Travel tech news: March 28, 2012
Every two weeks we bring you the latest news in travel technology from around the world. Here are our latest picks.
A glimmer of sense with electronics on planes. Perhaps.
In a shocking example of common sense, the Federal Aviation Administration has announced that it is taking a "fresh look" at the ban on (some) electronics being used during plane take-off and landing.
Sure it doesn’t include cellphones, sure it makes no promises and sure it is at least a decade overdue.
But at least it is something, and there is a slight hope that in a few years regulations might catch up with technology. Eventually I might even be allowed to keep reading my Kindle or playing Angry Birds as the plane taxis down the runway.
What a glorious day that would be.
Wash your clothes on the road with a Scrubba
Firmly in the backpacker accessory category, a new invention out of Australia promises clean, fresh smelling clothes without having to (a) carry a washing machine with you or (b) pay somebody else.
A modern take on the old washboard system, the Scrubba bag weighs about the same as a pair of jeans and requires only two litres of water, some soap/shower gel and 30 seconds of scrubbing on a hard surface to clean your laundry.
Easier washing = fewer clothes required = travelling lighter. We like this a lot.
Now that’s really off the beaten track…
A couple of days ago film director James Cameron took ‘getting away from it all’ to a whole new level when he reached the deepest point in the ocean inside his custom-built DeepSea Challenger submersible.
The bottom of the Mariana Trench is nearly 11km below the surface, southwest of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, but a new spinning vertical craft design allowed Cameron to reach the bottom in a little over two and a half hours.
After several hours looking around and gathering samples, Cameron jettisoned weights attached to the sub and shot back the surface in around 70 minutes.
Not a bad sort of a day trip, I guess.
Sailing down the Amazon with the click of a mouse
To celebrate World Forest Day last week, Google publically released its breathtaking images of the Amazon via Street View. Except, well, there are no streets – travel in this part of the world is only by river and occasional jungle track
If the wildlife or your budget have put you off a real boat ride down the world’s largest river, you can now get a sense of the experience from your own living room.
[Images via Kai Hendry, Scrubba, National Geographic, Google Maps]
One of the editors of Too Many Adapters, Dave has been a traveller for nearly 15 years and a geek for even longer.
When he is not playing with the latest tech toy or working out how to keep his phone charged for just a few more minutes, he can probably be found sitting in a broken down bus in some obscure corner of the planet.
