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Monday, January 31, 2011

How to Travel Like James Bond: SeV on FoxNews.com

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2011/01/28/travel-like-james-bond/?test=faces

How to Travel Like James Bond

By Paul Eisenberg

Published January 31, 2011


On January 11th, film studio MGM announced that Daniel Craig will make his third appearance as MI6 agent James Bond in the 23rd movie in the series, slated for release on November 9, 2012. The movie’s name – working title: “Bond 23” – remains uncertain, as does the future of MGM. Far more certain is our enduring fascination with 007 and spy culture.

“The public is intrigued by secrets, secret people, and secret undertakings” that “create the sense of an underground or hidden world,” says Peter Earnest, executive director of the International Spy Museum and a former CIA senior operations officer. He says Bond epitomizes that world, one in which the tools and techniques of the spy trade intrigue us just as much as the spies themselves.

“Indeed, some such cutting edge tools developed for espionage operations eventually made their way to the open market,” Earnest says. “The Internet, for example, was developed for intelligence use as were overhead reconnaissance satellites and early versions of the cell phone. Now we use them as part of our daily lives and no longer associate them the secret realm of spies and clandestine operations.” And part of our daily lives, of course, is travel.

And since Bond is arguably popular fiction’s coolest frequent business traveler, it follows that many of us, at least on some level, want to incorporate Bond-like gadgets and gear into our travels. And whether you buy that or not, here are a few things -- some cool, some practical, some not -- that’ll make you feel a little more 007ish on your next trip.

A place for your (secret) stuff

While aboard the Orient Express in “From Russia, With Love,” James Bond brought along an attaché case whose hidden compartments included a throwing knife, ammo, and 50 gold sovereigns. For good measure it also held a tear gas canister that detonated in the face of a bad guy who failed to open the case properly. Alas, the Swaine Adeney Brigg replica of the case that sells for a shade under $2,400 has no hidden compartments or tear gas, so it may not do it for you as much as, say, the Kata BJB-007 Undercover Video Bag ($185), a case equipped with a secret compartment that’ll hold a tiny camcorder, which will in turn shoot footage through a side panel. The bag will also hold other stuff, including your laptop. Speaking of which, if you prefer a bag more practical than clandestine, Magellan’s Dual-Access Rolling Computer Case ($95) won’t easily permit you to remove your laptop from the top of the bag once its under the airplane seat in front of you – hence the second, very discreet entry pocket on the side of the bag. As for secret side pockets, the Booq Taipan Shadow iPad Carrying Case ($79.95) has got one for your phone. I predict this bag will feel even more Bond-like by next November because really, isn’t it inevitable that Daniel Craig’s Bond is going to whip out an iPad on some hairpin turn or another

Cameras for spies like us

“Dr. No” finds Bond slicking a hair from his head across the opening of his hotel closet and sprinkling talcum powder on his briefcase, precautions that lead him to discover later – when the hair and powder are disturbed – that someone has been pawing through his stuff.  Feel free to use these old-school methods next time you check in someplace, but if you prefer a technique more Daniel Craig than Sean Connery, you’ve got options. “For under $50 there are numerous video cameras the size and shape of a cigarette lighter or a ball point pen one can place in a hotel room that will record hours of video,” notes personal security and identity theft expert Robert Siciliano,” adding that “for under $100 there are video cameras that look like cigarettes, alarm clocks, or even a smoke detector that will stream live video to your laptop hundreds of feet or even miles away.”Splitting the difference at $75 is the Pen Camcorder 4G, which shoots and stores 80 minutes of audio and video and, via the pen top’s built in USB plug, the footage will play back on your laptop.

The International Spy Museum store naturally carries cameras hidden within wristwatches, neckties, sunglasses, and buttons, but the one I give them the most credit for stocking is the Minox Digital Spy Camera ($299), a version of which George Lazenby’s Bond used to snap critical info while he was blowing up Blofeld’s hideout in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” The present day Minox is palm-of-you-hand tiny at 3-3/8” x 1-3/16” x 7/8”but yields images up to five megapixels, has 128MB of internal memory, and is rechargeable.

