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).

One of the first things I did after purchasing my iPhone 3GS was to buy a screen protector. In fact, I had the sales tech install it for me in the Apple store to make sure there was no way a scratch could find it's way anywhere near my new device.

I've been careful like that with all my gadgets - all the way back to my Blackberry Curve and even my old Motorola RAZR.

My first iPhone screen protector was brittle though, and didn't stick very well around the edges, as you can see from the photo below. It also didn't protect the sides or the back (I already have a scratch on the silver side trim, and several scratches on the back side even though I've been extremely careful with it).

Today I discovered the Invisible Shield, which is a full body skin that's precision cut for the iPhone (and many other mobile devices).

The shield has a piece that covers the front and another that covers that back and wraps around the sides for full protection. It's contoured so it's able to wrap snuggly around the corners of the iPhone, and comes with a special spray that helps it adhere tightly and without peeling like my old skin (and without leaving residue if I need to remove it later).

The film is very flexible and made of thin polyurethane (.02 milligrams), yet is super tough. It was originally used by the military to protect helicopter blades, and it's able to provide protection without interfering with the look and sleekness of my iPhone.

Installation Tips

I'm enroute to Dallas, TX right now and it's a wifi flight with American Airlines. I'm typing... I mean tapping this post on my iPhone 3GS, after paying a nominal $7.95 fee.

The Internet speed on the in-flight wifi connection is plenty fast to download a music album from iTunes while updating 4 apps, browsing the web and checkng email, without any noticeable slow down.

GPS looks a little confused though - it thinks I'm still at the airport even though we've been traveling for a couple hours, probably because that's where the signal is coming from:

SMS also doesn't work, so don't plan on texting on these flights. You also can't share a connection between a laptop and mobile device - you have to pay an additional connection for a laptop or mobile device (iPhone, Blackberry, etc).

I'd love to see wifi be free on flights, but all things considered, I felt it was still a great value since I was able to get a lot of work done (and play) instead of wasting a few hours in the air.

Question: Does the new iphone 3gs take decent videos, and are the pictures that much better too?

Answer: Having just purchased an iPhone 3GS a couple weeks ago, I'll answer this first-hand. The photos are much better with the new 3.0 megapixel auto-focusing iphone camera, and the 30 frame-per-second video recorder is surprisingly good.

I'll start with the video. It's easy to take good video when you have a nice steady tripod and a slow moving area to record. But that'd be way too boring.

Instead, how about a front row ride on the Timber Terror roller coaster at the Silverwood amusement park? I happened to be vacationing there this week with my family, and was able to snag a front row seat on this fast and bumpy thriller. Here's the video I took (picture me holding onto the front rail with my left hand and holding even tighter to my new iPhone with my right hand).

Here's the original 39 MB Quicktime movie file that looks quite a bit better then the one that was uploaded to YouTube: timber-terrror-silverwood.mov

Here's the YouTube version:

That's pretty good video quality in my opinion, and the roller coaster ride was a lot of fun too (except for the 2 girls screaming in my ear right behind me).

Videos are recorded in Quicktime .mov format and can be uploaded directly to YouTube from the iPhone, or sent to your friends via email.

The new iPhone 3GS has arrived, and I've had a chance to put it through it's paces over the last couple of days. I definitely recommend it - especially if you can get the upgrade pricing - and be sure to check with an Apple store for in-stock availability, because AT&T stores are currently backed up at least a week.

The first thing I did when I upgraded was to copy everything from the old iPhone 3G to the new 3GS. This included all the apps I had purchased, and all the music, photos, contacts, email, notes - the whole enchilada.

Overall the process went fairly well, and I'll rate it a B+ in spite of a few gotchas along the way.

Here are the steps I took to backup my old 3G and restore the new 3GS from the backup. These same steps can be followed to fully backup an iPhone 3G (and you might realize after reading this article that the backups you've been doing have not been backing up your purchased apps).

1. Backup the old iPhone 3G

Connect your iPhone to your computer with the USB data cable and open iTunes. Wait for it to recognize your iPhone, and then right-click on your iPhone in the left side bar. Select "Backup" from the short-cut menu to start the backup.

The first backup took about 20 minutes on my iPhone, which was loaded with about 4 GB of data. I say first, because I ended up having to do it again because the first run didn't backup my purchased apps nor my music files.

Instead, I received an error message indicating that not everything was transferred, and that my computer wasn't authorized to play the items (even though I had already authorized my computer).

Turns out you have to tell iTunes to transfer purchased apps from your iPhone to your computer, and Apple didn't put the menu option in a prominent location.

2. Transfer Purchased Apps