photo by Scott Beale

The last few days I’ve been staying in Cocoa Beach, FL for the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis. Every morning I was up before sunrise and back after sundown, but this morning as I left for the airport I finally had a chance to catch a beautiful sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. Living on the Pacific Coast, we are used to sunsets over the ocean, so it’s nice to catch an early morning sunrise.

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photo by Scott Beale

Google is offering free Wi-Fi service to air travelers at 47 airports across the United States this holiday season, starting today through January 15th.

Google Inc. today announced that it is working with airports across the country as well as Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group, Airport Marketing Income and others to provide free Wi-Fi as a holiday gift now through January 15, 2010. The gift currently includes 47 airports, including Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Louis and Charlotte. Additionally, as a result of this project, Burbank and Seattle airports will begin offering airport-wide free Wi-Fi indefinitely.

Google is also paying for free Wi-Fi on all Virgin American flights through January 15th.

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Last month Jason Laskodi and I took a trip to Dallas/Fort Worth to visit Barry Abrahamson. While there we organized a Laughing Squid Drinkup which started off at Cohabitat, an awesome coworking space located in a huge house in Uptown Dallas. Our friend Blake Burris graciously offered to host us there and gave us a grand tour of the space. Here are a few photos of Cohabitat from our visit.

Later that evening we made our way over to the Ginger Man where the Beatles cover band a A Hard Night’s Day was playing. Here are a few photos of Ginger Man Dallas.

photos by Scott Beale

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The Google Street View Trike takes photos cars can’t go, for instance LEGOLAND.

They are taking suggestions on where to ride next, the deadline is October 28th.

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I’ve recently been trying out Gowalla, a location-based social network that launched at SXSW this year along with Foursquare. Foursquare picked up a bunch of early adopters (I’ve been using is since it launched), especially those who used to use Dodgeball, but in the last few months, Gowalla has been ramping up quite a bit.

The two services are similar, with one major difference is that Gowalla uses GPS to verify locations, where with Foursquare you can check in to a location without even being there, something that is often abused. Also, currently Gowalla is only available for the iPhone without a SMS option, but they are currently working on support for other phones.

One big advantage that Gowalla has over Foursquare is that it can be used anywhere around the world. Foursqure is only in available in a few cities at the moment, with plans to expand in the future.

Like Foursquare, Gowalla also has a game layer. You can pickup and drop items at various locations. Dropping an item lets you become a founder of a location when you enter it into their database. Gowalla also has a “Trips” feature that encourages your to explore new areas in a city.

Another thing that sets Gowalla apart is their design. They use a clever icon set for various types of locations as well as many custom graphics for featured spots.

The Next Web and TechCrunch both recently did extensive reviews of Gowalla.

The best thing about Foursquare and Gowalla is that they encourage people to step away from the computer and leave their home to explore the world around them.

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Last week while visiting Boulder, Lori and I took a trip a half hour north to the tiny town of Hygiene, CO, just west of Longmont. Located there is the world headquarters of StickerGiant, the awesome company that we use to print our Laughing Squid stickers. StickerGiant founder John Fischer gave us a grand tour of their operations.

Photo Gallery: StickerGiant

photos by Scott Beale

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photo by Scott Beale

In April I came across this creative advertising by Zappos.com in the form of an ad in a TSA airport security bin at LAX. The ad is generating a wide range of reactions.

UPDATE: Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh contacted me with the following comment about the airport security ads:

We are funding a program that helps travelers get through airport security 16% faster, making the TSA workers’ jobs more ergonomic, and saving taxpayers and airports money.

Here’s a PDF of the Zappos Airport Bin Advertisement Program FAQ.

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guest post by Dave Schumaker

In November 2007, Christoph Rehage set foot from Beijing, China with a goal of walking to Berlin, Germany, a distance of over 4,500 miles. He created a short video called “The Longest Way 1.0“, documenting his journey over the course of a year and featuring self portrait photographs he took each day on his trip that shows his hair and beard getting longer.

As Christoph states in the opening of his video, “The initial plan was to walk from Beijing to Germany. I started in the fall of 2007. After one year of mountains and blazing hot deserts I realized… I had grown a mighty long beard.”

After walking for an entire year, Christoph was only able to complete 2,900 miles of his journey, ending in Ürümqi, China. No matter, Christoph Rehage is an inspiration to people like myself, who lack the ability to embark on year long adventures. Or the ability to grow proper facial hair.

Music is L’Aventurier by The Kingpins.

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Fasten Seat Belts to the World, a project made up of 35 “Do’s & Dont’s” videos to help reduce communication barriers for people traveling through Europe.

Some people, when travelling to new countries, may forget to consider the different behavioural norms they are likely to encounter and behave exactly as they do at home. In such circumstances, even minor cultural differences can become major barriers to communication and cooperation. This project aims to demystify these cultural differences and encourage visitors to embrace them.

via swissmiss

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photo by Julia Solis

The latest gallery on the Dark Passage Travelogue features haunting photos of abandoned swimming pools taken at hotels, hospitals and jails.

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guest post by Dave Schumaker

Recently, Air New Zealand released a new flight safety video for their Boeing 737’s called “The Bare Essentials of Safety”, that features some of their employees giving demonstrations in the nude. However, their bodies are covered in paint that look like air crew uniforms. As if their Kiwi accents weren’t enough to make us love them.

via Los Angeles Times

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Killing My Lobster has created a hilarious Oakland Travel Video.

