time for a new year.  Leica M8, 35mm Summaron 2.8

via news.google.com

“Yet if it is Alfa Romeo for whom the birthday cake has been baked, it seems a lot of Americans do care — particularly the enthusiasts, collectors and racing fans who hold that Italian marque especially close to their hearts. Young people, whose Alfa exposure has mainly been to rusty 1980s convertibles on American streets, may not understand. But for baby boomers who remember the Duetto that Dustin Hoffman drove in the hit 1967 film “The Graduate,” or hard-core enthusiasts who know all about Alfa’s win at Le Mans in 1938, the mystique lives on.

Who cares? It seems that the organizers of the year’s top automotive concours events do. Alfa Romeo will be a featured marque at the prestigious Concours d’Élégance at Pebble Beach in California in August. Alfa will be celebrated at many other classic-car events this summer, including the Concorso Italiano near Monterey, Calif.; the Fairfield County Concours in Westport, Conn., and the Concours of the Americas at Meadow Brook, near Detroit.

Topping the birthday events is a gathering of Alfas in the company’s hometown, Milan, on June 26-27. More than 1,500 historic Alfas are expected, and parades are planned for both days.”

I wish we could have stayed in Milano for this event, it should be spectacular.

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.