Take a little breather

While in the Bahamas staking out SPECTRE bad guy Emlio Largo in “Thunderball,” Bond gets a couple uses out of his breather, a tiny tubular gadget with a mouthpiece that grants him about four minutes of air while he’s underwater. As scuba aficionados know, the real-life equivalent of Bond’s breather, Spare Air, was invented by Larry Williamson, who while lobster diving one night off Catalina Island realized at 140 feet that his scuba tank was out of air. He hastily swam to the surface and before blacking out -- a dive boat yanked him from the water -- he recalls wishing he had “one more breath.” The standard Spare Air model ($299) holds the equivalent of 57 surface breaths or 3.0 cubic feet of air, which at 3 to 5 minutes conceivably betters the time of Bond’s breather. The Spare Air canister can be refilled from a SCUBA tank in about a minute. And not for nothing, Williamson’s breather has saved lives, and if you’re inclined to slide one into your carry-on before your next flight, the company advises that “the regulator must be unscrewed from the cylinder so [the TSA] can be sure that it is empty” upon a visual inspection.

Spywear, from head to toe

A must for virtually any destination where you’ll be interacting with other humans is a pair of rearview sunglasses ($20), whose interior mirrored lens coating enables monitoring of anyone behind you. Commonplace these days are blazers with multiple pockets, some of them hidden. A sport coat by SCOTTEVEST has 24 pockets and comes in gray or black, but overall, because it feels more like a Craig-era Bond garment and likely would end up being more versatile, I’d go with the waterproof Expedition Jacket ($200) in its safari color. It’s got 37 pockets -- evidently a record for the manufacturer -- including an iPad pocket, which of course Craig’s Bond may need (you know I’m right about that). Should you find yourself in the middle of a parkour or free-running chase, as Craig’s 007 did in “Casino Royale” while he was in Madagascar (though the scene was shot in The Bahamas), consider picking up a pair of the sensible Converse Jack Purcell OTR mid-cut brown leather boots that Craig wore during the chase.

Finally, if you’re on a trip and need to extricate yourself from an awkward situation, you might be in need of a jetpack, which Bond used to escape a couple bad guys in “Thunderball.”If that’s the case, you’re out of luck -- for now.  The Martin Aircraft Company is deep into the process of developing a personal jetpack, which Martin expects will cost a cool $100,000 when it first hits the leisure market.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Scottevest Travel Vest : There’s A Pocket For That « Flying With Fish

Scottevest Travel Vest : There’s A Pocket For That

Baggage is an annoyance on the road; even carry on baggage, especially short trips.  Travel with bags slows travelers up at security check points, leaves traveler property at risk for theft or loss at security check points … and for day trips requires travelers to schlep their bags wherever they go.

Yes, I admit, there are many times travel requires a bag or two, however earlier this month I have decided to begin traveling with an 11″ MacBook AiriPad, chargers, headsets, two cameras set-ups, SD card reader, spare SD card, sun glasses, pack of gum, two note books, pens, wallet, passport wallet, iPhoneBlackberry and sun glasses … and no bag.

In researching how to shed bags and make myself more mobile, there was only one choice for traveling this way on a series of flights … the Scottevest Travel Vest.  TheScottevest Travel Vest is designed with 22 pockets, sewn in such a way that the vest always fits close to the body without a significant bulge indicating the contents of the vest.

Traveling with the Scottevest Travel Vestwas a truly different experience. Most of the time before a trip my time is spent organizing my bag, for my first trip with theScottevest Travel Vest, my morning was spent installing the wires for my in-ear head sets … and that was pretty much it. When it was time to go, I spent 5 minutes loading up my pockets and walked out the door.

At the airport security check point everything I had with me was in the vest. While laptops with solid state hard drives are not required to be removed from a bag at a TSA checkpoint, I removed mine rather than argue with the TSA screener … a split second later everything I had was on the X-Ray belt and I was on my way. No fuss … no muss.

The Scottevest Travel Vest’s design is unusual in that the vest is very well balanced, even when the weight of the loads of the pockets are not evenly balanced. This design is extremely functional when packing an iPad orMacBook Air (or both an iPad and 11″ MacBook Air in my case) in a single pocket within the Travel Vest.

The details of the Travel Vest’s functionality are apparent throughout the entire vest. For starters, the interior mobile phone pockets are constructed with touch-screen windows. These windows allow for the person wearing the vest to completely control the touch screen of an iPhone or other touch screen device.

For ease and comfort of using a mobile phone and MP3 player with the Travel Vest, in addition to the see through tough screen mobile phone windows, the Travel Vest has an integrated wire system for headsets. Initially I was skeptical, as I always seem to get tangled up in my headset wires, but the layout of the Travel Vest makes securing the headsets simple, painless and most of off … hidden and untangled.

There are two minor problems with theScottevest Travel Vest … and by minor I mean, minor.

The first minor problem is this … if you have your headsets wired into your Travel Vest the cable won’t reach the tray table in front of you to plug into your laptop or iPad to watch a movie in flight.  This wasn’t a problem for me, as I planned to pack a pair of Sony noise canceling headsets.  But it occurred to me that most people probably don’t fly two sets of headsets.

