One of the first orders of business I take card of whenever I land in a new country is to try and get a pre-paid data plan for my phone. Some people chose not to have a working phone when they travel, since it's sometimes a bit of a pain to find the right provider. But I don't see much point in owning a smartphone and not having access to data with it whenever I want. Getting A Pre-paid SIM When You Travel Here are some other reasons why I love having a prepaid data plan with my phone when I travel. I can message friends and family back home using WhatsApp or iMessage whenever I want I can check ...

One of the first items I try to tackle whenever I hit a new country is to get a pay as you go SIM for my iPhone. If you are on a budget it's something that you may not want to do, but I find having data on my phone invaluable for various reasons. Last time I was in Ireland, I opted for a Vodafone SIM card for my iPhone. I remember at the time it was reasonably priced and gave me 100MB or so of data. Since I was going to be in Ireland for a month though, I wanted to have more data. I look at Vodafone's pricing, but it started at around 40 Euros for the month for 1GB worth of data. Getting A SIM ...

While SMS is great when you have a package that includes unlimited SMS messages, it can be extremely expensive to either send or receive international SMS messages, often to the tune of $2/message. Here are a few alternatives that are available for the iPhone to help reduce costs. Kik Messenger A few days ago, my friend John recommended that I grab a copy of the Kik Messenger application on the iPhone. Kik is an SMS-like application that allows you to have real time text chats with your friends over data or WiFi. Because it supports push notifications, it's as real-time as SMS is, which makes ...

A while ago I did a quick and dirty hosting experiment with some of my readers. I actually need a bit more data, although what I'm after is a bit easier this time. So, if you have a blog, all I ask is that you let me know the following: The URL for your blog The name of the hosting company that you're on If you like it or not So please post a comment if you have some of that info, or send me an email if you don't really want it public. If you know of any friends and where they are at, let me know too. Thanks! ...

I set up my computer to do backups using Apple's Time Machine a while ago. The good news is that it appears to be working just fine. The bad news is it seems to fire up my external USB drive far more than I would like, especially during the evenings. Since my iMac is right in my bedroom, the spinning, chugging drive doesn't make my sleep situation any better. If I can't find a way to dial down how often it does a backup, I might have to look at getting a quieter drive. ...