As an affiliate who likes to travel i have become a big fan of netbooks. For my 8 month, round the world trip i took the ASUS EEE as it weighs less than a kilo, is nice and robust and was powerfull enough to run all the programs i required to work on my websites. But now it is time to move on. In the next couple of weeks i will hopefully be getting a shared office here in Berlin and so i need a more powerful notebook. Up steps the Ferrari Hipstery Acer One. Ignoring the branding this laptop has some very nice stats. 2 gigs of ram, 11.6 inch screen and a very decent keyboard make this netbook the perfect travelling affiliates companion. Ideal for my upcoming trips to Stockholm, Munich and London.

Searching for the perfect Christmas present is never easy. Especially when you want to combine it with your photos from a recent trip/event. In total i uploaded over 1500 photos from our round the world trip to flickr and was searching for a great present to combine them all. Then up stepped Zumyn.

This great little site will turn your photos into a stunning mosaic. The 2 main advantages of the site are that it automatically pulls all your photos from Flickr for you, so no tedious uploads. And secondly you get to determine how many times each photo is used (i went for twice to get a better overall clarity of photo). Other companies that i found will use the same photo up to 10 times in your mosaic which i find really takes away from the overall effect.

Here is my now framed attempt.

Zumyns quality and service both come highly recommended!

Most of the countries we visited had internet about as fast as an Henry apology which made uploading videos a little tricky. Now that we are back it’s time to share them. Now please bear in mind that these videos were taken with our tiny little camera, and i know even less about making films as i do about taking good photos…

Mindo and humming birds. One of the first trips we took was to the cloud forests of Mindo, near Quito where we got to see wild humming birds. (see how many you can spot).

Galapagos Marine Iguana part 1

Galapagos Marine Iguana part 2

Machu Picchu – This was part of the Machu Picchu irrigation system. We only got to see it in action because it rained for part of the time we were there, but as you can see it is still working today!

Salar de Uyuni – 360° camera work from a cactus island in the middle of the salt flats.

Chile – This video gets slightly more exciting the longer you watch it…

Iguazu Falls part 1 – Some of the “lower” falls

Iguazu Falls part 2 – I think this part was called the devils throat. We were stood on the Argentine side looking into Brazil.

Franz Jospeh Glacier – One of our best trips on the whole travels was the Franz Jospeh Glacier. Whilst some of our photos were great (even if i do say so myself) they dont give a great overview of the glacier as a whole. Neither does this video… but at least it goes a little way.

OK, this one is a little blurry, but seeing monkeys in the wild was very cool! Cute they were not (check out the teeth!). This was taken in Ubud, Bali.

A puppet show in Solo, Indonesia. It cost us 20p to get in, and the show apparently goes on deep into the night. We lasted about an hour, but got a bit lost in the large sections of Indo dialogue.

This video was taken on a bike trip around Solo. We were taken into a Gamelan (musical instruments) making “factory”.

And last but by no means least… the magical retracting plant! Again taken near Solo, Java.

During the “big trip”, Friedi and i constantly wanted to share with friends and family exactly what we were seeing and feeling. And whilst uploading and sharing photos on Flickr was a great way for people to get an idea of what we were going through, it sometimes didn’t capture the whole experience. So as we travelled round i would occasionally take “panorams”, essentially just taking a series of photos along the horizon line with the idea of “stitching” them together when i got back. Well now I’m back, and thanks to Hugin, with an explanation courtesy of Lifehacker i have managed to work through a few of the images. So here is the first batch!

Note: You will need to click on the images to get the best effect.

1. Iguazu Fall (Argentina)

2. Mt Bromo (Java, Indonesia)

3. Sydney (Australia)

4. San Ignacio (Argentina)

5. Queenstown (New Zealand)

6. Bali (Indonesia)

For most of 2009 I have been travelling the world whilst keeping my affiliate business going at the same time. Before I left I realistically expected to see a drop in visitor numbers, site earnings, conversion rates etc. as I would be working a lot less, and when I was working it would be from countries such as Bolivia, Indonesia and Peru!
Much to my surprise, and thanks to the following essential affiliate travelling tools I have managed to exceed my expectations! Not only did I manage to keep traffic levels pretty constant, I also managed to slightly improve on my performance from last year. And all this whilst sailing round the Galapagos, trekking the Inca Trail, swimming with sharks at the Great Barrier Reef and much much more.!

Asus EEE 900 – This little mini laptop is the perfect travel companion. Small enough to fit in your day pack, light enough to carry anywhere, robust enough to survive the inevitable bumps along the way, powerful enough to run the basic software required and cheap enough not to worry about it getting stolen! Without this, there is no way I could have kept the websites running.

