We've all had those short connections that don't allow even ten minutes to plug in an AC adapter, even if we could find a (working) electric outlet. We're too busy rushing from one end of the airport to another! Imagine if we could harness some of that kinetic energy as we race through the terminal, just like a Prius storing away a few joules as you coast down a hill.

Turns out someone with an engineering background imagined that, too, and has brought a product to market! Thanks to ...

Remember when getting online in airports and hotel rooms meant having a laptop with a built-in modem, paying for a nationwide dialup service, and finding a phone jack to plug into? There were a couple of pay phones with data jacks in many airports, and for a while the gem of the travel industry was the US Airways Shuttle lounge at LaGuardia, with plenty of power outlets and phone jacks galore. Once you made it to the hotel, you might have to crawl around a bit to find a data jack -- or unplug ...

If you've traveled with your gadgets, you know that you need to plan ahead and bring all sorts of cords and chargers along for the ride. No matter how cautious you are, sometimes you'll find yourself out and about with a dwindling battery but without the necessary cord, or with no outlet to plug it into.

That's where these new Chargebox charging stations come in. These devices, and others like them, offer a place to quickly recharge your phone or other device while you're out and ...

When I first started using cell phones, roaming was a pretty easy concept. If you were in your cellular provider's local service area, near home, you weren't roaming. If you were out of town, sometimes even in your own state, you probably were roaming, often with a daily or monthly charge plus a per-minute charge, typically 99 cents per minute. 

Roaming across the United States got simpler fast with the advent of national calling plans from the major cellular carriers, so these ...

The bulk of my travel is for business, and of that travel, a lot of it is on complicated itineraries. Sometimes I'll do a swing of the East Coast and visit three or four cities, I'm frequently jumping between hotels, and I often have rental cars to deal with, too.

All these reservations are a pain in the butt to manage, which is why I've become an avid user of TripIt.

TripIt is an online trip planner that basically takes all your reservations and automatically (and with very ...