www.AirfareWatchDog.com
Sign up for their deal alerts, which inform users of hidden airfare deals and sale fares.

www.WhichBudget.com
Find out which budget airline flies where. They cover 112 different countries, 123 airlines, 772 airports and 19,961 routes! By using this site I saved $200 on a ticket from Rome to Prague.

www.AirTreks.com
AirTreks.com specializes in providing customized, efficient and affordable air tickets for complex international trips. This is the site to go to for a trip around the world. BTW: Sometimes a round-the-world trip might be cheaper than a round-trip ticket to Asia. Check it out: price quotes are fast.

www.RenaultUSA.com
Heading to Europe for more than 17 days this summer? If so, check out a short-term lease from Renault’s Eurodrive Program before renting a car. It costs about the same ($899 for 17 days) as a rental, but the benefits are far greater. The best is no tax — that saves 18% right there. Plus you can choose your model of a “factory-fresh, brand new car” in 3 easy steps from their website. Users get unlimited mileage, and can drive to 29 differnent countries. Insurance is included, as well as 24/7 roadside assistance. There are discounts for booking before June 15, and cars can picked up and dropped off at 35 certified locations in Europe (some may include add-on fees).

http://bbc.co.uk/languages
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french/quickfix/
In London I discovered one of the coolest travel websites for learning foreign languages. It’s from the BBC, and there is plenty of helpful info for beginners and intermediates. In addition to offering news in 43 languages, they teach free, quick holiday phrases in 34 languages, and help travelers refresh their Spanish, French, German and Italian. They even teach people Chinese, Greek, Irish, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic.

The AppleTV isn’t the first product out there that’s designed to wireless move multimedia content from your computer to your TV, but it does have a number of key features that set it apart from the competition…and quite possibly make it the first product of its sort to really deliver the goods.

The first difference is the AppleTV’s HDMI connection, which delivers resolutions up to 720p — actually high-definition, which will make a huge difference if you’re viewing on an HDTV screen. If you’re currently still using an older television, it’s designed to scale back to 480i, so you don’t have to upgrade just to use it. If your current TV configuration is not HDMI-ready, the AppleTV also comes with component video connectors (red/green/blue), and both analogue and optical digital audio connectors.

Although it comes with an Ethernet port onboard, the AppleTV is really designed to be used wirelessly, and it comes with a draft version of the 802.11n wireless technology onboard. (This may not be 100% compatible with all 11n routers, especially in mixed environments, however.) It also works fine with 802.11g routers, and it supports both WEP and WPA/WPA2 wireless encryption.

Sounds good, right? Well, there are a few drawbacks, too. First of all, there’s no off switch on the thing, which has a couple of implications: one, it’s always running and generating heat—and it does get quite warm—even when you put it to sleep; two, there’s the potential for sparking whenever you plug it in, which could damage components. This problem can be solved by plugging it into a powerbar with an off switch, for periods when the product’s not needed, though that will prevent behind-the-scenes syncing of content, until it’s turned on again.

More problematic, for users outside the US, is the lack of commercial video content: while users in the US can currently purchase TV shows and movies from the iTunes store, users in Canada (at the time of taping) didn’t have any video content beyond free video podcasts…and users in many other countries will have a similar problem. So for the short term, many AppleTV buyers will simply have to roll their own content or find a way to download content from the US store (which is a no no).

Quick summary:

Pro:
• quality is amazing
• great interface
• easy to set up syncing options
• ability to pull multimedia from multiple sources on the same network
• hdmi cable carries both audio and video

Con:
• slow to sync if your network isn’t up to speed, especially for large video files
• no off switch — some sparking during plugging in
• gets hot because there’s no cooling fan built in (to keep noise levels down)--even when not in use
• no composite video output
• the kind of video content you can purchase for playback will depend on your country