Casual Friday: High-Tech Travel Tips

Practical--and impractical--advice for the casual traveler.

Plenty of stories provide advice for elite mobile professionals. But what about you, the unproductive traveler? Maybe you're on vacation. Maybe you're trying to chill out before a day's worth of travel and business meetings. Point is, you need to pack a little smarter to entertain yourself, and that's what this week's column is all about. I have some great roadworthy games and a few ways to watch video--and, yeah, I'll even throw in some helpful, practical tips.

The Impractical Tips

Sometimes you simply want to sit back and relax--y'know, just watch a video on whatever mobile device you have handy. We used to have to jump through multiple hoops to do that; for instance, I'd run DirectShow Dump to strip out any DRM nonsense and then use 3GP Converter to transcode the video into different formats. These days, we have it easy. For some people that means watching show clips on cell phones. Other folks download Tivo content to a PSP or iPod. Me? I record shows on my Media Center PC and transfer the recordings at the touch of a button.

Let's not forget about the whole Webcast revolution. PC World Senior Editor Melissa J. Perenson put together a great, comprehensive feature looking at TV on the Web. Below, I mention a few specific things that are worth watching, but here's one big disclaimer: Many of the shows are region-locked. For example, as I write this, Hulu works only in the United States. My apologies to anyone in other countries.

Part of a massive multimedia effort to promote Stephen King's next book, Just After Sunset, N is a horrifically beautiful-looking Web miniseries.

This indie documentary, which looks at the town that George W. Bush moved into, recently premiered exclusively on Hulu.com.

The Sci-Fi Channel has a small but cool collection of classic science-fiction movies and serials. I mean, Radar Men From the Moon? Truly old-school awesome.

Not every high-powered freak in the world gets profiled on the hit NBC TV series. These Webisodes follow a mailman with supersonic abilities.

Rosario Dawson stars in this futuristic cop thriller. Be sure to check out the whole site for all the cool interactive features (and the oh-so-subtle Microsoft plugs throughout the clips).

This musical about a lovelorn supervillain is an Internet phenomenon.

For me, the surest way to kill time in any given situation is, of course, to play games. So here's a quick list of tips and games, organized according to what device you might have with you.