It's almost summer, and at CNET News.com, summer means road trip time. News.com reporter Daniel Terdiman is about to hit the highways for his third annual gadget-filled trek in search of geek and technology hot spots. This year, he'll travel through the South for three weeks, stopping at sites of note in Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida, and more. Here is the gear he'll bring along.
As with road trips past, a big part of Road Trip 2008 will be photographs of the destinations Daniel visits along the way. Last year, he used his own Canon Rebel XT with lenses Canon lent him. This year, he'll be trying Nikon's D60, the company's new entry-level DSLR. It's a 10.2-megapixel camera, and comes with a stock 18-55mm lens. He'll also be using 16-85mm and 70-300mm lenses.
On both Road Trip 2006 and Road Trip 2007, Daniel used a MacBook Pro for his computing needs. This year, Apple lent him a 80GB MacBook Air for the trip. He thinks the Air's extremely thin design will be nice when he's carrying it on his back. Its main drawbacks, he says, are the fact that its battery is internal, and it's therefore not possible to carry a backup, and the fact that it has only one USB port and no FireWire. That means relying on wireless connectivity is crucial, though he also has an external SuperDrive for reading DVDs.
By now, its common to spot iPhones just about everywhere. Road Trip 2008 will be Daniel's first extended trial of Apple's much-touted phone. He's interested in finding out how widespread AT&T's EDGE network is in the deep South, and whether the iPhone works as a wireless Internet device. He's never used a cell phone this big, so it will be interesting to see if the bigger size is uncomfortable. However, its many options and features, including Google Maps and its high-quality camera, are likely to come in very handy.
Verizon's new EVDO modem is much smaller and more streamlined than its previous offerings. The service seems pretty widespread, and the connectivity is fairly high-speed. Daniel will use this modem to connect to the Internet when he's on the move, and in the case of hotels or motels with poor Wi-Fi connectivity, he hopes this device will let him get online easily.
Like Verizon's USB727, the Compass 597 is a high-speed EVDO modem. Daniel will use this in much the same way as the Verizon device, to get online when he's on the move and to work when Wi-Fi is unavailable or too slow. He also plans to compare the performance of the Verizon and Sprint devices during the trip.
With the Flip Ultra video camera, Daniel will be able to take quick and easy video. The Flip allows for easy downloading of video files and then the simple uploading of them to blogs or YouTube. In this case, Daniel will use the device to take short clips and put them up on his Geek Gestalt blog.
Daniel chose the Dash Express because he thinks it's one of the most interesting car navigation systems to come on the market. It's built around giving drivers the best route information in commuting situations, but also has all the features of other navigation systems. For any given route, it offers three alternatives which are based on real-time traffic information. In addition, the device allows users to send addresses from their computers via the Internet and to share data with each other.
Daniel expects the Dash to be useful, as he intends to opt as much as possible for secondary roads over interstate highways, and the Dash is designed to show those routes as well as the main ones.
Qik's technology is still in alpha, but it is being used by some of the most influential bloggers around. The service is designed to be run on smartphones. It works by shooting live streaming video from the phone that is then broadcast to the Internet. Viewers watching live videos shot by Daniel can then send instant messages to him, which appear in the phone's viewfinder. This makes it possible for viewers to send in questions if he's in the middle of interviewing someone interesting.
All completed videos are then archived on a personal Qik "channel" for easy viewing later and each can easily be embedded in a blog entry.
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