Dual TomTom & iPhone charger – the options

TomToms are tricky little suckers to get third-party USB chargers for, because they use an unusually high amount of power. While most USB car chargers put out a maximum of 0.5A, TomToms need 1.2A – 2A depending on the model.

If you want to charge your iPhone and TomTom at once, the choices are slim; you can:

– buy one of these dual cigarette lighter adaptors from Dick Smith and plug in two chargers at once…

– install a car stereo that has an iPod cord and charge your iPhone off that, and use your cigarette lighter jack for the TomTom charger
– manually swap between the chargers…!

Now Scosche in the US has released a $US24.99 dual USB car charger with one port that puts out 2.1A and another port that puts out 1A. The former is perfect for TomTom and the latter for iPhones or most other USB devices.

Its marketing name is Scosche ReVIVE II, but confusingly there is another product called ReVIVE II that only puts out 2 x 1A — so you are better off searching for it using the product code Scosche USBC3.

Only trouble is that they’re currently out of stock on Scosche’s website. Scosche reckons they were in stock as recently as 10th August — so they must have sold out quickly. They are, however, in stock at Amazon.com, if you use a US buying agent such as PriceUSA.com.au.

Fascinating pics of Mojave desert aeroplane graveyard

I wonder if any Qantas / Virgin Blue planes have ended up at the graveyard, or whether there are other aircraft dumps around the world.

Full post: Strange Geographies: The Mojave Desert’s Airplane Graveyard

AMAZING Virgin Blue email marketing error: congrats – you’re Gold. No you’re not.

My strong dislike of Virgin Blue just ratcheted up a notch to “will avoid flying with them at any cost”. I received an email from Virgin Blue last night congratulating me on achieving Velocity Gold frequent flyer membership, only to receive another one an hour later saying “you do not qualify for this upgrade. Please disregard”.

The actual emails are after the jump.

I rode the Google staff shuttle bus!

I’m on a Gray Line bus out of San Francisco, en route to Yosemite National Park. There is FREE wifi on the bus – amazing! San Francisco really would be the place to live if you were tech minded.

The bus driver just commented that the reason this bus has WiFi is that it does double-duty as the shuttle bus for Google employees! He showed me the WiFi setup — it was installed by a particular Google engineer and has four mobile broadband cards — Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and some other network attached to a WiFi router with auto-failover in case of no coverage on one of the networks. All I can say is thank you Mr or Ms Anonymous Google employee!!!

I’ve also decided not to use global roaming for data on my Blackberry while I’m here because it’s easy enough to find WiFi hotspots here with reasonable pricing like $US15 per day — or free in some hotel lobbies. Of course, my Blackberry is practically useless with WiFi — I’d forgotten how atrocious the Blackberry WiFi implementation was. Most of the time it can’t associate with a hotspot or it can associate but can’t get an IP address (while other devices like a MacBook or iPhone have no problem associating).

I am therefore very glad that I also have an iPhone 3GS with me (on review loan from Optus, and before anyone asks: no, they didn’t offer to provide global roaming access as part of the review!) In fact, I’m writing this post from the great WordPress app for iPhone.

I have also noticed that hotels in the US increasingly don’t have wired Ethernet broadband in their rooms any more, instead having WiFi only. “So what?” you might ask. “Isn’t that more convenient?” The answer is no; it means you have to pay for each device you want to connect separately. Although hotels with wired Ethernet have the same rules, you can get around the per-device charging restriction by using a WiFi router plugged in to the Ethernet port. Can’t do that with WiFi only hotels.

Applying for a Journalist US I-Visa: everything you need to know

Visa requirements for travelling to the US as a journalist are a constant source of discussion among Australian IT journos. I went straight to the source, The US Consulate Sydney, to get the myths debunked once and for all.

Aussie IT journos frequently toss up questions like:

• [Big PR company] assures me I don’t need a Visa to go to [big vendor lovefest] because Australia/US have a visa waiver scheme for visits of up to 90 days now… is it true?
• I’m a journo but am visiting the US for a leisure visit, honest to god. Do I really need a journalist visa?
• [Large video card manufacturer] has invited me to their conference in San Francisco, departing in less than a week. But the consulate has no visa appointments. Is there any way I can get my foot in the door?

Here are the facts…

FLIGHT REVIEW: Qantas A380 economy

Since most journos who have scored free flights from airlines on A380s have been given the business or first class experience and written about that (for obvious reasons… airlines want publicity for their immensely profitable premium seats) I thought it would be worth relaying my experience of flying a Qantas A380 in economy recently. (The flight was paid for by another vendor whose conference I was attending, not Qantas. I do write for the Qantas inflight magazine, but they do not give me discount air travel and I do not give them free kicks in my coverage of Qantas in other publications 😉

I flew the Qantas A380 on an eight hour Singapore to Sydney leg the other day and was immensely impressed. In fact, it’s such a comfortable ride compared to a 747 that I will certainly be actively looking for A380 routes on future international trips, and I reckon I’d be prepared to pay 30% more on the ticket cost of an equivalent 747 route.

Some initial thoughts on what is so great about the Qantas A380 after the jump. (PS that’s the awesome “tail cam” view on the inflight entertainment pictured above.)