The second minor problem is this … if you have an iPad, netbook or iPad and netbook inside your Travel Vest, sitting in an aircraft seat can be a tad awkward. Of course the obvious solution is to place the netbook and iPad in the seat back pocket in front of you … but this issue became quite obvious to me as I squeezed into the seat of my first flight with no bags … a US Airways Canadair Regional Jet 200.

So rather than rattle off what I put into myScottevest Travel Vest, I figured I’d post my photos of the vest below, describing the contents of each pocket beneath each image.

… at a cost of US$100, there certainly is a pocket for nearly everything with theScottevest Travel Vest.

The Scottevest Travel Vest is going on my list of Travel Essentials!

Happy Flying!

Photo 1: The Scottevest Travel Vest

Photo 2: The ScotteVest Travel Vest inside out to show pockets

Photo 3:  Apple iPhone 4 through interior touch screen window

Photo 4: Blackberry Curve through see through interior touch screen pocket window

Photo 5:  Two pen slots, along the zipper, easy to access, hidden from view

Photo 6: iBeats by Dr. Dre in ear headsets with phone mic, wires concealed in the vest

(vest has ear bud baskets to conceal the ear buds, take a look at Photo 1)

Photo 7:  11″ MacBook Air and iPad in the interior pocket

Photo 8: Apple power supply, iPhone/iPad cables, Kodak SD card reader, SD & SIM cards

Photo 9: Cross Passport walletLouis Vuitton business card holder, press credential

Photo 10: Oakley Flak Jacket sun glasses

Photo 11: Moleskine hard cover notebook,Moleskine soft cover notebookDoublemint

Photo 12:  Keys, attached to a supplied afixed bungee that ensures you don’t lose your keys!

Photo 13:  Sony MDR NC-20 noise canceling headsets

Photo 14: A pack of Cottonelle ‘fresh wipes’in a ZipLoc bag stashed in the rear pocket

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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Sunday, January 16, 2011

TSA's Official Response on SCOTTEVEST: Have pockets, will travel

TSA's Official Response on SCOTTEVEST: Have pockets, will travel

Asked to comment on the [SCOTTEVEST] trend, Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Sarah Horowitz said, somewhat enigmatically, "The TSA doesn't endorse or approve any packing products. Obviously when you go through security you need to remove your jacket."

In other words, have pockets will travel. Take that DELTA! controversy over. Scotttevest wins!!!

Sent from my iPhone

 

Another Washington Post Article about SCOTTEVEST No Baggage Traveling: "Have Pockets, Will Travel"

Have pockets, will travel

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/13/AR2011011305700.html


(Illustration By The Washington Post; Windbreaker: Scottevest)

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By K.C. Summers
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, January 16, 2011

I don't check luggage. Never have. Even before the days of checked-bag fees, I refused to play traveler's roulette with my belongings. I'd rather pack light and wear the same black pants all week than suffer damaged, stolen or lost luggage (at worst) or endless waits at the baggage carousel (at best). If it doesn't fit into my carry-on, it doesn't get packed.

Honestly, though? Packing light is a giant pain. It requires tough decisions and a willingness to sacrifice both vanity and dignity (see black pants, above). Carrying on is not for the weak.

Which is why, when getting ready for a long-awaited trip to France several months ago, I found myself wavering. It was just a 10-day vacation, but try as I might, I couldn't fit everything I needed into my regulation 20-inch roll-aboard. City clothes, country clothes, guidebooks, hiking shoes, laptop - none of these things was expendable. Yet I was committed to flying with the proverbial one personal item and one carry-on. What to do with all my extra baggage?

Reader, I wore it.

I'd always poked fun at those dorky traveler's vests and jackets loaded down with all manner of pockets, snaps and zippers, but now I was desperate. If the garments could hold travel documents, cameras and even iPads, as the ads touted, then why not an extra pair of shoes, a bathrobe and a few novels?

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Googling around for options, I discovered a world of outerwear that would do James Bond proud. Removable pant legs! Secret compartments! Pockets within pockets! I started out small and ordered L.L. Bean's $79 travel vest, which boasted eight pockets and an outdoorsy vibe.

Then I stumbled onto the Scottevest "system" of "gear management clothing." With products ranging from a 33-pocket knee-length coat to a 13-pocket cotton hoodie, this company turns packing light into performance art. I ended up springing for a 17-pocket windbreaker for $75, choosing a drab green color so as not to attract too much attention from airline personnel.