Affmeter – After spending 8 days on a boat without the internet, a quick login, update and I can then instantly see how the sites have performed. The number of hours that Affmeter has saved me is uncountable. I can then use this time for much more effective tasks, such as adding new content or fixing broken links.
Affmeter now supports a huge number for different networks!

Gmail (plus Gmail offline) – I discovered this about a month into the travels (the offline part that is..), and it was a real boost to productivity. It allows you to download all emails and work on them offline, essentially interacting with Gmail as if you were online. Then when you reconnect to the internet it will upload all your changes. This is perfect for the countries with limited wifi connections!

A decent host. (34sp.com in my case) – The moment I got on the 12 hour flight to leave for South America one of my main sites got hacked. Thanks to some friends back home, and the amazing support at 34sp.com the damage was limited. If I was still using my old hosts the problems would probably still not have been resolved!

Multi Country Power Adapter – It sounds obvious, but you really dont want get to a country and not be able to power up your laptop!

Tomorrow we fly back to Europe after almost 8 months of travelling round the world!

Our final destination was Hong Kong, where we have just spent an amazing week with my great aunt and uncle. We stayed in Discovery Bay and enjoyed everything Hong Kong had to offer! (It is 1am at the moment and still need to pack, so going to keep this blog post (very) short.)

Here are the photos.

As an added bonus, here are a few photos from Jakarta that i forgot to upload….

Just a quick post before Indonesia is forgotten… We spent a week in Yogyakarta followed by 3 days in Jakarta before flying out to Hong Kong last Thursday. In and around Yogyakarta (which was pretty touristy) we visited the Dutch fort, the sultans palace, the bird market, the sultans water palace a puppet maker, and the two giant temples of Borobudur and Prambanan. Borobudur is the largest Buddhist temple in the world!

This Friday we fly back to Germany signalling the end of our round the world trip . Really looking forward to catching up with family and friends though!

Solo is where Friedis grandparents and father lived about 50 years ago, so we spent a great week here exploring the past. We managed to get a booking for the final 3 days in the hotel that Friedis father lived in (Hotel Dana), and although much has changed we still managed to see alot of things Friedi had heard about. (Photos above)
We also took a couple of day trips outside of Solo to see the surrounding villages and temples. Both trips were fascinating, learning all about how the local goods are made, and how to ride a broomstick!
(Photos below).

3 days in Malang were great, even though we seemed to be the entertainment for the town! On one of the days we got up at 1.30am to go and see the sun rise at Mount Bromo and to look into the smoking volcano. On the way back we visited several temples but were “attacked” by a group of school children who found our names highly amusing!
After Malang we took an 7 hour train ride to Solo where we are now.

We arrived in Bali late Monday night and stayed in a great little place set amongst the rice fields 20 minutes outside of Ubud. The first 3 days we just spent wandering around taking in all the new sites, the many temples, statues, monkeys roaming wild, rice fields and the great food. For our final 2 days in Bali we stayed right in the centre of town. We took a (down hill) bike tour of the local hills, passing through and learning about the villages and the way people live, more temples and giving “high fives” to all the school children we passed. Bali must hold the world record for the happiest children on the planet!
So after 5 great days in Bali it was time to leave for Java to learn more about where Friedis grandparents and father lived for 4 years. The 14 hour bus ride proved to be quite an experience. When we arrived at the bus station to leave Bali we were literally herded around by a group of 5 guys
.
Where you going Mister?
To Malang
Yes, we go there. Very good bus Mister, very cheap price.
(We had read in the guide book to aim for the executive class buses) Is it an executive?
Yes, yes. Very nice!
What time does it leave? (It was 7.40am) Soon?
Yes yes. Very soon. 8am.
(And finally…) Is it direct?
Yes yes. Of course Mister. Direct to Malang.

Normally we would take our time and ignore the pressure sellers, but this time we could only see one bus that might be going to Malang, and they told us it was leaving soon! We bought the tickets. It was only once were sitting on the bus (which had somehow managed to squeeze 5 seats into a row in place of the standard 4) that we saw another much better looking bus pull up right next to us. We finally left at 10.45 with our maniac driver (far worse than anything South America could throw up!), with his driving philosophy being that if he tooted his (fairly quiet) horn then he could drive on what ever side of the road he felt like (didn’t matter if it was a blind summit or we were taking a sharp bend!). Anyway… even with the dodgy ferry crossing we somehow made it to Java, having to change buses to an even more dodgy one, (so much for direct) and eventually making it to Malang at around 10pm.