Month: March 2010

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Blog Texas USA

Report from the Nerd Break at SXSWi

As suspected, not a lot of burning family travel news to come out of my time at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) tech conference last week, but here are two items of possible interest to parents….

***  The research work of Dr. danah boyd (yes, she spells it lowercase) into social media usage of people in general, but especially teens.  She argued strongly that privacy is not dead, but you must take much more control of your privacy than you did before the ubiquitous Web.  My feeling is that parents must help in this area, but how many of them are tech-savvy enough to do so?

Here is a video excerpt from her opening keynote and here is a summary of her presentation on the excellent site ReadWriteWeb (with the so-true quote, “By and large, teenagers, according to Boyd, are more conscious about what they can gain by being public, while adults worry more about what they could lose.”)

***  The explosive growth of smartphones continues and will continue as more and more new models and services are offered (my own teen does not have one, but I can see the day coming – for now she works on her mad texting skillz.)   What does it mean when your kid has the Web in his/her pocket?

The biggest techy buzz out of “South by” this year was location-based games like Foursquare and Gowalla, where people can “check in” to different locations and collect virtual prizes for doing so.  The games are more addictive than you’d think (I play and I normally dislike games, and on Foursquare you don’t need a smartphone to play) but there are security implications to revealing your exact physical location to the whole planet, via the Web.

I strongly recommend talking about that with your tweens/teens before they jump into these services.

Categories
Texas USA

Kid-friendly Mexican food in Houston: Lupe Tortilla

Lupe Tortilla in West Houston You know how it is in restaurants with little kids; you need to get seated quickly, get the food quickly and one parent ends up doing the “toddler-chase” while the other one bolts down the contents of his or her plate.

A good noise level to drown out the occasional squawking is a bonus.

I have a recommendation for you in Houston: Lupe Tortilla.

It’s a local chain of 8 restaurants, and I first heard about it when I wrote an article about Pro Stock drag racer Erica Enders (a Houston native and along with her sister, the subject of the Disney movie “Right on Track.”)  Erica loves Lupe Tortilla and they were a sponsor of her race car, so I thought I’d check them out on my next visit to town.

Lupe Tortilla outdoor playground for little ones who hate to wait

At the West Houston location, the place was packed at dinnertime on a Sunday, but the line moved quickly and hallelujah, there is a small outdoor playground that was mobbed with little patrons and their parents.

The food was good with a nice variety, the margarita came quickly and the noise level was enough of a din to cover squawking, but not so loud that you couldn’t carry on a conversation.

Houston being Houston, the restaurant is tucked next to a freeway (Interstate 10) and it took me awhile to find the right access road, but once I got in, life was good.

How can life not be good at a Tex-Mex joint on a weekend?

Pay Lupe Tortilla a visit.

Categories
Tips

Listen up! iPod and audio travel guides and tours

An iPod toddler (courtesy GoonSquadSarah at Flickr CC)Are your kids like mine – often with some sort of headphone or earbud plugged into their aural sockets?  Take advantage of that tendency by looking for available iPod/audio guides and tours when you travel.  Kids can keep looking plugged-in and “cool” but may actually learn something on your trip.

As a parent, of course, your job is to never seem too “Squeeee!” happy when they occasionally admit that something is informative or educational.

Where do you find these tours?

First, if you use iPods, do a search in the iTunes store; Apple recognizes the value of their audio tour podcasts although the iTunes Search function is not particularly good.

There are many well-established general travel podcasts (think of them as little radio shows) from Indie Travel Podcast (latest topics as of this writing include Christchurch, New Zealand and Tasmania) the Amateur Traveler (latest episodes are about the Republic of Georgia, London and Easter Island) Frommers.com and Rick Steves who covers Europe.  An iTunes search for Disney informational podcasts returns a bunch of options too; just make sure they’re fairly recent since things can change quickly at the parks.

You can also find location-specific offerings on iTunes like LAWithKids for Los Angeles and audio/video podcast offerings from VisitLondon.com.

Some companies focus specifically on audio offerings – AudioSnacks, for example, has a big section for audio tours, and the company SoundWalk has some very unique walking tours that place special emphasis on New York City, although they do have a few other cities as well. The media company ARTineraries has professionally-produced tours of mostly Italian historic sites.  LearnOutLoud has a kid’s audio section, too.

The UK’s Guardian, always a good source of worldwide travel information, has a small selection of free audio tours called Sounds of the City (Athens, Rome, Nice, Marseille, Valencia and Granada) plus an eclectic collection of very personalized audio travel guides, featuring people like musician Franz Ferdinand taking you on a tour of his hometown of Glasgow.

Some travel guide companies also produce audio – I like the DK (Dorling-Kindersley) Eyewitness guides for their clean layout and liberal use of photos and graphics, so I was pleased to find that they also have a few DK Travel podcasts.

Finding these things is a classic Google search problem, but I’ve had best results when I query search engines about tours for a specific location.  As I always advise, start with the tourism board/Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (CVB) for the place you’re going to visit.  For example, the Chicago Office of Tourism has free downloadable guides including Chicago for Kids and a blues tour narrated by Buddy Guy.  Even smaller towns may have them; Astoria and Warrenton, Oregon have audio tours guided by locals and sponsored by the local Chamber of Commerce.

Don’t forget that most museums have had audio tours for a long time, including big places like Chicago’s Field Museum and New York’s Museum of Modern Art, plus smaller ones like the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, which has tours in English and Spanish.

Let us know in the comments if you have any favorites!