Net Access on an American Road Trip?

slim asks: "I'm planning a month-long road holiday in August, driving from Chicago to Los Angeles, where possible following old Route 66, rather than the Interstate. I'm not quite dependent on Net access, but it certainly would be nice to be able to use mail, check Slashdot, maintain an Everything daylog, upload pictures from a digital camera to my Web site, etc., along the way. I'm British, and I've already found out that my GSM phone won't work in most of the USA, so fancy-schmancy GSM modem access will do no good unless I buy a phone locally. So what's a Brit to do? What ISPs have a local number in every state? Will they accept a month-long subscription from someone with no U.S. address? Do most hotels have a standard phone socket I can use? Are cybercafes common enough to make do with?"

Plug: Rand Macnally software

If you need to find a public library in every town, I'd recommend the Rand MacNalley Streetfinder Deluxe. For 100 bucks, you can get detailed street maps of the entire US and and a GPS receiver.

In my current job I do a lot of travel. I use it on business trips when I have a hankering for sushi (which tends to go with being on an expense account). It puts up a map with a red dot showing your current position and the kinds of things you are interested in (restuarants by cusisine, copy centers, stores by merchandise type, parking, and of course public libraries) <duh>Of course, be careful using it while you are driving&lt/duh>. You can also download maps onto the palm pilot, but I haven't found it as useful.

Combine this with an 12VDC inverter and a co-pilot in the passenger seat, and it's really convenient when you are in a strange city. In any case, I bought it on a lark and have easily got a hundred bucks of yuks out of it.

By the way, you can't use the GPS stand alone without a computer. It saves cost by omitting the display screen and control buttons -- it just sends NMEA strings over a serial port. The accuracy is pretty good for such a cheap receiver -- usually they have jittery clocks that throw them off. The GPS/GIS expert in my company thought at first the software was snapping the red dot to the street until I showed him the highest zoom view.

Re:Sounds like a job for AOL

I have to second this thought. I recently did almost this exact thing late last summer. My Fiance and I traveled cross country with a Laptop and Digital Camera. We used the (hated) AOL all across the USA. We never had trouble finding a local number. We were also able to plug our modem into the wall at almost every hotel we stopped at.

We found that most hotels are "Modem Savy" and if you ask about it they will know what you are talking about. Most had standard phone hookups, and those who did not had adapters. We also had a cellular modem/phone along, which we found did not work well at all. We had a hard time connecting/staying connected. Ultimatly we had to rely almost exclusivly on land lines.

Check out our site here:
Rex & Dodi's Road Trip '99 [schraders.org]

We were able to update almost every day. All of our relatives back home were able to follow along as we went. We got a lot of positive comments. It really gave us something to do as we were going along. Having a reason to take pictures added a lot of fun and purpose to our trip. I think that without the web site to work on we would have been really board. It was also a great thing to do while the other person was driving!

We brought along an inverter so we could keep the laptop running full time. This turned out to be great in conjunction with "Microsoft Streets & Trips 2000". We used S&T as our map THE ENTIRE TRIP! It was totally awesome to never have to open a paper map! It not only had all the streets, pathfinding, and time/distance calculations, it also had all the HOTELS and their telephone numbers. Heck, it even had resturants we ate at!

Make sure that you bring the right software! We had to download some image editing/compression software while on the road, which sucked.

"Always drive on roads, not on people."

Omnisky.com

My friend recently pointed me to Omnisky [omnisky.com] for wireless net access. They are in beta phase right now, but I think they are going to release it to the general public in April. Here is what you get (yes, it's ripped straight from their site):

• Full-Featured Email from your existing accounts
• Real Web Content with access to virtually any Internet site
• Enhanced Palm Applications for easy record sharing
• High-Speed Modem for the Palm V for fast access on Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) Networks
• Unlimited Nationwide CDPD Wireless Service with free roaming

There is no definite price listed on the site, but they do say "Monthly standard subcriber rates will not exceed $49.95" and that's no so bad for nationwide coverage.

Also: It is only for Palm V users, but I am sure someone out there can figure out how to get a laptop to work with that Minstrel wireless modem.