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There is a mind-boggling number of iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry applications on the market to download to help make your driving and travel experience more user friendly. So which ones are best?
Here are five of the best travel apps ones for Labor Day weekend family reunions, backyard barbecues and last of the summer escapes to the beach:
1. Weatherbug – This app combines the simplicity of Apple’s Weather app with a few extras for your phone. It’s the largest network of professional weather stations in the US and the only source for truly live, local weather wherever you are or want to go. That’s important anytime, but especially when there’s a hurricane like Earl messing up travel plans along the East Coast.
2. BePut - This App lets you share your whereabouts with people you want to find you, like the cousin you are trying to hook up with in Disneyland, or the friend who might be waiting for you at the wrong airport baggage carousel or highway rest stop. With the touch of a button, you can send an email or text message to your cousin or buddy with your exact location, and the recipient gets a special, secure FindMe Key. Saves time and stress from all those “where are you now” texts and phone calls.
3. Trapster — Useful for anytime you are driving, Labor Day or not, this App tells you about police speed traps. It’s counter-intuitive, but Trapster is becoming a favorite tool of police. They want you to know where the speed traps are, so you slow down. Trapster actually encourages its 6.4 million downloaders to slow down and drive more safely. That makes it a true safe driving.
Pittsburgh Fairmont is city's first LEED certified green hotel
The only LEED certified green hotel in Pittsburgh is the new Pittsburgh Fairmont, and it proves that green can be beautiful. Here’s some of what makes this luxury hotel so green that it has been awarded the Gold level of green:
Lighting — energy efficient LED and compact flourescent bulbs reduce energy use at the Pittsburgh Fairmont by enough to power about 50 households a year. Also, equipment and appliances are Energy Star compliant, which means they use 20-30 percent less energy than non-certified machinery.
Water — reduced-flow showers, automatic sensors in sinks in public areas and other fixtures save more than 900,000 gallons of water a year.
Green construction materials — All paints, carpeting, fabrics, and such have no or low emissions of volatile organic compounts (VOC), and most bedding in guestrooms is made from organic or recycled fiber. That’s is also good news for guests with allergies. Woodwork and flooring is made from timber that’s been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which means it comes from sustainably harvested forests.
Fairmont Pittsburgh bedding uses organic and recycled fibers
Food — The hotel chef features local and organic ingredients in the restaurant and bar. Food waste is treated by a high-tech enzyme digester, and fryer oil is recycled locally into biodiesel.
Gottlieb Daimler 1885 patent design for 'riding car'
The automobile was born on August 26, 1885. That is the day Gottlieb Daimler filed a patent for his ‘riding car’, the world’s first vehicle with an internal combustion engine. The world would never be the same, and 125 years later, engineers and designers are still tinkering with the size, power and performance of the cars we drive and ride. Daimler put a motor on a two-wheel vehicle, so purists might say this is the first motorized bicycle or the first motorcycle, not the first car. Let’s not quibble. This was the start of motorized personal mobility.
It took another year for his patent to be awarded, by which time engineer Carl Benz had applied for a patent on a three-wheel motorized vehicle, the Patent Motor Car. That same year, 1886, Daimler created the four-wheeled Motor Carriage.
Fabulous fact: the word automobile comes from the Greek auto, meaning self, and the Latin mobilis, or mobile.
Labor Day is the end of the peak summer travel season, and the beginning of what the travel industry calls ‘shoulder season’, and it’s a season of great travel deals and discounts. Here are some budget travel bargains to grab before they disappear –
Germany is justifiably famous for its great beer and wine festivals, which start in late summer or early fall and focus on regional wines, beers, and culinary specialties. The most famous is the Munich Oktoberfest, the world’s oldest and largest beer festival , which celebrates its 200th anniversary in 2010. Festival dates this year are September 18 to October 4.
The Munich Oktoberfest turns the city into party central. Dozens of huge tents serve food, beer and entertainment to thousands of people each night, and a sprawling midway lures visitors to Ferris wheels and other rides. Each of Bavaria’s beer breweries has its own tent and serves only its own beer, and of the beer tents serve tons of wurst, roast pig and chicken nightly, and every tent features an oompah band.
World's largest Oktoberfest beer festivals are in Munich and Stuttgart
Every few minutes, the band plays a rendition of the “Prosit” drinking song, and everybody stops chatting or eating or drinking to stand up and sing while waving their beer mugs in unison. It’s tough to resist.
I’ll admit — I’ve been there, and I’ve done that. And, I never ceased to be amazed at the strength of the waiters and waitresses who thread their way through the crowds while juggling up to eight one-liter mugs without spilling a drop. You’ll have the most fun if you pick one tent and stay there for the evening, rather than tent-hopping.
Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra tapped to be India's green ambassador
India has tapped popular Bollywood actress and a former Miss World, Priyanka Chopra, to be the face and the body of the country’s environmental efforts, which include tiger conservation and cleaning up the Ganga River. Before heading to Bollywood and establishing a successful career, Chopra traveled the world as Miss World 2000.
Priyanka Chopra’s new green face is primarily for eco-themed programs within India, to encourage the 1.2 billion population to stop littering, and to encourage India’s businesses to avoid dumping industrial waste into the Ganga River, which is central to India’s religious and commercial worlds.
Bengal tigers photo courtesy National Geographic
Chopra also will be spreading the message of the importance of saving the Bengal tiger, whose population has declined to less than 1,000 in the last century, from as many as 40,000.
Book Expo America, NYC
Author Book Signing Peaceful Places NYC
My new travel guidebook
Cuba
Havana, Cienfuegos,
Trinidad, Santa Clara
San Francisco
Launch, 2011 Ford Fiesta
Dubai
Bangkok, Chang Mai
Beaver Creek, Colorado
Where I’ve Been
January
Beaver Creek, Vail, Colorado
2009
Miami - Audi A8 launch
Los Angeles Auto Show
Detroit - GM, Ford
St. Lucia
Guadalajara, Mexico
Frankfurt Auto Show
Stuttgart, Munich, Augssburg
Edmondton, Canada NASCAR
Churchill, Canada, "Polar Bear Capital of the World"
Taos, Albuquerque
There is a mind-boggling number of iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry applications on the market to download to help make your driving and travel experience more user friendly. So which ones are best?
