of the real people who are impacted by this decision.

Cockpit Chronicles at Gadling attempts to help us understand why waiting in line on the runway is inevitable.

Travellious has some cool travel gear.  And besides that, Kelly is heading off to Italy.  (See Italy Mondo post above. . . again!)

LA Times lists some over-the-top promotions that hotels are trying.  Are you tempted by any of them?  The promotion that I want?  FREE internet access!

Seattle PI reminds me that there are hostels here in Seattle.

That’s it for this week.  Please stop by and say hi to this great group of travel bloggers – and tell them you read about them at Flyaway Cafe.

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That’s how I feel about Friend Mosaic, in beta, a site that will take all you Twitter followers and create a mosaic photo of you.  Sounds strange, I know, all these photos of other people going to create a larger photo of you.  But it’s actually kind of cool.  So cool that I spent an hour or so playing around with it, using my own @twitter name as well as some of my friends.

The resulting photo here is a compilation of my 2,222 twitter followers.  Cool, huh?

You can follow me on Twitter:  @flyawaycafe.

Photo credit:  Friend Mosaic

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Up, Up, and A Gay, a recently discovered blog from another Flight Attendant, dishes about why we’re always dishing about work.  It’s true, too!

Los Angeles Times tries to makes sense of the security rule regarding exact name matchups.  There may be flexibility now, but what little there is will be going away soon.

The Venice Guide captured my attention again this week with a post about the etiquette of dining in Italy.  If you’re planning a trip there, give this post a once over.

Consumer Traveler enters the debate about travel agents being charged fees to book tickets on United.  No matter which side wins this battle, it’s us travelers who will wind up paying.

Gadling reviews a gadget with a name too long to remember.  Bottom line, though, is this little gem will help you get better wi-fi reception in hotels.

The Rio Guide gives suggestions for saving on your food budget by hitting up the right supermarkets.

Intelligent Travel tempts us to the 49th state with a post about Homer, Alaska.

Wanderlust and Lipstick has a travel writing contest.  You can win a 12-day culture and spa tour of Vietnam.

The Miami Guide writes about the story behind Vizcaya, a landmark property along the Miami shore.  You may want to catch the upcoming PBS documentary about it, too.

Tripbase lists 20 ways to screw up your Labor Day road trip.  These are good trips for any time at all.

Ron Dubin Photography has a great shot of Los Angeles and the smoke blanketing the city from the aggressive forest fires.

Traveling the Green Way reviews recycled travel speakers from OrigAudio.  Compact and green, what a great combo.

USA Today writes about the conception vacation promotion.  Provide some medical documentation to support your claim that your baby was conceived while vacationing at the The Westin Resort on Aruba, and get a credit for a return visit.

Photo credit: SXC

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The Edinburgh Guide – Although it has been called Auld Reekie, it never meant smelly until now.

Wisebread – Good tips for finding free wi-fi at airports.  Unfortunately, some of these means are getting encrypted and/or shut down, but it’s a great starting point.  And why, oh why, can’t there just be free wi-fi at the airport?!

Concierge – From Conde Nast Traveler comes this great guide to tipping around the world.  Read it, print it out for future reference, and understand how tipping appropriately maintains the culture of where you’re traveling.  It’s really not about throwing your money around to feel important!

The London Traveler – The Cult of Mithras, the patron god of the Roman Empire Army, is depicted in statues around the city.  Andrea puts it all together and explains why it’s important to the history of the area.

Wanderlust and Lipstick – What’s worth the money and what’s not.  Mostly not.  A good read on how to avoid the airline fees that plague us all.

Intelligent Travel – A review of S’Mac, in New York City, where the specialty is macaroni and cheese.  Ooooh, oooooh, I love my mac and cheese, and this lower east side restaurant serves their versions of it right in the skillet.  My mouth is watering even typing about it!

Tripso – A great discussion of how social media can help make your vacation better.  Twitter anyone?

Stood There – I love this fun site where there are lists and list of attractions and locations where you must have your photo taken.  Divided up by geography, these lists are a lot of fun.  How many can you check off?

Traveling the Green Way = Travel is certainly not the most green of activities, but seeing the world and learning about other cultures is important.  Jennifer lists a variety of ways to help minimize our traveling impact, giving us good food for thought.

