Download European City Guides – For Free!

Welcome to another Cheapskate Friday where we focus this week on European travel guidebook giveaways. And without doubt, the one site at the top of the pile as far as backpacker guidebook freebies go has to be www.inyourpocket.com. Read more

Links for the Thrifty Nomad 9/11/07

Thanks once again for dropping by ubertramp.com, and welcome to the first in the series of regular round-ups celebrating all things backpackery, geeky, and cheap(y)!

As you may have already gathered, this new weekly slot is a celebration of web based austerity. Each Friday I’ll be compiling and sharing a handful of discoveries from around the web – discoveries geared toward preserving that meagre road fund.

Ok, just a few links this week as I only had the idea of doing this whilst having a smoke a few hours ago. Its now mid afternoon and if I leave it much later I’ll have to change the title to cheapskate Saturday – and I don’t want to do that.

To kick off this week’s festival of frugality we’re going straight over to Eyeflare.com and their recent trilogy of tips to help secure a cheaper flight.

Essentially, it deals with air consolidators. And thankfully, the first post in the series kicks off with a brief outline of what an air consolidator is and what they are all about. Now, with this newly gained knowledge tucked into your belt they’ve then laid out a most useful guide to using an air consolidator – with tips and tricks as well as perils and pitfalls.

So, once you are all about on them, all that’s left to do is give you a nice hearty list of some of the main players, and some links to help you get the best deal on your flights. Good, eh?

“But it’s a fast moving business!” I hear you say “Things change all the time!” you shriek again. Never fear. The editor of eyeflare.com keeps his finger on the pulse, diligently updating the posts as required – so it’s well worth dropping by from time to time to check out the latest goings on there.

Ok, moving on. Please allow me to now share something incredibly special with you this first ever Cheapskate Friday. It’s without doubt the most endearing and thought provoking travelogue I have ever found. It’s sharp, exceedingly well written and truly inspirational – and best of all it’s a current, ongoing adventure and has everything to do with getting by on meagre funds.

It’s bristling with romance and humour, and delivers shrewd observations by the bucket load – but its not all flowers and smiles, oh no, there’s enough grit and heartache from front to back to have you reaching for the Prozac. In short, it’s got it all – It’s Song of the Open Road.

I first heard about Song of the Open Road whilst in Morocco a couple of months back, and have been returning to catch up on his latest antics ever since. Of late, I’ve had a little more time to trawl through his site – and have flitted to and fro checking out the posts stretching back a good few years. All I can say is that despite his vehement disapproval of my recent post about Swiss Army Knives, to me he remains a true inspiration.

The astute author Wade – a self confessed happy, rolling cowboy – and his girl, Mira, are currently gallivanting through Portugal on their latest acquisitions: two old bicycles picked up in Spain after their departure from Morocco. I can only assume they will be heading further north, but who knows? But therein lays the beauty of this blog – you never know where it’s going to go. It’s boldly eccentric, magnificently free, and thoroughly recommended. Check it out.

Well that just about wraps it up for this week, so enjoy your weekend – wherever you are and whatever you’re doing – and be sure to drop by again for a more comprehensive round up in 7 days time. Hell, why not subscribe while you’re here as there’ll be plenty more posts in the meantime. If you don’t know what an RSS feed is or how to subscribe, then check out my easy guide to RSS!

Subscribe to the Ubertramp feed

Oh, if you’ve discovered a site that you think is a worthy inclusion to Cheapskate Friday, or in fact run one, why not drop me a line and tell me all about it? Basically, if it’s backpackery AND cheapy I’d love to hear from you. In the meantime, why not share the first Cheapskate Friday with a stumble? It all helps spread the word. Thanks!

What is RSS?

You may seen the icons below and the terms RSS, syndication, subscribers, and feeds paraded on many websites. If you’ve ever wondered what the hell it was all about then this post should make it a bit clearer.

 

In short, it’s a whole new and infinitely easier way of keeping up to date with the latest posts from your favourite sites.

So without further a do, here’s a (very) quick run down of the theory behind RSS feeds (boo!) and how it can make your browsing even easier (yay!):-

 

So here’s the scenario: You have a handful of blogs that you regularly check when you log onto the internet. In order to read these latest posts from your favourite sites you manually visit each place and look around for new posts.

BUT if on your next visit to that site you click the swanky little orange button that looks something like this (it doesn’t matter if its orange, or green, or even brown like our one, they all do the same job) then from that day on all the posts will come to you! Basically, you have just subscribed to their posts. Its free, it’s safe, and there’s no obligation to continue receiving their posts into your internet reader for any longer than you wish. If at some point you now decide that their posts are crappy then you cancel that particular subscription with one click – just as easily as you subscribed, in fact.

Anyway, rather than me harp on about the ins and outs of it, this awesome video by Commoncraft explains what these readers are, how you ‘get one’ and how you can access and read the latest posts from your favourite blogs.

Click To Play

Well, all that’s left for you RSS virgins to do is try it out for yourselves and see how good it is. And what better place is there to start than with our very own feed?!

Hey! Ubertramp! I’m tired of coming to you; from now on you come to ME!

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