Rob and AJ Travel Tips

Nov 19th, 2008

TRAVEL TIPS . . . (Peter Greenberg Worldwide) HOUSE SITTING ABROAD: If you’re looking for a free place to sleep on your travels, I’ll tell you how you can get an entire place to yourself … as a house sitter. The website Mind My House dot com helps connect potential house sitters and homeowners in various locations around the world. Travelers can post their ads or respond to a homeowner’s request for a house sitter. A similar site called HouseCarers dot Com also allows travelers to post a free ad—this one requires some flexibility, since potential house sitters have to wait for an interested homeowner to contact them. And, since 1983, the Caretaker Gazette has been helping house sitters find placements around the world, for an annual membership fee of $30. For security, house sitters should be prepared to provide a recent police check, references, and a safety deposit fee for the property. And, if possible, both parties should meet face-to-face to sign a written agreement. (Peter Greenberg is North America's preeminent expert on Travel. An Emmy Award-Winning writer and producer, Peter is the Travel Editor for NBC'S "TODAY SHOW," MSNBC and CNBC. A Best-Selling author of the "Travel Detective" series and host of the nationally syndicated "Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio Show." Visit WWW.PETERGREENBERGWORLDWIDE.COM to learn more about Peter Greenberg and his adventures.) LOST DIGITAL TRAVEL PHOTOS: If you’ve lost or deleted your digital photos, don’t panic: there are some simple solutions to save your photographic memories. If your camera’s memory card is giving you an error, you may be able to recover your pictures by buying a memory card reader. The reader plugs into your computer’s USB port and costs under $20. Or you can try taking your memory card to your local photo processing center, which can often recover your photos for a small fee. However, for larger problems, you may need to send your damaged memory card to labs such Mittoni – it costs about $128, but if they’re unable to recover your photos, they won’t charge you. And lastly, you can download special photo recovery software from companies like Lexar or Sandisk. It will cost you about $40, but you can usually opt for a free trial to see if the program can actually recover your lost photos