For most of us, it’s unimaginable to think that you might have to live without a mobile phone for even a couple of hours – and that includes when you’re traveling internationally. More and more, your smartphone is an invaluable travel tool.

For this reason BlackBerry owners have to be concerned with the avalanche of bad news surrounding Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry mobile devices. With the company struggling, you have to wonder if they can keep pace with the iPhone and Android operating systems. And now comes word that BlackBerry is “under siege” in Europe. The New York Times reports that BlackBerry is losing market share to Samsung’s Droid phones, especially in Europe. A second report from another research firm says that BlackBerry is still the top-selling phone in the United Kingdom, although Samsung Droid phones are gaining fast. One of BlackBerry’s strongest attributes is the high level of security they offer. Once Android and iOS can match that level, they will likely absorb even more of the market share.

For BlackBerry-toting travelers, the concern isn’t that your individual device will suddenly stop working. But, if BlackBerry ceases to be competitive with iOS and Android, it’s reasonable to be concerned about the long term viability of the entire platform. So, the short term answer to the question of whether your BlackBerry will work in Europe is “yes.” But long term … might just be another matter.

Author: John Miller
John Miller is president of Miller Media Group.  He is an avid traveler and web-surfing junkie.

Photo by adactio. 

A recent post from FoXnoMad provides readers with a quick reality check on How to Accurately Calculate How Many Calories You Just Burned Sightseeing. The author provides some basic rules on how burning calories is impacted by energy exerted, weight, level of athleticism and age. Then he offers suggestions for apps and maps that will help you better estimate the distance you travel while touring an area on foot and in turn, better calculate an average of calories burned. Weight conscious travelers can then use this information to make meal choices that won’t negatively impact their waistlines.

Have you tried any of these apps? What do you think?

Photo by nelnel7.

In a (somewhat) recent post on Sean Nolan’s blog, Family Health Guy, we learn that Microsoft’s HealthVault is going mobile.  I think this is big news for the adoption of personal health records, or PHRs.

Privacy concerns, the difficulties associated with integrating information from the myriad of players in the health care industry and lack of better or complete standards for PHR has hampered the adoption of their use.

As one of the three top players in the PHR field, along with Google Health and Dossia, Microsoft may be in the best position to take the lead.  While Dossia operates under a different model (it is a non-profit working for the benefit of its founder companies and additional employers), HealthVault and Google Health are focused mainly on the “P” in PHR – the patient or person.  Microsoft’s leadership in taking the PHR mobile may be just what is needed to break through and convince people that it is worth it to have a PHR, keep it up to date and use it when seeking health care.

Microsoft has also been smart, as Nolan points out, by making sure that HealthVault works well with all of the main mobile platforms.  They will soon release SDKs for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems; the SDK for Windows Phone 7 is out.

I am excited to see how quickly Microsoft’s move ushers in a new generation of innovative and deeply capable mobile health applications that take advantage of integration with one’s PHR.  What’s available so far in the app stores does not address many of the shortcomings that seem to be holding back adoption of PHRs.

What do you think?  Do you have a PHR?  Are you still concerned about privacy issues?  Will making them mobile make a difference in your thinking?

In yesterday’s press release on radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced it has classified the exposure to radiation from cell phones and other similar radiation-emitting devices (radar, microwaves, radio, television) as a Group 2B carcinogenic risk.  To put that into perspective, the IARC has five classifications:

• Group 1 – carcinogenic to humans
• Group 2A – probably carcinogenic to humans
• Group 2B – possibly carcinogenic to humans
• Group 3 – not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans
• Group 4 – probably not carcinogenic to humans

There are several hundred items classified as Group 2B, ranging from talc-based body powder to surgical implants made from nickel to titanium dioxide (used in paint, sunscreens and food coloring). Coffee is also a 2B item even though recent studies show that coffee drinking lowers the rate of prostate cancer.

While this news may be scary, I still believe in the old adage of “moderation in everything” — try to limit your cell phone use and use a headset if possible, but don’t let this news make you go back to smoke signals and the telegraph.

Photo by Nemo’s great uncle.

