McGarvey's Words: Journalist…Podcaster..Speaker

By Robert McGarvey

I walk 10,000 steps a day (actually I average 12740), about 5.96 miles, and when I travel I want to maintain the pace.  Nowadays too business trips are a hectic blur – it seems I’m doing something every minute for 16+ hours daily.  I often do not have time for a walk, at least not a walk for walking’s sake. That’s why I have developed a real fondness for five cities that are made for walkers.

5. Phoenix. Yes, it’s hot from mid May to late October, just about 6 months, but Phoenix is also an easy town to walk in – particularly early in the morning and after sunset.  A key: stick to central Phoenix, the corridor that runs along Central Ave, as does the light rail. If it is just too hot, hop on the train to get where you are going. Don’t tempt fates when the mercury climbs above 110 F.

Also, bring a bottle of water when you do walk. A pint probably will do you.

My advice: stay at the Clarendon Hotel – famous as the spot where investigative journalist Don Bolles was murdered 40 years ago; it’s now a delightfully updated and budget friendly independent hotel.

Walk in the morning to the downtown convention center or whichever downtown venue you are going to for a meeting. That will log 3.2 miles.

It’s a nice walk. Don’t miss the spectacular mid-century architecture along Central Ave.  

Walk everywhere at the venue and, bingo, you have 5 miles, 10,000 steps.

Take the light rail back to the Clarendon. Exit at Osborn. Then walk back to the hotel; that’s another .7 miles.

You are over quota.  

And you didn’t even break a sweat.

4. Washington DC. Washington DC is a spectacularly beautiful, human scale town.  It’s center nowadays also is very safe.  Decades ago when I lived in the District it was a dystopian reality but today you can – safely – walk just about everywhere in the city core.

I usually stay at the Washington Plaza Hotel in Thomas Circle (a few blocks from the White House).  The mid century architecture is a hoot, the location is ideal, and it is affordably priced.

Walk to Dupont Circle and it’s a mile each way. Good for restaurants, bars, and often I have to visit an office for a meeting.

Walk to the Convention Center and it is a mile round trip.

Walk around the Convention Center and, soon, you will hit your quota.

Bring an umbrella.  Washington has “measurable precipitation” one in three days – it rains 43” per year.  Be prepared.

3. Manhattan.  I think the last time I took a taxi in Manhattan was maybe a decade ago and, no, I have never used Uber there. I walk and when it it is too far to walk, I take the subway. Manhattan is a walker’s paradise.  Flat and so much to see.

Where to stay? Whatever turns up cheap is my preference. I have no real neighborhood preference – just something vaguely midtown.

But walk, walk, walk in Manhattan.  Things are closer together than you may think.

Walk from the New York Public Library to Katz’s and that’s 2.4 miles.

I cannot recall not easily logging 10,000 steps in a Manhattan day. Just skip the cabs and you’ll hit goal.  

2. San Francisco. Usually I stay at the Hotel Carlton, a Joie de Vivre hotel on the edge of the gritty, authentic Tenderloin – and typically too I log miles walking through the Tenderloin every day.

It’s about one mile to Powell Street.

Look for steep hills – a San Francisco treat – and you will find them.

Walk Powell Street from Union Square to North Beach and there’s a nice elevation, plus it’s a good neighborhood tour.

Stop in City Lights Bookstore.  

History, elevation, urban grittiness – these parts of San Francisco have it all.

Note: the Tenderloin is not an especially dangerous neighborhood. But it is not safe either. Use discretion and if you are an urban wimp, probably you want to walk in other parts of the town.

But you cannot go very wrong in San Francisco. It is a lovely town for walkers.

1. Las Vegas  Surprised by my top pick?  I go to Las Vegas a lot – I have never been for pleasure, by the way, only conventions and conferences – and I have found it a dream town for a walker.  It is shockingly easy to pick up 10,000 steps just walking around a big exhibit hall, walking from the hotel elevators to the convention center (where you have to thread your way through the casino), and walking from one meeting venue to another to lunch.

