Today, I’m up bright and early, actually I was never ‘down’ last night and its not bright out at all, still pitch dark.  I’m sitting in the Charlotte airport waiting to catch my flight to Las Vegas via Houston to attend Blogworld 2008.

Its been a bit of hectic week and a half prior to this trip and the next couple days will very likely be even nuttier.  I’m looking forward to getting to the show, meeting some new companies, learning about great new services and of course making lots of new friends and maybe a few business partners.

I have a host of activities lined up after hours, but my official plans are pretty involved as well.  I’m packing an extra battery for my laptop.  I have a 17″ toshiba and this thing isn’t very light let alone with an extra battery, cameras and other gadgets.  If things work out just right, I will be co-exhibiting at the show. 

The thing is there is no wired power at the booth that I will be at and to run the demos, I’m hoping to run I need power.  Hence the extra battery. 

I tried to purchase a 6 hour universal battery at Office Depot the other day, but it turned out the battery wasn’t as ‘universal’ as it was marketed to be.

So here I am in the airport, juicing up one of those batteries at an electrical outlet, trying to keep my eyes open long enough to make it onto the plane.  I’ve got my handy neck pillow ready to get 40 winks during the two flights out there and then its time to turn on the charm and attention up to 110% to get some things done.

I almost panicked a bit this morning. When I first tried to login with my Verizon Wireless aircard.  It didn’t want to connect right.  I had 4 bars, it kept trying to do an update and then erroring out.

Apparently, I need to install some updated VZ Manager software soon to keep this thing running.  So that’s probably what I’ll do as soon as I get back, unless this thing melts down first.  Verizon Wireless is not my favorite company these days, so it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if things melt down.

OK, well, about time to get ready to board and then sleep.  Hope you are having a great Friday where ever you are in the world and where ever you are going.  On my way back, I was unable to avoid the Red Eye, and so I’m likely to be a bit worthless on Sunday when I get home.  I look forward to the Red Eye about as much as a water buffalo looks forward to diet pills.. . . .

I have several times gone on a trip over the years only to come down sick while traveling.  Traveling while sick is nothing that I would wish on anyone.  So there is a bit of an irony that I came down with a nasty virus this week and was too sick to travel to Austin for the SXSW Interactive Media conference.

SXSW – South by Southwest Music, Film and Interactive Festival in Austin | Maven Mapper’s Information

I’m disappointed because I will not get to see a number of people and companies and attend some great learning sessions, but at the same time I am somewhat relieved that I did not become sick after departing for Austin.  Plus, I am also somewhat relieved that I am not there to be ‘that guy’ that accidentally passes on a virus to everyone they meet through all the hand shaking and stuff.

So in general, I wish everyone that is going a great and healthy time.  I do wish I could be there, and honestly I won’t miss lugging all that trade show material around from bouncing light up balls to bic pens with company logos to USB drives that I’ll never use, because I really only need one anyway.

If you are not currently covered with travelers insurance by your employer nor covered by your credit card company, or if they do not cover you fully for a number of different scenarios you may want to consider picking up travel insurance when you travel outside the United States or the country that you reside in.

A recent press release by TravelSafe Insurance, a company that has been providing Travel Insurance for the last 37 years, highlights the benefits of a person can receive from protecting themselves with travel insurance.

When you travel abroad, your health insurance does not always cover you in hospitals located in foreign countries. Even if it does cover you sometimes it cannot pay for the service upfront and you must do that in cash or with a supplemental policy. American Express may reimburse your travelers checks if they’re lost, but sometimes it takes travel insurance to reimburse you for lost luggage and clothing. Furthermore if you have to cancel the trip because of the hurricane or some other event, travel insurance can reimburse you the cost of the plane tickets.

Too much time behind the computer will burn anyone out.   Sometimes the computer can draw you in with one small issue after the next until before you know it you have spent an entire day performing what is essentially light but necessary maintenance on your computer.

Repeat this day in and day out and your productivity starts to sag.  Sometime, you almost need to run your computer until it actually breaks as opposed to letting your computer run you with multiple little complaints.

All those minor computer complaints take their toll over time and there’s really only one good way tofix yourself.  STEP AWAY from the machine, take a vacation, go hiking go on a few cruises to the tropics anything, but don’t let your computer run you into the ground with the little problems.

Now that Microsoft is soon to end an era of OS building its time to think about new brand names for the Vista replacement. Maybe if Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates head to Aruba for the winter, they will be inspired?

For the rest of us mortals that do not have our own private jets and a few extra billion dollars laying around, we could also find similar inspiration.

Our sponsor vacations.net provided a press release that informs us of their great rates and offers on their aruba all inclusive resort packages.

Maybe you can head down to Aruba with every thing paid for in full and enjoy your self in the sun like Bill Gates without a money care in the world.

I have been catching up on a great deal of web work this week, and worked on a review for Inasra.com today.  Its a travel site targeted for finding hotels in India.

The layout and interface is very clean and fast.  All the pages I tried loaded in less than two seconds, but I was very impressed with the speed of the filter options on the site.

Let’s say you are looking for hotels in mumbai, India.  You select a time frame and pick the city of Mumbai.  You will then get a list of potential hotels from which you can filter more completely.

As you select a check box for the items you want to include in the filter the site is very fast and adept and eliminating those hotels that no longer meet the users requirements.  The filtering process is almost instantaneous.  Plus, if you are looking for more information on a given hotel, you can expand and contract the details section to get more information more rapidly.

Here is a filter with Fax included:

The same search with Fax unchecked instantly offers a greater selection of hotels (that apparently do not have faxes):

A couple weeks back, I traveled to Las Vegas in the United States.  I could only wish that the hotel sites had been half as easy to navigate and compare requirements as this site was.  It does not seem to have any user reviews included in the current beta which is a negative.

Plus, there does not appear to be different price levels within a hotel (like a suite versus a room versus something else).

As I finalized my travel plans for CES this week, it became abundantly clear to me that many of the travel sites from Orbits to Travelocity to Expedia can be a big pain.

Many times, I saw what might have been a good deal.  But not knowing the hotel or its area had no idea if I was going into a denizen of debauchery or into a world class hotel.

Now I have stayed at some of the finest hotels that Vegas has to offer, but this year, my budget is a little lighter and I rarely get much use out of the hotel room anyway.  I just need a safe place to sleep and keep my stuff secure.

I found a unique site that focuses on providing reviews of Las Vegas Hotels.  The cool thing about the site is that they put the hotels in summary form on the front page so you can look at all the hotels at the same time and get the 1 through 5 star view.  From there you can click in further and get more information about the hotel.

Sometimes displaying information successfully just requires a simple layout that fits on one page!

If you are looking for reviews on Las Vegas Casinos, you should check out Las-Vegas.Cruzino.com. Here’s a quick shot of what I’m talking about as far as their user friendly layout is concerned.

Just a simple little Web 2.0 arrangement!

We’re also proud to add Las-Vegas.Cruzino.com to our list of sponsors!