Physicians in practice for many years will tell you that upon hearing a diagnosis, the first question that many patients ask is “is it serious?”  In fact, most people do not really care about what their illness is called, so long as they can expect a quick and total recovery.  This is also true for travelers who fall sick or sustain an injury while traveling and want to make an educated decision on whether or not to seek medical care or cut their trip short.

A few months ago, we reviewed on line symptom checkers with an eye towards efficacy and accuracy of self diagnosis.  A few standouts, such as “Everyday Health” were lauded for their thoroughness and clinical acumen, while most of the others were criticized for being too general and stopping far short of identifying the actual medical problem.

Perhaps the focus of our earlier review was ill placed.  What do people really want from a symptom checker?  Do they really need to know the name of their illness?  Does toxic epidermal necrolysis have a meaning to anyone other than a physician?  On the other hand, wouldn’t someone with this or another condition with similar symptoms like to know that it is serious, and mandates immediate professional attention?

We decided to take a second look at on line symptom checkers, this time with an eye for those able to quickly separate conditions that required immediate professional involvement from those which did not.  Not surprisingly, several of those which were dismissed in our earlier review as not being thorough enough were actually quite good at distinguishing between serious and relatively benign conditions.  Others with extensive algorithms, although entertaining and impressive to medical personnel, tax the attention span of most and take much too long to arrive at a diagnosis.

Using revised criteria, symptom checkers such as those found on the “Embody Health” website from the Mayo Clinic and Schmitt Thompson’s (available through a licensing agreement only) make recommendations whether or not to see a doctor after only two or three clicks.  WebMD’s symptom checker works in a similar fashion- encouraging a call for help based on the initial selection of a chief symptom.  The vomiting of blood, for instance, gets an immediate directive to seek medical attention.

There has been a virtual explosion of medical self help options over the past fifteen years. The introduction of on line symptom checkers is a more recent development, and is replacing labor intensive nurse hotlines in many markets. Perhaps the best symptom checkers are those which direct, but do not diagnose. Knowing exactly what you have, assuming you have answered all questions appropriately, is probably not as important as knowing whether or not to see a medical professional if you happen to be a long way from home.

Photo by southerntabitha.

Travelers to remote locations with limited or no options for professional medical care often have access to the Internet and thus the ability to seek out web-based tools to diagnose conditions and recommend medical triage. Even those in the comfort of their own homes have made free self-help symptom checkers a popular pastime on the web.

How useful are they? In vetting some of the most popular of these “checkers”, it appears that they produce a lot of information but fall short of providing definitive answers. For instance, WrongDiagnosis.com, provides a list of 1,729 causes for abdominal pain and vomiting and 1,300 causes for cough and throat symptoms. 

Other symptom checkers, such as OptumHealth.com provide only a modicum of information for most problems, and appear quick to pull the trigger for a doctor referral.  When entering the symptoms of headache and virtually any other symptom such as fever, a history of high blood pressure or band tightness around the forehead, the user is always told to call the ambulance or physician’s office. 

WebMD’s symptom checker appears slightly more useful, but often falls short of providing detailed information.  It usually limits the patient to just a few rounds of questions, and then offers a number of possibilities.  Although the list is nowhere near as exhaustive as WrongDiagnosis.com, WebMD stops short of a doing a deeper dive for symptoms of abdominal pain and vomiting and lists 20 possible diagnoses.

The Mayo Clinic’s symptom checker was similar.  It provided a comprehensive checklist of symptoms for the user to select.  However, despite requesting a more detailed history than the WebMD site, the number of possibilities declined slightly, if at all. When additional history was added to the complaint of upper abdominal pain with vomiting, such as the quality of the pain, timing, exacerbating factors, and associated symptoms such as diarrhea and fever, there were still over 20 options for a diagnosis.

The symptom checker from Everyday Health, designed to mimic the real experience of providing a medical history to a health care professional, does perhaps the best job of identifying medical maladies.  The website uses an extensive number of algorithms — responses to each question prompt another series of questions — ultimately providing the end user with a much smaller number of possibilities. The process takes much longer than the other symptom checkers, and often results in a recommendation to see a health care professional anyway, but still deserves kudos for its efforts to be more specific.

