{"id":3263,"date":"2016-04-24T10:40:02","date_gmt":"2016-04-24T20:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/?p=3263"},"modified":"2016-04-24T10:40:02","modified_gmt":"2016-04-24T20:40:02","slug":"mobileviews-podcast-157-travel-tech-observations-and-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/24\/mobileviews-podcast-157-travel-tech-observations-and-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"MobileViews Podcast 157: Travel tech observations and tips"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_4458_AmericanAirlinesiPodMode_640w.jpg\" alt=\"AmericanAirlinesiPodMode\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-3264\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_4458_AmericanAirlinesiPodMode_640w.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_4458_AmericanAirlinesiPodMode_640w-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><br \/>\n<em>American Airlines in-flight entertainment &#8220;iPod mode&#8221;<\/em><br \/>\n<iframe id='audio_iframe' src='http:\/\/www.podbean.com\/media\/player\/gbkfe-5eb5fd?from=yiiadmin' data-link='http:\/\/www.podbean.com\/media\/player\/gbkfe-5eb5fd?from=yiiadmin' height='100' width='100%' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' data-name='pb-iframe-player' ><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I visited my daughter in the UK earlier this month. We traveled through Scotland and then spent a few days in England. I rarely travel these days and even more rarely travel outside of the U.S. So, this was a learning experience for me in terms of gadgets and technology. In this podcast Jon Westfall and I (Todd Ogasawara) discuss some of the things I observed and learned during this trip.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>The American Airlines flights I took had a USB port under each of the in-seat displays.<\/li>\n<li>In the UK every electrical outlet is switched. In the old days, I had to carry a voltage adapter as well as a plug adapter. A\/C adapters for gadgets are smart enough to automatically deal with moving from the U.S.&#8217;s 110\/120V 60Hz electricity to the 230V 50Hz needed in the UK and elsewhere. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B009GQ1X82\/?tag=totechcom\">Tmvel TMV-G-2IN1-4PK 2-In-1 Universal to United Kingdom Type G Adapter Plug &#8211; 4 Pack<\/a><\/li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B00VH958F0\/?tag=totechcom\"5-USB-port Anker charging hub<\/a> I carried was sufficient for my needs while traveling. I didn&#8217;t need the power strips I had taken with me.<\/a><\/li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B016QLE7O6\/?tag=totechcom\">August EP715 &#8211; Active Noise Cancelling Earphones<\/a><a> worked better than I expected based on my testing at home.<\/a><\/li>\n<li>I paid AT&#038;T $30 for one month of a low-end international roaming plan. It included a mere 80 MB of data and reduced cost for voice plus free texting. However, this was just for emergencies or if I accidentally switched out of airplane mode was in the UK because\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/li>\n<li>I also carried my Nexus 6 on the Google Fi network which includes a much more reasonable international roaming plan through its use of the T-Mobile roaming plan. Fi uses the T-Mobile and Sprint networks in the US.<\/li>\n<li>In the UK, Google Fi was exclusively on the T-Mobile UK network.<\/li>\n<li>While the Google Fi FAQ says that I was limited to 3G 256 Kbps download speeds, I often saw LTE connections and what seemed like relatively fast speeds.<\/li>\n<li>Despite leaving AT&#038;T roaming service off, I was able to get GPS data for the photos I took with my iPhone 6 by turning on WiFi. This also enables the GPS radio<\/li>\n<li>Google&#8217;s offline maps feature worked reasonably well on both the iPhone and Android Nexus.<\/li>\n<li>Google Fi&#8217;s WiFi calling feature turned out to be handy.<\/li>\n<li>While free WiFi services in airports, hotels, and the Apple Store worked as expected, many (most) &#8220;free&#8221; WiFi offered in pubs, restaurants, and other smaller venues required some kind of UK based account. So, this kind of free WiFi is not available for foreign visitors.<\/li>\n<li>The Nexus 6 seemed to freeze several times in the UK and required a forced soft reset. I have not seen this problem since returning to the US.<\/li>\n<li>The Scottevest Revolution Plus jacket was mostly good. However, the hood&#8217;s zipper kept unzipping when not on my head. It needs some kind of locking mechanism. And, the hood is extremely difficult to fold back into its too small pouch.<\/li>\n<li>The Scottevest short sleeve Camp Shirt, on the other hand, has two well designed extra large breast pockets that easily holds both an iPhone 6+ and Nexus 6. They are actually double pockets so you can also store tickets or passports too.<\/li>\n<li>A U.S. Netflix account worked fine in the UK. However, you see content licensed for the UK.<\/li>\n<li>Video downloaded from Amazon Prime for free played back with and without network connectivity.<\/li>\n<li>YouTube Red subscriptions are not active in the UK. I saw a message telling me so. This meant that I saw ads in videos there.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>We also discussed:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Opera developer edition now includes free VPN option\/service. <\/li>\n<li>Gadget Security: The Insecurity of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lockwiki.com\/index.php\/Smartkey \">Kwikset Smartkey Locks<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Jon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Favorite Cargo Pants: <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1MQ87v1\">http:\/\/amzn.to\/1MQ87v1<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1Qv4cOP\">http:\/\/amzn.to\/1Qv4cOP<\/a> (Black)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>American Airlines in-flight entertainment &#8220;iPod mode&#8221; I visited my daughter in the UK earlier this month. We traveled through Scotland and then spent a few days in England. I rarely travel these days and even more rarely travel outside of the U.S. So, this was a learning experience for me in terms of gadgets and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[126],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podcast"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppKRG-QD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3263"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3269,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3263\/revisions\/3269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}