Recently in Travel Category

I, for one, would like to ditch bulkly guidebooks with all those chapters on places I'm not going to, but the time is not now. I can see buying the overseas mapping service for my GPS and downloading a chapter to my Blackberry, but not yet. Still seems futurisitic. But change is coming. Lonely Planet has been sold to the BBC. It's now offering chapters of its guidebooks for sale online and will upload all of their content online soon. Restaurant recommendations and other tips are more current online than in books. But guidebooks seems to be defying the rush to online content, for now.

So far, the digital media revolution has been much less turbulent for guidebook publishers than for record companies, which have fallen victim to rampant online copying. Sales of travel guides, while flat in some traditionally stalwart markets, like Britain, have been growing strongly in developing countries and in the United States - despite a weak dollar, which has made overseas trips more expensive for U.S. citizens. Travel publishers sold 14.8 million books in the United States last year, up 11 percent from two years earlier, according to Nielsen Bookscan.

Still, guidebook companies may have missed an opportunity on the Internet, which presents them with moneymaking possibilities that have not generally been open to publishers of other kinds of books.

"Given how conducive the Internet is to what they do, they were probably a bit slow in developing this side of the business," said Alexander Burmaster, an analyst at Nielsen Online, which tracks Internet traffic.

TripAdvisor spotted the potential in tapping users' reviews of hotels, package trips and tourist attractions, and collecting a fee each time they click through to reserve a room, for instance, on a partner site. TripAdvisor supplements users' reviews with links to sites run by guidebook publishers like Frommer's. TripAdvisor, which is owned by Expedia, does not break out financial figures separately from its parent.

In reaching Internet audiences, TripAdvisor has clearly been a big success, placing third among travel-related Web sites worldwide, according to Nielsen Online. About 3.6 percent of users of travel Web sites visit TripAdvisor in an average month, placing it third behind Expedia and another booking service, Orbitz. Among guidebook sites, Lonely Planet ranks first, Nielsen says, but with an audience reach of only 0.3 percent.

Archaeology among us. A wonderful idea for a book.

Southern New Mexico is the site of some of America's most spectacular ruins.

Photographer Arthur Drooker traveled America for two years taking pictures of places like the Quarai Mission, which was built in 1622 as Spain expanded its empire.

"Well just think of it," he told CBS News correspondent Jerry Bowen. "If we were here about 350 or 400 years ago on a Sunday, there would be a mass going. We'd be walking through these walls, which probably would have been plastered white. There'd be gold ornamentation. Crucifixes. The Indians who were converted would be probably on their knees praying to their new god. So all that goes through your mind as you're walking here."

Quarai and the nearby Abo Mission are among two dozen man-made structures that have weathered time and now fill the pages of Drooker's new book, "American Ruins" - from missions to ante bellum mansions to Alcatraz, the prison that was home to Al Capone and Machine-Gun Kelly.

"I like to think that my book is almost a guidebook, if you will, to some of these places," Drooker said. "Because most Americans just don't know about them and they should be visited. I think it'll give people a certain kind of depth and appreciation for our history and heritage."

To make Drooker's list, the ruins had to meet certain criteria: They had to be part of a preservation program, and had to represent the geographic and architectural diversity of America.

Now you, too, can look like a camel.

I have long eyelashes. People have commented on them since I was a child. Every now and then people will actually stop me on the street and mention them. Or at least stop me when I'm talking with them. A few years ago, I was fascinated to learn that camels also have long eyelashes, the better to keep sand out of their eyes during long treks in the desert. Considering how much time I've spent on camels in the last few years, I've tried to use this shared anatomical oddity to my advantage on several occasions.

But long eyelashes are now within reach for everyone!

Doctors and patients alike have noticed that eyelash growth is a side effect of a glaucoma drug called Lumigan, sold by California drug maker Allergan Inc. That phenomenon has set off a race among cosmetics companies to create new eyelash treatments that contain either bimatoprost -- the active ingredient in Lumigan -- or other so-called prostaglandins found in glaucoma drugs.

The eyelash products look like mascara tubes and have a brush or tip for applying the product along the base of the lashes, and typically sell for $140 to $160 in spas and doctors' offices. At the same time, some doctors are writing Lumigan prescriptions for their cosmetic patients, a practice allowed because a drug may be prescribed for any use once it is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for one use.

But the companies pushing into this arena are already facing two big fights: one with each other, the other with the FDA.

Singapore Airlines tries to kill it.

The A380 may have the world’s first airborne double bed, but it won’t be put to the obvious use if Singapore Airlines has its way: “If couples used our double beds to engage in inappropriate activity, we would politely ask them to desist,” said the company’s Stephen Forshaw.

“There are things that are acceptable on an aircraft and things that aren’t, and the rules for behaviour in our double beds are the same ones that apply throughout the aircraft.”

While Silverjet tries to revive it -- with a twist.

This is the funnest thing I've seen on the Internet in quite some time. NYC has a new taxi logo that's absolutely hideous. It's here on the right: NYC is block letters, followed by a circular T in a different...

Genius website? Or big disappointment? http://www.speedtrap.org/speedtraps/stetlist.asp....

I drove back or forth from New York to Cape Cod four times in the last eight days dropping off our girlies for Camp Grandma. Right over the Bourne Bridge are two huge roundabouts and the traffic often backs up...

To Raise a Village. A bit of boastin' here. Check out this extraordinary slide show on Time.com about the Mural Arts Program of Philly. My sister represents them and it's a wonderful community program, proven to unite neighborhoods behind works...

Now's the time to plan that birthday party on Tybee Island, once lovingly known by residents as Seedy Savannah Beach, my home away from home since I was a child and the name of one of my twins. Forget the...

It can happen to anyone, even the most experienced traveler. One of Lonely Planet's most well-traveled writers, Clem Lindenmayer, has been found dead on a Chinese mountainside, three months after he was reported missing. Mr Lindenmayer, 47, had set out...