I have never “gone for a walk” in Las Vegas but I easily notch my daily quota, probably because the venues are so huge.

Yes, this is all indoor walking but in Vegas it works. For me at least.

I don’t say “no” to Las Vegas trips.
How do you like that? An entire story about urban walking where the only appearance of ‘flaneur’ is in sneer quotes at the end.

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By Robert McGarvey

 

Stop the debate. There really shouldn’t be any.  When it comes to picking a cellular carrier for frequent international travelers the best by far is Project Fi from Google.

Second best is TMobile – but it’s a distant second.  Subscribe to T-Mobile’s “Simple Choice” and what you get is calls at 20 cents a minute, unlimited texting, and unlimited data. But the hitch with the data is that the first 2GB are high speed. Then it slows to 2G.  If you want higher speed, T-Mo upsells you into a week pass with 200MB of data for $25.

The problem: 200 MB of data is almost nothing.  It’s fine for email, checking social sites, posting a handful of pix but don’t go crazy. Photos can really eat through data.  Be very careful with mapping. Be very careful with everything in fact.

Right now, many pundits are busily crowning T-Mo as the best carrier for international travelers. But they are mistaken.

Enter Project Fi.  It offers high speed data access in 135 countries (just about any place you want to go) at a flat $10 per GB – which is the same rate you pay in the US. With Project Fi you pay for what you use, in 1 GB tranches.  Sign up for a 3GB per month plan, only use 1, and you pay $10, not $30.

The Fi Basic plan is $20 per month for unlimited domestic talk and text.

Internationally, calls are 20 cents per minute.  Texting is free. Data is the same price in 135+ countries.

The Project Fi goal is simple but bold. It wants to make the whole world safe for one phone, from one carrier.  No horrifying high roaming charges.  No need to swap SIM cards.  The single Project Fi phone will do you.

What’s the hitch?  The only hitch is that Fi works only on a couple of phones.  The 6P is $349.  The 5X is $199.  Google sells both.

As for the network, domestically, Google uses T-Mobile, Sprint, and US Cellular and it hops among them and latches onto the strongest signal.

In Europe it uses Three and probably other carriers.  

Elsewhere, Google is not especially transparent about who is carrying its calls and data but why should it be? It probably swaps carrier partners as business needs dictate and certainly as they change.

Where it can, Project Fi seeks to use WiFi – it almost certainly will in your home and office – for calling. How good is that? In my tests – I have had Project Fi for about a year – WiFi calling has erratic quality. Sometimes it is good, sometimes no and my home WiFi has a generally strong signal.  So I’m not sure why it sometimes is poor quality. (Note: you can turn off WiFi calling as an option. I don’t advise it. But if you wish, you may.)

Use WiFi when abroad to make international calls and rates tumble to far below 20 cents per minute. A call from the UK to India is 1 cent per minute. Most calls to the US are free. Those low rates are not atypical.  All WiFi calls are processed via Google’s Hangout app.

Walking around downtown Phoenix and using cellular networks, Project Fi on average is a stronger signal, less likely to drop than the T-Mo signal I have on an iPhone.  I have experienced similar in Las Vegas.  

I detected no differences between them in New York and that’s true in much of the country.

How can Google make money on international calling and data? Probably it does not.  Google is reticent about divulging data on particular lines of business, and does not breakout Project Fi’s financials, but the general belief is that Google runs Fi as a kind of cudgel to goad cellular carriers into offering technologically better and more consumer friendly plans.

Back to T-Mo which apparently is not willing to surrender.  Through August T-Mobile now promises unlimited 4G LTE data in much of Europe and, honestly, that puts it ahead of Fi – assuming it extends that deal beyond this summer.  Right now there is no indication T-Mo will, or won’t.  We just don’t know.

Until we know, I’d go with Fi,

Oh, there is no contract with Project Fi.  Sign up for it and if you don’t like it, quit. The phone – unlocked – will happily accommodate a T-Mobile SIM, probably also AT&T.  
Once you needed an invitation to sign up for Project Fi. No more. Just visit the website.  

