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Flying on commercial airlines these days isn’t glamorous like it once was. Security, while extremely important, can be a hassle. It seems like a wrestling match with all the electronic gadgets as well as luggage, shoes, coats, bag of liquids, that have to be separated and sent through the scanner. At the other end then you have to scramble to put it all back together, while others are waiting, often impatiently behind you. The more stuff you have, the longer and more difficult the task.

I’ve had an iPhone for almost a year, and at the risk of being penned an Apple fanboy, I love it. I’m finding myself using the notebook computer (not a MacBook yet…) less and less on short trips, as the iPhone handles email and internet use just fine. If I need to write a text document, I can just put it in email and send to myself, and convert when I get back to the computer.

So here’s the tip to travel light: lose the notebook computer. It is amazing how much lighter the briefcase is without a notebook, and so much less dragging on my sore shoulder. Delete the computer and so goes power cords, resulting in a loss of six plus pounds or more of dead weight. Gain more energy by not having to lug it around! Apple should make that part of the iPhone ad campaigns.

Several Apps make the iPhone a real workhorse as well. One my absolute favorites is Evernote. This is essentially a note clipping service that allows one central spot to store web clips, text notes, photos, screen shots, etc. They are stored on a “cloud” server, and can be uploaded, stored, and accessed from both your computer as well as the iPhone.

A great example for the utility of the phone and this software is to use the camera to take pictures of text. Say you pick up a magazine and see an interesting ad; shoot a picture and load it in Evernote. It will be stored, and your entire store of notes is searchable by keyword!

For photos of paper articles and such, in order to make the text clear I use a shell on my iPhone that has a built-in close-up lens. It is made by Griffin, the model is the Clarifi. It makes a huge difference in close-up pictures, and legibility for storing text files from photos. If you’re going to use Evernote for this method, or for general close-up pictures, the Clarifi is an absolute must have.

There is a great article over at TUAW.com on this exact topic, with some clever ideas about how to use Evernote to reduce the paper load as well. Oh, I also forgot to mention, Evernote is free!

Let us know what you do to lighten your travel load, or how you use your iPhone. Click the comments link below.

Selecting an outstanding webhost is essential for your website. If you’ve been following my site for a while, you certainly have noticed a number of recent changes. I’m now running on WordPress, which I’ll cover at some point in the near future. In this post I want to highlight my recent change of webhost. I switched to Hostmonster.com.

Do you want to set up a blog? Then all you might need to know is Hostmonster.com has a script setup feature that helps you install a WordPress blog in about one minute. Seriously. This is nice stuff!

Why the switch? Well my previous webhost seemed to have some outages; nothing major but enough to be annoying. It seemed to run my CMS (content management system) site relatively slowly. Trying to change my domain info has been a hassle. I could go on but you get the picture.

So I read reviews and recommendations and settled on Hostmonster. I’ve had to call support in order to sort out a domain transfer, and they have been very pleasant, quick and very available via phone as well as web chat. You know that you’ll have issues at some point, and customer service is really, really important.

If you’re looking to run a database-driven website, such as a CMS or a blog, you want a host with up-to-date software. Hostmonster has the latest and a comprehensive array of options. In the past I’ve found that the hosts I’ve used had inadequate Control Panel, better known as cPanel, features for even my humble needs. Now that I’ve seen a really good one I know what I was missing in both feature set as well as use.

The features the Hostmonster’s cPanel offers are fantastic. Things like one-click backup wizards, which will backup not only the site but also the database at the same time or separately. Nice. You’ll find numerous webmail options, as well as several layers of management for spam and filtering. FTP, check. SSH, check.

The list goes on and on, so I won’t bore you, you have to see it for yourself. And if you’re not a tech geek, every single option within Cpanel has an associated video tutorial to walk you through setup. Their entire program really is set up with customer service in mind, which isn’t all that common among the typical low-cost hosting companies.

Pricing is very competitive, maybe a tad bit more (we’re talking a buck or two) than others, but reliability and service as well as the features that they offer, in my opinion, make it a bargain. Click here (my affiliate link) and check them out. Email me via the contact link in the right column if you need setup tips, I’m more than happy to help.

Click on the comments link below and contribute your thoughts, ideas, or questions about this post.