"Abandon your mobile phone, laptop, iPod, and all such links to family, friends, and work colleagues. Concentrate on where you are and derive your entertainment from immediate stimuli, the tangible world around you. Increasingly, in hostels and guesthouses one sees "independent" travelers eagerly settling down in front of computers instead of conversing with fellow travelers,...

Since I've written quite a bit about how electronic technology is transforming travel , I enjoyed reading " GPS and the End of the Road ," Ari N. Schulman's essay in the Spring 2011 issue of The New Atlantis . In the essay, Schulman posits that GPS devices, along with "location awareness" apps like HearPlanet...

Looks like the guidebooks are heading for the really small screen: mobile devices. With the soaring popularity of the iPhone and other smartphones, guidebook publishers are moving to take advantage of new platforms, as this AP article describes: Guidebooks adapt to mobile download era . However, they are running into a common problem in the...

Bargaining in Chatuchak Weekend Market in Thailand. Photo: Eugene Tang / BangkokSights.com One of the biggest obstacles to traveling is the language barrier. Simple tasks like asking where the bathroom is, telling a taxi driver to take you to your hotel, and others can seem like impossible missions. Can technology bridge the gap? Some new...

Dealing with phone cards and other vagaries of international calling can be a major pain. Matt Gross, the New York Times journalist who does the "Frugal Traveler" column, has the perfect system worked out. In his article, Staying in Touch Internationally, on the Cheap , he presents the details of his calling system. It makes...