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By Robert McGarvey

I come not to praise the hotel business center but to bury it.

I don’t even come to eulogize it.

Whenever I see one – and I still see way too many – I wince. Does this hotel think it is 1990?

But business centers aren’t just anachronistic, they are hazardous.

Understand this: business centers, many of them, are radically dangerous to your data security.  They can be every bit as bad as public WiFi.

They also radiate the cluelessness of whoever thinks they are necessary to keep. That’s especially so when the business center is tucked away in a forgotten space – I have seen them in the basement – and often the computing equipment honestly is so old it is valueless.  

When Travo, an event based planning tool, surveyed some 32,000 hotels, it found that 71% claimed business centers as an amenity.

But is anybody using them?

First, tho, here is why a hotel business center is bad for your data security. When it is tucked in a forgotten part of the hotel, a crook can easily gain access and install keylogging software or other malware.  Exactly that is known to have happened and on a scale large enough to trigger a warning from the federal government.  

Could it happen again? You bet. Many hotels are known to have slim to no security precautions in their business centers so you must use them at your own risk.  

“Business centers ask customers to assume the best – that they can use these resources with confidence.  But that objective undermines a proper security education position where you try to tell users to be skeptical,” said Scott Petry, co-founder and CEO of Authentic8, developer of a secure browser.

Petry’s strong advice: just don’t use a hotel business center.

It’s not just a matter of keylogging.  There’s also the possibility that a criminal can go in as you leave, sit at the machine, and – with a little bit of computing skill – retrieve much of what you worked on.  Trace images stay on computers and can be retrieved and criminals know the how to.

Petry acknowledged that at many hotels – especially ones with newer computers – they have installed software that automatically resets the device and wipes out trace info at the end of a session.

But how will you know that software is installed and operating? You won’t.

Said Petry: “When I’m done and ready to walk away, how long before the machine re-images?  Should I wait for it or should I try to restart the device.  When the machine is re-imaged, is that document that I needed to download in order to print really deleted?  Or just moved from the trash when the session ends?”

There is no end to the security worries raised by hotel business centers. They may even be more dangerous than public WiFi.

The good news: really, we do not need a business center.  I always travel with a computing device – an iPad at the least – and a cellphone or two.  Pretty much everybody else I know does likewise.

What about printing? Uh…I don’t do much of that anymore. Email a file instead.

Some hotels get this – they are pulling out business centers, said hotel technology consultant Adam Gillespie, because they want to monetize the space.  

Gillespie added that a trend at some hotels is closing the business center, then installing a sleek kiosk – or two – usually a flat screen monitor and keyboard – off the lobby, where traffic is high.

A plus is that configuration – in a high traffic, public space – is inherently more secure than a computer in a forgotten basement room is. Those kiosks, said Gillespie, usually also are good at reimaging when a user finishes and that is comforting news.

Some users sing praises of new set-ups.  Business travel expert Carol Margolis, who blogs at SmartWomenTravelers, said in an email: “As a very frequent traveler, I love hotels that have the shared workspace vs a business center. When a hotel has a working space, whether it be off of the lobby or restaurant, I always bring my laptop and get work done. It feels so much less lonely than sitting at a often not-very-comfortable desk in my room. As a solo female, this feels safe to me as well as there are often many of us solo-travelers working in this type of space.”

She continued: “Hotel business centers, usually a small room with two computers and printers are great for printing documents but that is about all — at least to me. They’re even lonelier than my hotel room!”

The list of obsolete hotel design/technology thinking keeps growing.  Yank the in-room phone, sure. Ditto the TV. And definitely shutter the oldfashioned business center.    

Said travel researcher Craig “Buzz” Conroy, “Traditional hotel business centers are not a growth industry and much as the traditional payphone was a mainstay of every hotel lobby from the 5 star to the no tell hotel they are approaching extinction.”

 

 

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