Photo credit: SXC

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Now available in HD, and a number of colors and fashion choices (like the Hello Kitty Flip in photo) , the Flip Mino has a budget friendly price point to go along with its travel friendly size.  Here are a few of the features it offers:

• Pocket sized
• One-touch recording
• Built in flash memory (holding up to 60 minutes of recording)
• Battery lasts over 4 hours of recording time per charge
• Battery recharges via your USB port
• Fast start up allows recording within seconds of power up
• Pause, Fast Forward, and Rewind
• Child Safe mode to prevent accidental deletion
• 2x digital zoom
• Transflective display for clear viewing in bright sunlight
• Flip-out USB arm plugs directly into your computer for easy transfer
• Silent recording mode
• TV connector cable so you can watch videos on television
• Tripod mount compatible with most standard tripods

That’s a lot of features in a small package, and is one of the reason that the Flip has become a popular choice with travelers and low-technology users (it’s SO SIMPLE to use).  Priced well under $200 (depending on model), and available at online and at your local electronic, camera, or big box store.

I purchased a larger video camcorder about a year or so ago, with the idea that I would be able to take some great video on the road, and learn to share it with family and friends, and post it on my blogs.  That’s never really come to fruition, though.  Although the vidcam is fairly small, it still requires effort to take it with me, and I haven’t really mastered the technology.  I’m giving serious consideration to purchasing this little Flip cam.  It’s small enough that I keep it in my purse so that it’s always handy (that’s what I already to with my camera), so there’s be no excuse for not having it with me.  I have no delusions of becoming a great film director, but for the casual videos that I’d like to take, this may be a good choice for me.

I’d love to hear comments from any of you who use the Flip.  What do you like?  What don’t you like?

Photo Credit:  Hello Kitty Flip Mino courtesy of Sanrio

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And then life got in the way.  Juggling myriad duties involving work, home, relationships, and personal responsibilities meant that often I didn’t even have time to take the film in to be developed.  When I finally did get them developed, they just sat in the return envelope taking up room in a drawer.

I was made for the era of digital photos!  No film to be developed, just upload from the memory card or camera to my computer, and everything is there at my fingertips.  I can instantly look at them and send on to friends via email.

Only problem – you still have to do some organization.  If not, you’ll have a bunch of photos labeled with strange looking numbers and you’ll have no idea what they are.  Put off the organization long enough, and you’ll have hundreds (if not thousands) of photos and you’ll have no idea what they are or where they are.  There is just no getting around it – if you take photos, and want to ever look at them again, you’re going to need to get organized.

Another feature that makes digital photography so versatile is the ability to make some corrections to your photos.  What you would once have tossed out, now can be cropped, sharpened, brightened, or otherwise massaged into an incredible shot.  As I’ve learned the hard way, however, this doesn’t magically occur.  You have to sit down in front of your computer and actually do it.  Which leads back to my previous organizational problem.

The kind people at Serif must have been reading my mind, because they asked if I’d be interested in giving their Digital Photo Suite software a try.  I jumped at the chance – thinking maybe, just maybe, this will be the impetus I need to get my photos in shape and get organized.

Like most software these days, Digital Photo Suite is easy to install and get going (you can install from a CD or download from the site)  Purchase price is $49.99.

But once you have things set up and are ready to go, what’s next?

First of all, let’s be realistic – this program is a tool.  It’s not going to organize your life or force you to sit down and get your photos organized.  If you’re motivated, it will lend a helping hand, but if you really aren’t motivated to get your photos in order, nothing is going to help you.  You can stop reading now, and accept that you will have a life unrecorded by photos.  If you are at the same point that I am, however, then sit in a chair and work through this.  There’s light at the end of the tunnel.

Like many of the photo programs available (both for free and for a fee), Digital Photo Suite promises that it is an easy way to do three things:

1. Organize your photos
2. Fix and enhance your photos
3. Share your photos

Let’s look at each of these steps.

Organize:  The bane of my existence, yet once I sat down and started to use the tools, I made remarkable progress in a relatively short period of time.  I decided that organizing my photos was my top priority, even if that meant I didn’t get to some of the other tools right away.

Digital Photo Suites has a number of tools to help you get your volumes of photos organized, and to set things up to integrate the new ones that come along.  This really isn’t rocket science, you basically set up albums for each of your photo collections.  This is pretty routine stuff.  Set your albums up by theme, vacation, years, or whatever works, and use keywords, tags, and ratings of your photos to get them in the right place and make them easy to find.  It was easy, if time consuming,to do,  But honestly there wasn’t anything new or different here that makes the organizational part of the process a standout over any other program.

Fix & Enhance:  OK, my photos were now organized in albums (or at least most of them were), and now it was time to do something with them.  This is the part of the program that I really think shines, although again, you need to be realistic – you are going to have sit down and do the work.