A fabulous vacation wonderland awaits you on the other side of the Bay Bridge!

The video is reminiscent of the Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Videos.

via Tim Pratt

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Clear, the service located at serveral airports that provided express lanes allowing travelers to bypass TSA security lines, has ceased operations due to financial reasons.

via Dan Gillmor

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The fog we encountered last weekend while we were at MaxFunCon 2009 in the mountain top resort of Lake Arrowhead, CA was pretty intense, even for a San Franciscan. Heather Powazek Champ shot a great time-lapse video of their trip down the mountain in the heavy fog.

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guest post by Burstein!

photo by Tod Seelie

The Swimming Cities of Serenissima are art boats that are quite literally made out of junk down to their Mercedez 240 D diesel engines. A merry crew of artists are sailing these pieces of art to the Biennale in Venice, which is a fancy contemporary art show that is just perfect for crashing. Here is an update on the trip from Chicken John:

I’m in Italy. We are traveling in little canals, but the bridges are low and we keep getting kicked out of the canals and sent back to the Adriatic. Sea. The Adriatic Sea. It’s the ocean. It’s huge. It’s not like a big lake. This ‘aint Camp Tipsy. We are piloting ocean-going vessels in serious swell on boats made of bullshit. It’s pretty amazing. Everyday I simultainiously fall in love and a few hours later I feel like I’m wasting my time. I’m totally confused. It happens when you spend too much time with vegans. The crew are 30 art-types who are all totally great on their own but as a collective they are impossible and the logistics are maddning. The boats aren’t even done, really. We are building as we go. We were underway and Steve was welding a muffler pipe. It’s stupid. I watched someone cut a piece of wood in half with a leatherman yesterday. We are cutting steel with a hacksaw. We’ve got a welder, but it’s 110. We’ve got a grinder, but it’s 220. Half the tools are 220. Everyones cell phone is deep 6ed. My tools are gone, eaten by the sea. We had a few problems with drive shafts and sheer pins, but we stopped in a little fishing town and a adorable old Italian man fabricated us a sleeve to protect the vibration and we havn’t had a problem since. He worked for 12 hours and charged us $160. People give us fish. The curiosity is very reserved here. Italy is kinda fancy. I’m in the North. It reminds me of Palm Beach.

photo by Neiltron

They are going to arrive at the Beinealle soon where they are going to put on a show. For those folks in the region, it takes place June 4th-6th at Isla Certo sa Vento di Venezia Hotel.

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guest post by Burstein!

As part of our continuing coverage of the Swimming Cities of Serenissima, we have obtained some lovely mail art from embedded artists Spy Emerson and Moses Grub. They have been mailing back improved postcards from their travels as part of an ongoing fundraising effort that included the speakeasy raid at Ritual Roasters because “being an art marauder does not pay.”

The piece above is from the coast of Slovenia. This means that the Swimming Cities are getting closer to their ultimate mission – crashing the extra-fancy Venice Biennale on June 7th. There is much more adventure left, so there is plenty of time to get an original piece of mail art for only 10 bucks.

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guest post by Al Ridenour

Time to rethink Bulgaria. Forget feta cheese, women’s choirs, and communist thuggery. Someone is rebooting  Bulgaria, and his name is Azis. At one level, you could simply describe him as a performer of chalga, a commercially streamlined fusion of traditional Romani (“gypsy,” ok?) folk-music and pop. But that would hardly do. In truth, Azis is Bulgaria’s answer to Madonna, Michael Jackson, Boy George, Liberace, and Marilyn Manson all rolled into one colossal glitter-dusted, KY-oozing jelly roll.

A Romani outsider by birth, this Balkan Bear’s star rose quickly with his first release in 2003, an unsuccessful bid for Parliament in 2005, an unofficial but highly publicized gay marriage in 2006, and the birth, in 2007, of a daughter via artificial insemination. But all this is nothing compared to the visual spectacle of his music videos. Whether playing Bollywood in an Erte-inspired Ice Queen get-up or playing nasty with Tom-of-Finland-inspired gangsters, the stylistic audacity of this hefty and uncompromising man-diva clearly demonstrates: it’s not your father’s Bulgaria anymore.

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The first Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video didn’t work as planned, so they came up with a second version.

So The Cleveland Board of Tourism was not happy with the first video that I turned in. In fact, they said that upon viewing it, three of the board members moved away.

They insisted that I turn in a proper Cleveland tourism video, otherwise they will pursue litigation.

Here’s the original video:

See Previously: This Is My Milwaukee – Come For The Weekend, Stay For Life!

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guest post by Burstein!

Adrien Noterdaem created a really cool interactive map of The Simpsons’ hometown Springfield. Along with classics like Krusty Burger, this maps out the locations of places like Sprawlmart, U-Trawl Boat Rentals, Bob’s Big Poi, the nuclear power plant, and of course 742 Evergreen Terrace. Very neat.

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bishopvids quickly put together this awesome Cleveland Tourism Video, if this doesn’t make you want to visit Cleveland, nothing will. “Fun times in Cleveland today, Cleveland!”

The Cleveland Tourism Board gave me 14 million dollars about 8 months ago to make a promotional video to bring people to Cleveland. As usual, I waited till the last minute and I ended up having to shoot and edit it in about an hour yesterday afternoon. I probably should have invested more time.

UPDATE: The first video didn’t work as planned, so they made a second version.

See Previously: This Is My Milwaukee – Come For The Weekend, Stay For Life!

Thanks to Jason Laskodi for the tip!

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