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Thanks to Anne Sigmon for her post on Jungle Pants: Twelve tips for avoiding mosquitos–and the serious diseases they carry. Anne also provides a link to Tipnut’s Over 40 Mosquito Bite Itch Relief Tips.

April 20, 2011

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April 27, 2011

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May 4, 2011

12:00 pm

The San Francisco Waterfront Challenge, a new weekly “identify-the-photo” game, is giving prizes to waterfront-savvy locals and visitors. The challenge starts at noon on Wednesday, on April 20^th. The photo challenge is a celebration of San Francisco’s lively waterfront and a promotion for the San Francisco Waterfront website and mobile application.

Here’s how it works:  Read more... (233 words, 1 image, estimated 56 secs reading time)

• Each Wednesday at noon for the next for six months, a photo taken somewhere along San Francisco’s waterfront, from the Golden Gate Bridge to AT&T Park, will be posted online at San Francisco Waterfront. SF Waterfront Challenge rules are on the website.

I love this sturdy, way-clever, thin-as-paper, easy-to-conceal travel wallet.  The linked article includes easy do-it-yourself instructions. Make several before your next trip, and stash your cash safely.

In their quest to blanket the world with superior apps, Sutro Media is looking for expert authors for the following European destinations. If you’re an expert on any of these areas, get in touch with acquisitions editor Kim Grant.

England: Most regions (but specifically Cornwall, Devon, Kent, Cambridge, Oxford, Yorkshire, Bristol); London.

Wales: Cardiff.

Scotland: general country guide, and Glasgow.

Ireland: general country guide, and Dublin, Belfast, County Cork, County Wicklow, County Galway, County Kerry, Northern Ireland.

Norway: general country guide, and Oslo, Bergen, fjords.

Sweden: general country guide, and Stockholm.

Finland: general country guide, and Helsinki.  Read more... (238 words, estimated 57 secs reading time)

Thanks to travel writer Dick Jordan (Tales Told from the Road) for his review of the App Happy class Suzanne Rodriguez and I (Laurie McAndish King) taught for people who want to develop and market their own mobile travel apps. We developed so much content for the class that we’re nearly finished with an an e-book on the same topic.

 

Salon.com co-founder and New York Times Book Review contributor Laura Miller wrote in March about about the swirling milieu that is publishing…

“Last week, the book world saw a particularly symmetrical bit of revolving door ballet as Amanda Hocking — who famously became a millionaire by selling a series of paranormal romance novels as self-published e-books — signed a contract with an old-fashioned publishing house, while the bestselling thriller author Barry Eisler walked away from a similar deal, preferring to self-publish his next book. Did I mention it was the same publisher (St. Martin’s Press) in both cases? Like I said: symmetrical.”  Read more... (111 words, estimated 27 secs reading time)

Lisa Morton’s PIRATES! Or, How to Protect Your Intellectual Property on the High Seas of the Internet provides advice for tracking and dealing with unauthorized reproduction of work you’ve published online.

Here’s a short from the Wall Street Journal, which likes Don George’s Trip Lit column for National Geographic Traveler. Well, who wouldn’t like it? Great books and incisive reviews by a legendary travel writer and editor.

Congratulations to the winners, including the Bay Area’s own Michael Shapiro, who took the bronze and $500 for “Beneath the Rim,” his engaging account of following in the paddle-strokes of John Wesley Powell on a journey through the Grand Canyon.

To take your mobile phone along or not? Does your next  destination use CDMA or TDMA? AMPS? TACS? Here’s a site for travelers listing what phone systems work where.

Unsure about the electrical system at your next destination? Few other countries use the 120 volt system that is standard in the US and Canada. Libya and Aruba are close, at 127 volts, as are the Dominican Republic at 110 and El Salvador at 115. Turkmenistan is on 220, 230 is standard for the EU, and Australia uses 240.

Here’s a handy source for information about electrical systems around the world: the Global Electric and Phone Directory.

I enjoyed Laura Fraser’s talk at Bay Area Travel Writers on Saturday—especially her suggestion about writing regular “sensory postcards” as an exercise in paying attention to our surroundings and writing regularly.

Laura’s latest book is All Over the Map, in which she “tangos in Buenos Aires, seeks wisdom from an Amazonian shaman, heads off into the wilderness on Outward Bound, goes on a ten-day meditation retreat, interviews sex-trafficked women in Italy, and reports on the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda.”

I met Teresa LeYung Ryan at the Bay Area Travel Writers meeting on Saturday, and had a few minutes to look through her 100-page workbook, Build Your Writers’ Platform & Fanbase in 22 Days: Attract Agents, Editors, Publishers, Readers, and media Attention NOW. It looks like a good resource; let me know what you think if you’ve read/used it.

