"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,...

SIM cards and top-up cards. Photo: Karl Baron /Flickr Creative Commons The situation: you're out and about in an exotic land. You meet some cool travelers, open-minded and fun. You all fervently promise to meet up later that night. What happens? You show up on time, but your new friends are nowhere to be found....

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...