The easiest way to start tackling enhancing your photos is to use the QuickFix Studio.  It’s just what it say a quick fix – and will take care of a number of minor photo corrections:  brightness, color saturation, sharpness, contrast, removing red-eye and cropping.  This is where I spent the bulk of my time.  as I had a lot of photos to try to get through.  While many competitive program also have these features as well, I thought these were a bit easier to use, and more intuitive than many I’ve tried.

Other enhancing tools include many that are found in other photo editing programs:  color adjustment (sepia tones, black and white, pop art-style enhancements, etc.), and special effects (stained glass, watercolor look, etc.).

Tools that I found that were either unique, or better than the competition, were the portrait features (whiter teeth, tanner skin, etc.). the rotation feature (allows you to rotate a photo without losing the perspective quality), and the back up/revert feature.  I love knowing that however much playing around I do with a photo, that I’ll always have the original.

How many of these cool fixes would I use?  The Quick Fix took care of pretty much everything that I needed as far as editing my photos, I used the Lossless Rotation feature for nearly all of my architectural shots, and I used the Revert feature frequently.  The other features, while very cool and fun, were probably not ones that I’d use often.

Share:  After spending the time organizing and fixing some of my photos, you darn well know that I wanted people to see what I’d done.  This is the bragging rights part of the deal!  You can save photos as a screen saver or desktop and email to friends, of course.  And I did a fair amount of that, getting lots of compliments.  BUT – those things are so pedestrian compared to some of the other features.

There is an automated process to share your photos with Facebook and Flickr, so you don’t need to convert them or upload them individually.  If you’re a high volume user of either of these services, this feature will save you tons of time!

You can also put together some pretty cool slide shows (using a wizard), adding music and other special features.  I didn’t do too well at that, but I made a good start at it.  I really like the feature that allows you to upload your slide shows to YouTube in one step rather than having to mess with a bunch of conversion stuff, which, face it, I would never do.  I had hoped to have this feature perfected so that I could include my slide show in this review post, but it’s going to take me a bit more time and practice.  You’ll eventually see one though!

There were also some of the standard type of features regarding photo printing, making photo CD’s and other photo projects.

So how does Digital Photo Suite stack up against the other photo editing programs out there?

It’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Many of the tools and features offered are no different than what you’ll find in a lot of FREE programs.  Some of the other features can be found in the pay-version of the FREE photo programs.  Those pay-versions are going to run you about $25/year, so the price tag of Digital Photo Suite pays for itself in two years.  Updates and fixes are included.  If you are a regular user of some of the enhanced features, however, the time savings will be well worth the software price tag.  A bit trite but true – if you’re going to use it, it’s worth the price.

If you are skilled at photo editing, Digital Photo Suite probably won’t offer you a whole lot that’s worth paying for.  That’s fine.  But if you’re like me, someone who needs to get organized and do something (anything?) with photos that have been collecting for far too long, I think this is a good option.  The time saved in uploading to flickr and Facebook would mount up quickly.  And when I learn to do slide shows and upload to YouTube, I’ll have an additional multimedia option to include with blog posts.

Saving time is (convenience) is worth this price tag for me.  I’d recommend reviewing your skills, needs, time, and motivation to organize your photos.  Only then can you decide if the price tag balances things out for you.

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This photo was taken in those few minutes right before sunset.  A particularly peaceful way to end a vacation day. 

Photo credit:  personal collection

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After a sunny day exploring the island of Capri, it was fun to take the chair lift in Anacapri all the way to the very top to take a view of the island and surrounding area.  The fog rolling in on one side of the island created quite a juxtaposition with the sun on the other side.  Here’s the foggy side.

The name of the island is properly pronounced CAH-pree, not cuh-PRI (like the pants).

Photo credit:  personal collection

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Today, I discovered a relatively new blog that takes this idea to a grander level.  Anthony at What I See Out My Window asks readers to take a picture of the view out their window.  Then, send the photo to him along with your location and a description and/or story about the view.

Anthony says that he’s bringing the world together, one window at a time.  What a fun idea!

Head on over and check out this creative idea.  And then, get your camera, go to your window. . . and click!

Photo credit:  wikimedia

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As part of Conde Nast Traveler’s 20th anniversary, it is having a travel giveaway — and your photos may just be your ticket.  All you have to do is submit a photo , to the “Live the Cover” contest, that you took and that captures a great travel memory.  Tell where the photo was shot and what made the experience so unforgettable.  That’s it! 

The deadline is June 25th, you can enter as many photos as you like, and the winner gets a trip for two to the Frank Gehry designed Hotel Marques de Riscal, in Eliego, Spain.  (The hotel was on the May cover of the magazine.)

I’ve seen some great photos, and I’m going to send copies of this blog post to a few people suggesting that they get busy and enter.  How about you — do you have a shot that captures one of your great travel memories?

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