Ricky Says

I've built up a respectible arsenal of gadgets and devices while logging almost 200,000 miles in frequent flier miles this year.

Some are necessities, and some are just for fun. Some are just to keep my sanity on longer trips like the one I'm taking this week to Cologne, Germany.

My geeked out road warrior survival pack includes everything from a lithium-ion battery pack that gives my iphone 2 extra charges, to a sleek pair of noise canceling Bose headphones that block out the majority of jet airplane engine noises.

It also makes a great Christmas shopping list for the business traveler or technology addict in your life ;-)

Here's my Letterman's countdown of top ten must-have gadgets when traveling for business or pleasure:

10. Starbuck's Via 3-pack. Technology aside... Let's face it - hotel room coffee tastes horrible no matter what brand they use.

I really need a good cup of coffee to start the day off right (especially for east coast trips where it feels like I'm getting up at 4 a.m.) and these instant coffee packs from Starbucks are just as good as the real thing. You can get hot water from just about anywhere, including an in-room coffee maker without the coffee grounds.

9. iPod nano with armband. Yes, I have an iPhone too (see #1 below) but a small ipod is more convenient for working out, and also provides more hours of music for helping long flights go by faster.

8. Camera. I bring my Nikon D50 DSLR camera along with a 300mm zoom lens when I want to be sure and capture the city views in high quality (and I usually have some time after business hours for touring the city).

Question: I have lots of songs in Windows Media Player that I want to copy to iTunes (I have just bought an iPod). How do I do this?

Answer: I hope you like your new iPod and you can easily import music from Windows Media Player into iTunes by following these steps:

1. Open iTunes and select the File -- Add Folder to Library menu.

2. Browse to your Windows Media Player music folder. iTunes will ask you where your songs are located, which by default will be in your My Music folder on Windows XP, or in your Music folder on Vista.

3. Convert Windows Media Player songs to AAC format (.m4a). iTunes actually does this for you, and it will automatically prompt you to convert the songs after you click OK in the dialog from Step 2 above.

iTunes doesn't modify your original music files from Windows Media Player. It leaves those songs in their original location and makes copies in your iTunes music folder, converting them to AAC format along the way.

Once your songs have been imported into iTunes, you can plug in your new iPod and drag and drop the songs from iTunes to your iPod.

With all the travel I've been doing lately, I splurged today on a pair of QuietComfort® 15 Acoustic Noise Cancelling® headphones (over 180,000 miles this year and another 10,000 mile round trip to Germany next week).

These are the latest and greatest in sound control from Bose, and my first pair of noise canceling headphones. The other one I considered buying was the new digital headset from Sony, but after reading numerous reviews on Amazon I concluded that the Bose headphones had better overall noise reduction, quality, and battery life - and they were also $100 cheaper than the Sony's.

To properly test the noise reduction capabilities of these Bose headphones, I took them with me on my bus ride commute home. It was a 45 minute bus ride from downtown Portland, and I sat in the back right next to the noisy engine compartment.

Imagine a loud revving diesel engine, squeeky brakes, doors opening and closing - you get the picture. Plenty of noise.

The Bose QC 15 headphones are very comfortable with an around-ear design, and I didn't realize just how well they were doing until I turned them off and was hit with a blast of engine noise.

They also make music sound better because they filter out much of the external background noises, meaning you don't have to crank up the volume to hear deep bass and crisp treble.

I showed you a while ago how to link your Facebook account with Twitter, so that whenever you posted something to Facebook it would automatically show up on Twitter.

However, I quickly discovered that many of my personal Facebook updates were "TMI" for my Twitter followers, and my business-related tweets were gobbly-gook to my Facebook friends. So I turned off the Facebook-Twitter integration.

Recently I discovered a better (and free) tool for handling Twitter and Facebook integration: TweetDeck

TweetDeck lets you create links to both your Twitter and Facebook accounts, and then lets you identify which service(s) your updates will be sent to. So you can post to just Twitter, or just Facebook, or you can update both Twitter and Facebook in one shot. That's the kind of control I was looking for!

Here's how you can set up Facebook and Twitter in TweetDeck:

1. Download and install a free copy of TweetDeck if you haven't done so already.

2. Click the Settings button in TweetDeck.

3. Select the Accounts tab and click "Add New Account".

4. Click the "Add Your Facebook Account" link and enter your Facebook account information.

You'll be asked to allow access to your Facebook account, and to allow TweetDeck to publish to your Facebook acount.

5. Type in your tweet like you normally would, and choose both Facebook and Twitter in the "From" section in TweetDeck.

For some reason the Snipping Tool in Windows Vista tends to frequently lock up, resulting in the familiar error message "The Snipping Tool is not working on your computer right now". In fact, it just happened to me so I thought I'd jot down the steps I took to fix the problem.

Microsoft's error messages are not always very helpful, and this is no exception. Restart your computer? Really?

It turns out you can quickly reset this handy screen capture utility without restarting your computer, just by killing the SnippingTool.exe process in your control panel.

Don't let that line of techno-speak scare you away either - it's actually super easy if you follow the steps below:

1. Open your Task Manager by giving your computer the 3-fingered salute (press Ctrl+Alt+Del keys at the same time). Select "Start Task Manager" from the list of options that are displayed.

2. Click the "Processes" tab in the popup dialog, and click on the SnippingTool.exe process.

3. Click the "End Process" button and confirm that you want to kill this service.

4. Start up the Snipping Tool again, which you can find in your Start -- All Programs -- Accessories menu.

A few clicks is all it takes to restart the Snipping Tool and get back to taking screen shots in Windows Vista.