In fairness to all online symptom checkers, the identification of illnesses is often challenging because disease symptoms overlap.  For instance, abdominal pain with vomiting can be associated with dozens of causes, and it may not be realistic to expect a symptom checker to accurately identify even a limited number of illnesses. It’s reasonable to expect web-based checkers to improve on their results, so feel free to use them, but keep your expectations in line.

Other popular symptom checkers worth checking out:

About.com Symptom Checker

MedicineNet.com

AOLHealth.com

msnhealth.com

Photo by southerntabitha.

As a follow up to our report on the 28^th, it seems that Egypt restored Internet service yesterday.  In the aftermath of this event, it is even more obvious how important it is to have important information at your fingertips and with others.  When trying to manage an evacuation, it really helps if your passport number, country and expiration date, birth date, full name, gender, cell phone number, email address, current location and desired destination are stored with your travel agent, school’s program director, immediate family member contact, etc.

Don’t count on the Internet and other communication services to be up and running from the epicenter of whatever situation you find yourself in.  Be prepared.

Photo by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.

Egypt’s President, Hosni Mubarak has pulled the plug on the Internet and on most wireless and SMS service.  This is a pretty drastic step for a government to take and luckily, fairly rare.  However, it made me think that we should point out the dangers of being over-reliant on services that may not be available.

There are lots of pieces of information that might be important to you while traveling far from home – personal health information (allergies, prescription medications), identification documents, emergency numbers, itinerary details, etc.  The always-on aspect of the Internet has lulled us into believing that we can always rely on it.  While you may not be in a country trying to suppress political views or protest event details, you may often find yourself away from a reliable connection to the Internet or phone service.  Make a point to capture the important information you need in a format that doesn’t need a connection – type it in as a note on your smartphone, download an app that helps to organize this information and stores it locally, or, God forbid, write it all down on a piece of paper (remember that option?).

For apps that might help in these situations see 15 Best Note Applications for iPhone or The Best Note-Taking Apps (includes Android apps).

What else can you think of that you might want to have at your fingertips on a trip?  Let us know.

Photo by Frame Maker

There’s a lot going on in the world of travel this week – hopefully at least one of these tips, ratings or apps will help make planning for your next trip a little easier.

Tips and Trends

Crisis in Tunisia proves Twitter is the best, and worst, way to follow breaking news. 

Flight Canceled? How to Get a Cot, Food, a Shower and the Fastest Flight Out.

C’est la Fee: New Hassles for Travelers – “Travelers now face higher transaction fees and more-aggressive fraud detection systems when they use their credit and debit cards abroad.” 

Delta Lets Passengers Name a Price for Bumping

Draining a Snow Globe for Flight – Snow globe collectors find a way around the TSA’s ban 

Imagine Volunteering at Feynan EcoLodge – A career break for those who need a break from technology and social networking.

Ratings

New lists from Trip Advisor help travelers make better decisions relating to flight plans and accommodations:
Airline rating system

Dirties hotels in the world

Best hotels in the world

Apps

New Initiative Harnesses Smartphones to Help Keep Heart Attack Victims Alive

Free iPhone Apps Helping Huffington Post Blogger Get through China

Like gadgets? Like to travel? You’ll like today’s links.

Yesterday, The New York Times blog “Gadgetwise” posted App Picks from the Times’s Travel Columnist.  The author briefly reviews five Droid apps that help travelers manage the basic logistics of traveling – arrangements, roaming charges, translations, etc. (If she was covering iPhone apps, mPassport, the mobile medical travel companion, certainly should have made the list.)

If you or someone you know is singing the winter blues, drown them out with Valkee’s bright light headset – but keep in mind “it’s not used for listening to music. It’s used for bright light therapy.”  

Readers heading to a developing country, a relief situation, or those who are just into hiking and sports check out “the pumpkin.” It turns into a carriage – for clean water.

Backpackers and other travelers who have questions about an upcoming trip should check out this post from foXnoMad covering five questions commonly asked by novices. And if you are looking for an answer to his fifth question on travel insurance, check out hthtravelinsurance.com.   

The Wall Street Journal published their 2010 airline rankings this week – find out if bigger is better in this post.