Giddily, I repacked my stuff. Out of my carry-on and into my vest went my camera, extra batteries, airplane socks and a blindfold, a mini-booklight, a money belt, an immersion heater, an electrical adapter and a converter, noise-canceling headphones and, hanging from a clip, my water bottle. So far, so good.

But the windbreaker was the real revelation. I discovered that in addition to the 17 pockets, I could also fit things into the space between the mesh liner and the back of the jacket. To wit:

four guidebooks

two novels

two pill organizers

Have pockets, will travel


(Illustration By The Washington Post; Windbreaker: Scottevest)

Discussion Policy
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

corkscrew

extra tote bag

folder with maps, printouts, train tickets and other travel documents

big floppy hat

flatiron (I know, I know, but I was going to Paris!)




Not surprisingly, the coat-as-suitcase phenomenon has sparked controversy, especially now that many airlines have increased their checked-bag fees. Travel-gear companies have rushed to embrace the trend, with the Idaho-based Scottevest taking an early lead as hidden-pocket champ. The company made headlines in October when Delta's in-flight magazine rejected its ad touting how to "beat the system" and "avoid extra baggage fees." Scottevest founder and CEO Scott Jordan immediately cried censorship, although the airline cited "creative standards."

Delta Sky publisher Marialice Harwood said last week that the Scottevest ad was misleading. Since it pictured a coat stuffed with an iPad, a cellphone and important documents - all typically carried onto the plane by passengers, not placed in checked luggage - the ad might lead passengers to believe that the airline charges for carry-on luggage, she said in an e-mail. "Delta Air Lines does not charge for carry-on bags, so we believed that this content was misleading and could potentially cause confusion about Delta's baggage policies."

"It got entertaining," Jordan said of the ad brouhaha. "We saw a tremendous blip in [online] traffic after that. We've had the best holiday season ever, by a long shot."

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Airline touchiness aside, is stuffing your coat with luggage okay with the feds? Asked to comment on the trend, Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Sarah Horowitz said, somewhat enigmatically, "The TSA doesn't endorse or approve any packing products. Obviously when you go through security you need to remove your jacket."

I decided to take that as a ringing endorsement.


(Illustration By The Washington Post; Windbreaker: Scottevest)

Discussion Policy
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

On the way to the airport, I was feeling downright smug, but once in the security line, I began to get nervous. Turns out that when you wear half your luggage, the overall effect is a little . . . bulky. I looked like an extra from the hippo scene in "Fantasia." As the line inched along, I started to perspire. Would the agents single me out for extra screening? Would airline officials cry foul? Nowhere in the rules does it say that you can't stuff your pockets, but suddenly I was losing my nerve.

I turned to my travel companion. "Do I look normal?" He assured me that I did. "You just look . . . full-bodied," he said. "Like you're going abroad to have bariatric surgery."

When my turn came, I arranged my windbreaker and vest artistically in the plastic bin, trying to hide the larger protrusions. I walked through the metal detector and stood oh-so-casually on the other side, waiting for my stuff to emerge from the X-ray machine.

It emerged all right, but so did a security officer. He gestured to the bin containing my lumpy green windbreaker. "This yours?"

"Yes, sir. Is anything wrong?"

"I saw a corkscrew in one of the pockets."

"But . . . but . . . I thought corkscrews were okay?"

"Not when they have a knife attached."

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He began to go through the pockets, pulling out my immersion heater . . . my money belt . . . my straw hat. It was like the clown car of windbreakers. Finally he found the offending corkscrew and tossed it aside.

But he wasn't done with me. Turning the jacket over, he unzipped the big back pocket and pulled out my spare tote bag, which was stuffed into its own little pouch. "I saw this on the screen," he said. "What is it?"

"Collapsible tote bag," I said brightly. "You know, for bringing back souvenirs?"

He looked at me for a long minute. "You've got a lot of stuff."


(Illustration By The Washington Post; Windbreaker: Scottevest)

Discussion Policy
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

"I know," I said.

"Okay," he said.

So I was free - for the time being. I still had to make it past the gate agent. Donning my luggage again, I tried to zip up the windbreaker, but it wouldn't close over the vest - which was now soaked through with sweat. I thrust my boarding pass at the agent and kept moving. I almost made it past her, then felt a tug on my sleeve.

Oh God.

"Ma'am? Don't you want your boarding pass back, so you know where to sit?"

Uh, sure.

So, I beat the system. Was it worth it? Let's just say that I decided to check my bags on my return flight from Charles de Gaulle. I couldn't take the strain.

Summers is a former editor of Travel.

Scott

Scott Jordan, CEO
Sev/Scottevest
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