Resources as Collected by Colin Wright

I've recently finished reading How to Travel Full Time and Start a Freedom Business  by Colin Wright on my Kindle. Throughout especially the former, he lists a number of useful (web) resources for people interested in full time travel. Since browsing the internet kind of sucks on a Kindle, I decided to collect all of these in one place here for others to use more easily.

I've omitted some of the obvious stuff (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, ...). This is a selection of stuff I found particularly useful, didn't know before or tend to forget about.

How To Travel Full Time

http://exilelifestyle.com/ - Colin Wright's website and blog

Travel Blogs
Uncornered Market
Migrationology
Nomadic Matt
Legal Nomads
Castles in the Air
Everything Everywhere
Art of Nonconformity
Almost Fearless
Indie Travel Podcast
Jet Set Citizen
Nerdy Nomad
The Professional Hobo
Vagabondish

Resources

Communication
TinyLetter for creating newsletters
Flickr photo sharing
Picasa photo sharing
Vimeo video platform, a little nicer than YouTube
Evernote task lists, reminders, etc.
Google Docs
Offline Mail Gmail offline plugin
WeTransfer file Transfer
Mailchimp create, design and send emails

To-Do Lists
Wufoo Online form builder
Remember The Milk
Things to-do list for Mac
Toodledoo
Todoist
Moleskine nice leather-bound notebooks, calendars, etc.

Payments/Finance
PayPal online payments (sending/receiving)
Amazon Payments
Google Checkout
Mint personal finance, budgeting, etc.
Passive Panda how to make more money
Man vs. Debt become debt-free
Get Rich Slowly

Freedom Business/Entrepreneurship
Location180 build a business, achieve freedom, live anywhere
Epic Self awaken your mind. freshen your body. referesh your spirit.
The Middle Finger Project to hell with the shoulds; life is short. do what you want.
Nerd Fitness lose weight, get stronger, live better.
Amber Rae lifestyle blog by Amber Rae
The Suitcase Entrepreneur creative ways to run your business from anywhere
The Personal MBA

Remote Working
Nu Nomad work while travelling the world
The 4-Hour Work Week
(if you're in/from Germany: Motius does remote engineering)

Bill Management
Manilla

Mail Forwarding
USA2Me
Malbox Forwarding get mail scanned to read online, rent mailbox, forward mail
USABox
Virtual Post Mail
Earth Class Mail online mail
Zumbox

(Full Time) Travel Gear
Canon Powershot SD1400is
Victorinox E-Motion Trek Pack Plus 20"
WritersBlok notebooks
Kindle
Slim Slimmy Front Pocket Wallet
Timbuk2 Messenger Bag
Gorillapod Tripod

Online Platforms
SquareSpace build a website
Hostgator webhoster
1&1
W3 School HTML Tutorial
Google Code University

Tickets/Flights
Kayak
Hipmunk
Adioso
AirfareWatchdog
SeatGuru find desirable seats
Bing Travel
Cheapoair

Packing
Bundle Method
Rolling Method
Packing Cubes
10 Days in a Carry-On

Travel Safety
General Travel Safety Information
Travel Insurance and Safety Advice
10 Safety Tips for Travellers

Meeting People
CouchSurfing meet people, find place to sleep
OkCupid online dating, but also good for just meeting people in a new place
Travelers for Travelers
Yelp social location/POI/business service

Travel blogging
Everlater (now MapQuest Travel blogs)
TravelPod
World Nomads Travel Blog

File Storage and  Backup
Dropbox
Backblaze
Mozy
Carbonite

Scroogle is a Mistake

I've just stumbled across this article about Microsoft's Scroogle campaign, and I think it touches on what I wrote about in my last post. The gist of it is this: Microsoft started an anti-Google campaign online, accusing them of invading their users' privacy by going through their e-mail and using that data for targeted advertising.

Microsoft is obviously in the wrong here (and I'd venture to guess that they already know this), they're being hypocritical - what they accuse Google of is something they themselves actively pursue and do research in. From their website:

[...] With broad research efforts in areas like statistical learning, pattern recognition, text mining, optimization, information retrieval, recommendation, we are currently exploring practical technologies to enable large scale knowledge acquisition, to model user intention and to optimize the eco-system which involves users, rich clients and various online services. [...]

So, even if they weren't going through your email for advertising, they do actively use your personal data for profit. Of course they do - perhaps Microsoft is less reliant on this than Google, but they need the profits just as much, and they certainly can't afford to not keep up with what other companies do. There might not be anything wrong with this, but frankly it's somewhat embarrassing to see what has been a great company accuse another of screwing their users without reasonable justification.


Why out of all points in time they chose now to attack Google on this issue (Google's been doing this for years) is beyond me, but perhaps they've only now stopped doing it themselves.

But wait! They never have. Microsoft may be advertising Outlook.com with the campaign, but surely they can't just turn around and pretend Hotmail doesn't belong to them - it has nearly the same amount of users as Gmail.

To me, this entire campaign is a misplaced and counterproductive, and I hope Microsoft will eventually come to this conclusion themselves. Microsoft has recently done a great job of recovering their image as an innovative company and has released a range of really great products. I frankly don't understand why they would feel the need to start a negative campaign, instead of focusing on actually being better than the competition.