Guest Post: Mlungu Brett on technology and travel comms

About the author: This guest post is that of a now experienced travel blogger. Brett (and his friend Darren) spent nearly a year traveling the world, all the while posting news, tips and photos on each leg of the journey. In his second guest post, he talks about the best ways to go about keeping touch with friends and family while traveling extensively.. You can find the Mlungu Trek blog at www.offexploring.com/mlungutrek.

KEEPING CONNECTED AND ON THE MOVE

You may think that keeping in touch while travelling overseas may sound easy for today’s interconnected and small world. Although there are great tools for this like email, Facebook, Twitter, Skype and cell phone services like sms, WhatsApp, Blackberry messenger or the similar iPhone offerings, there is one place where the world is still pretty slow and far behind: phone calls and roaming.

Roaming, for those who are not sure, is taking your existing cell phone, that you use every day in your home country, with you overseas and using it without changing sim cards. Coming from South Africa, you can either activate roaming for SMSing or texting only or you can activate it for full use, being, SMS/text, calls and data. SMSing, though expensive, is definitely cheaper than phoning. And, data, the medium through which Whatsapp and other cheaper alternatives work, is generally cheaper than SMSing or calling at home but can be much, much more expensive if used overseas.

But, this is the new world, and there are facilities out there to help curb the cost of communicating while travelling. If you’re travelling with a laptop, smart phone or tablet, your best bet is using free wifi (which is available quite widely in America, Europe, Asia and South America, but oddly not really available in South Africa) to make use of the communication apps mentioned above. Skype is the best for calling and is either free if the person you’re talking to also has Skype or is a small cost if calling a phone.

But when wifi fails you, or you don’t have access to Skype, there are some other ways of reducing the cost of communication.

The cheapest way of communicating is to buy a sim card in each country you go to and use this. You can let people know what the number is by email/Facebook/Twitter and you can use it for local communication or SMSing overseas or receiving calls. You’ll be surprised how cheap or free sim cards are around the world but you will need to buy airtime in each country.

Another alternative that is less cumbersome than buying a new sim card and airtime in each country is to get a world sim card. An example here is www.worldsim.com or www.onesimcard.com. The disadvantage here is that costs will be a bit more expensive.

The last and sneakiest option requires a sim card in each country and Skype and works as follows:

• Start by setting up a Skype online number. There is a cost involved here, but the benefit should outweigh this cost if used enough. (At 01 Mar 2012, the cost was about R150 for a number for 3 months).
• This online number allows non-Skype users to call you anytime from their normal phone and as long as you’re online, then they can chat to you direct. You should set this number up as a land line number in your local country.
• Next, set up the call forwarding function on Skype to forward calls to the sim card phone number of your local cell phone.
• This means that when people phone your online number, if you’re not online (either on your smartphone Skype app or on a computer or tablet) then the call will be forwarded to your cell phone.
• There will be a charge here when the call is forwarded to your travel phone, and you will have to foot this bill, but the end to end charge will be a lot less than a direct phone call.
• You can change the number that Skype forwards calls to as you move around the world.

This nifty trick can also be used in reverse by setting up an online number for you to phone in the country that you are in so that when you call it, it forwards calls to a number in the country you want to phone.

So, until the roaming charges are reduced, or multinational cell phone service providers start stringing their international services together to help reduce costs – Vodafone is leading the way in this at the moment –get yourself a smart phone for travelling purposes and make sure it’s one that supports Skype (Android or iPhone).

Words by guest writer: Brett Sacks (brettsontour@gmail.com; www.offexploring.com/mlungutrek)

Gadget review: Uniross Power Pod

Uniross, known widely in South Africa for their rechargeable batteries, has designed and is selling a multiple-device charger, allowing one to charge several gadgets simultaneously.
The Power Pod has four ports into which ten interchangeable bits (included with the device) can be inserted and removed. It also has two USB ports into which devices that are too big for the Power Pod, like tablets, could be plugged. The circular design and bit-port placement ensure that gadgets of various shapes,sizes and charging-port locations are easily fitted and don't obstruct each other on the Power Pod.

This device is great for bedside or desktop cable clutter where charging cables for various gadgets twist and tangle constantly. The reduction in plug ports is also pretty handy - one two-pin plug for charging up to six devices at at time.

The Power Pod is well constructed and very sturdy. The bits fit properly into all the devices that I tried out (iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia and HTC phones).  Power to the Pod is provided by a 2-pin radio-type cable that plugs into the base and there is a power toggle-switch placed next to the power cable port. The bits insert and remove easily from the Power Pod and fit well - there isn't any device wobble when they are mounted on the Power Pod. The bits can be removed by tugging them from the top, or pushing the bit release buttons found underneath the Pod.

When the device is powered on, the ring on the centre of the Power Pod lights up in a bright blue hue. While devices are receiving charge, a light in front of the respective charging port also lights up. This is fine during daylight hours and looks slick. However, at night these super bright LEDs cast a great disco-show on the ceiling. This is easily rectified by putting a cell phone pouch over the centre of the Power Pod, however it would probably be better for future models to come with less intense LEDs.

There is only one glitch that I found with the Power Pod. When charging an iOS device, the touch screen functionality can go a little crazy during charging. When one place on the screen is touched, another place on the screen is actually activated. This makes it nearly impossible to type or browse when plugged in. A quick gander on some Apple forums revealed that this glitch can result when using a non-Apple generic charger touch-screen Apple devices. This is obviously a problem when one cannot use a device for the couple hours that it is charging.

All in all, the Power Pod is okay (not great; not terrible). In practice the Power Pod has been very useful and I will most likely continue to make use of it. As stated earlier, the Pod is well designed and constructed but I would still prefer a device on which all my devices can be used while charging.

Uniross Power Pods are available at Makro and Dion Wired at approximately R399.00.