wireless world Business travelers who find it hard to keep up with the flood of WiFi systems, smart phones and other wireless technology have a new resource: Technology publisher Ziff Davis has launched the "Wireless Supersite" at http://wireless.ziffdavis.com. Here you'll find news and reviews of wireless products from top suppliers like Palm and Dell, along with in-depth articles from industry experts about where the wireless world is going, and what you'll need to know to go along with it.
shopping cart Speaking of wireless, one place to look for the latest and hottest stuff on the market is online retailer Belkin (www.belkin.com). The firm's products include the latest and fastest, like 54g wireless networking, which it says is five times faster than WiFi; tablet PCs; and Bluetooth technology. It also carries more mundane things for road warriors, like its new MiniWireless Optical Mouse, when your desk is a tray table; and its new TraveLite Retractable USB Lamp, which plugs into your laptop and illuminates your keyboard.
report card Which of the major online travel booking sites does the best job in terms of privacy/security policies, customer service, disclosure of advertising partnerships, usability and overall content? The "clear winners" were Expedia and Travelocity, according to a study by ConsumerReports.org and Consumer WebWatch. Besides those two sites, the probe also included Orbitz, Cheap Tickets, OneTravel and TravelNow. You can check out more detailed results of the study at www.ConsumerWebWatch.org.
road service How can members get road service assistance from the American Automobile Association? With the cell phone explosion, you might assume that all service calls are made from the road. But AAA notes that more than one-third of the requests it gets for road service come from homes or offices of its 46 million members, so the auto club has introduced online service calls. Members who log onto www.aaa.com will be routed to the site of their local club, where they can access a variety of services, including emergency road calls.
room reviews When you're going to an unfamiliar city and you don't know the hotels there, where can you find objective advice about them? Some 3 million travelers a month are turning to TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com), which lets you check out hotel opinions culled from travel guidebooks, media articles and the opinions of persons who have stayed there. The site even rates hotels by popularityin Amsterdam, for instance, the Sheraton Hotel Pulitzer gets top honors. The site also lets you check prices for selected properties with links to various booking sites.
transit systems with airport rail links