Through a special agreement with more than 800 newspapers worldwide, the Washington, DC Newseum displays the front pages of newspapers from around the world each day on its website. The front pages are in their original, unedited form.

Thanks to John Montgomery (Montgomery Photographic) for the link.

March 18, 2011 9:00 am

to

March 19, 2011 4:00 pm

Workshop activities include:

• Instruction in writing techniques particular to creative nonfiction—travel, memoir, food and the personal essay.
• Strategies to aid the invention, composition and revision of students’ writing.
• Study of professionally published models of creative nonfiction writing.
• Writing exercises and sharing of participants’ writing.

The workshop fee of $150.00 includes instruction, digital copies of reading materials, morning coffee, drinks at lunch and afternoon snack. Directions to the workshop location in Pleasanton will be sent to all participants. Email the instructor, Kathryn Abajian, at kabajian@gmail.com for an enrollment form and further directions. Or call Kathryn at 925-998-5785 with questions.

Anyone who plans to travel anywhere, ever—and I think that’s pretty much all of us—will want to watch this amazing 15-second video about how to fold a shirt. (So that’s how they do it!)

Thanks to John Montgomery (Montgomery Photographic) for the link.

“For the media, this is a Tom Sawyer moment. “Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” he says to his friends, and sure enough, they are soon lined up for the privilege of doing his chores. That’s a bit like how social networks get built. (Just imagine if Tom had also schooled them in the networking opportunities of the user-generated endeavor: “You’re not just painting a fence. You’re building an audience around your personal brand.”)”

Read the rest of this Feb 14 New York Times article about crowd-sourced journalism.  Read more... (132 words, 1 image, estimated 32 secs reading time)

Here’s a heartening post by Lara Dunston—a travel writer who has developed and negotiated a unique editorial relationship and is not starving!

The new mobile guide to San Francisco’s waterfront, San Francisco Waterfront: Bridge to Ballpark, is now available on iTunes. Travel writer Suzanne Rodriguez and I (Laurie McAndish King) co-developed it, and we both enjoyed the process immensely.

The app runs on Apple iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads, and is a witty guide packed with history, photos, and information about the best things to see and do along San Francisco’s waterfront.

Please tell your friends (shameless self promotion, here we go), and consider downloading a few copies; it’s an excellent holiday gift for friends and colleagues: smart, fun, high-quality, relevant, well-written, easy to give, and inexpensive (just $2.99).

I enjoyed Gregory Dicum’s December 1st New York Times article about literature as sustenance in San Francisco. It is, and yeah, that’s why we love this city.

Linda Ballou’s Lost Angel Walkabout: One Traveler’s Tales was just reviewed on Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding by a reader who appreciated Linda’s cultural sensitivity: “Ballou is a very culturally conscious traveler. Her stories bring with them a wealth of information about an area. She seems to travel with a researched understanding of a places history, customs, and ecological situation. Indeed, many chapters are followed with an Eco-Alert, informing readers of issues specific to an area and, sometimes, what they can do to raise awareness or help.”

Booklist gave Li Miao Lovett’s book a starred review, calling it a powerful first novel.

“China is all around us, from the clothes and furniture we buy to the food we eat. Yet much of the culture is still a mystery. In the Lap of the Gods sheds light on modern China through the story of a widower and the baby girl he rescues from the Yangtze.”

Check it out by reading an excerpt from In the Lap of the Gods.

Acclaim for In the Lap of the Gods:

“A moving farewell to the old, more humane way of life.”
~ Maxine Hong Kingston  Read more... (144 words, 2 images, estimated 35 secs reading time)

December 31, 2010

Samsonite Luggage is giving away a “Luxury trip for two to China and a set of xSpace luggage” in celebration of the company’s 100th birthday. Visit the Samsonite website and enter by December 31st.

Discover Ireland is giving away a customized “$5,000 dream vacation to Ireland.” You have to become a Facebook fan in order to enter (interesting marketing idea), but hey—how hard is that to do?

December 1, 2010

Congratulations to Michael Shapiro, winner of the Travel Classics West 2009 Writers Contest for Best Travel Story on Arizona. Michael’s story, “Beneath the Rim: A Journey Down the Colorado River with John Wesley Powell,” won him a 2-night stay at Arizona Biltmore’s new Ocatilla “hotel-within-a-hotel” in Phoenix, plus a spa treatment of his choice, and dinner at the Biltmore’s Frank and Albert’s restaurant.

The next Travel Classics contest, Best Travel Story on Quebec, will be open to attendees of Travel Classics Quebec 2010. Contest deadline is December 1, 2010. Prize includes airfare, accommodations and rental car for four days in Quebec and Montreal.  Read more... (106 words, 1 image, estimated 25 secs reading time)

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