Travel Tip: IRIS Eye Scanner
April 17, 2008
If you frequently travel through Heathrow and want to beat the Immigration queues when you arrive then sign up for IRIS on your next outbound. It’s an eye-scanning technology that effectively replaces the Immigration officer and passport check, by scanning your iris and checking the data stored on their database. It only takes 5 minutes to sign up, and once you’re in the system you’ll clear immigration in no time on your return leg, you don’t even need to rummage through your bag for your passport. It’s all a bit ‘Minority Report’, but if you can get past the THX1138ness of it all it’ll radically transform your arrival, as you skip past the queues and collect your bags in a matter of minutes.
Travel Tip: Perfume
April 17, 2008
One of my favourite, but slightly weird, travel tips is to buy new aftershave or perfume at the airport before you go on holiday, and using it exclusively whilst you are away. Smell is the most memorable of all the senses and, when revisited, can be a powerful reminder of your vacation. Here’s a more scientific view. Go on, try it next time you’re away.
Frequent Flyer? Use Dopplr.
April 11, 2008
Dopplr is a simple web application that helps you keep track of friends and colleagues, wherever they are in the world. I travel to San Francisco about 10 times a year, and Dopplr lets me know who’s going to be in town when I’m there: listing all my friends who live there, as well as people who are visiting at that time – useful, eh. Not only that, but it also allows your connections to share their tips for the city – cool coffee shop, best place for free wifi etc, making it super-useful for checking out the places that you won’t find in guidebooks.
Check it out and add me as a friend.
