Stories by: James A. Martin

When you're on the road, camping out in a bland hotel room, there's something truly comforting about seeing your spouse, kids, or other loved ones in a live video chat.

Remember the opening scene of Night of the Living Dead? A young woman and her brother are visiting their grandfather's plot in a graveyard. A creepy pale-faced dude approaches them, and the screaming begins.

Some words seem destined to go together, like "Marco" and "Polo," "Uma" and "Oprah," "rock" and "lobster." Until recently, however, I would never have thought to conjoin the words "checkpoint" and "friendly." But these days, the two seemingly disparate words are locked in a brazen embrace, showing up all over the media and the Internet, in relation to new laptop bags.

Downloadable applications from Apple's iTunes App Store can turn your iPhone into a helpful traveling companion. As of this writing (early August, 2008), the App Store's Travel category includes foreign language translators, currency and weight/measure converters, a smattering of guides to municipal transportation (such as one for London's Tube), and Frommer's city guides for New York and San Francisco.

I recently tried limiting myself to just one carry-on bag when flying. I couldn't do it--and frankly, I don't recommend the practice. However, the exercise prompted me to re-evaluate all the gear and related accessories I normally pack. Here are two items that will continue to make the cut.

I'm now the owner of an Apple iPhone 3G, after waiting out the first-generation model.

When it comes to packing sensibly for a trip, I don't have a lot of credibility among my friends. Some still shake their heads over the time I took a pinata to Mexico. And the guy who lugged an espresso machine from California to the British Virgin Islands? That would be me.

If you're single and looking for love, here's a tip: Buy an Apple MacBook Air and start hanging out at Internet cafes.

Google recently added a welcome feature to Google Docs, its free Web-based office productivity tool set, which includes word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation apps. It's called Google Docs Offline, and as its name suggests, the feature enables you to edit Google documents without being connected to the Internet.

Recently, I was talking to an executive at a smartphone software developer. The company had recently released new versions of its software for RIM BlackBerrys, Windows Mobile Smartphones, and other devices - but not for Palm OS smartphones. I asked why.

Practically every week I receive e-mail from readers asking about digital voice recorders. Usually, they want to know which digital voice recorder is best, and which I recommend for speech-to-text conversion.