You have Skype, and use it quite often. You probably have Google Voice, too, but use it much less than the latter. Why? Well, for one thing, it's older—Skype has been around since 2003. For another, it's just reliable—guaranteed crisp audio levels made it the authority in VoIP. And most Skype users have the app installed in their phones, making voice and video chats anywhere quite simple. Google Voice, though more personalized with its voicemail transcription, call blocking and screening, and ability to ring to other devices, lacks the immediacy—and intimacy—that Skype's video chat feature provides.

Or, it did. When I learned that Google was unveiling their Voice service within Gmail, I succumbed to the hype and signed up immediately last Wednesday.

And since, I haven't touched Skype on my computer or phone. Voice is my new answer to keeping in close contact with family and friends abroad—Google has made it all too convenient for work, home, and traveling. It's free within the U.S. and Canada until December 2010, and incredibly cheap internationally. And we can still audio and video chat, just through Gmail. There's not a separate app floating amongst the fifty windows overtaking our screens. Now, we can do it all within one window—which might sound trite, but is the gold standard for online junkies.

The JVC GC-FM2

Not unlike the way low-cost netbooks re-energized the laptop market, inexpensive ultra-portable camcorders are the fastest growing segment of a category that had gotten bloated and complicated. Flip started the revolution and its cameras are still the closest adherents to the original selling point of these models: keep it simple stupid - record, stop, done. But now just about every camcorder maker is in the space, offering a few more bells and whistles to distinguish themselves.

JVC, which makes great full-size camcorders, just unveiled two new models on the higher end. The GC-WP10 and GC-FM2 (catchy) are both high-def and barely bigger than a pack of cigarettes. Both have 3-inch touch panels on the back for control and for reviewing movies, a nice trend begun by Flip's Slide. Both also shoot 5-megapixel stills, record time-lapse video and have digital image stabilization. That's never as good as optical image stabilization, but these tiny cameras are so prone to hand-shake, any extra bit helps. The WP10 is also waterproof to 10 feet—which makes it the perfect cam to pick up just for your next snorkeling trip. The FM2 is $180 and the WP10, $200.

If you're looking to try one of these smaller cams at a smaller investment, check out this amazing deal: A Flip Mino HD for $85, about half price, today only.

Facebook's worst-kept secret, Facebook Places, was unveiled late yesterday and it has the internet buzzing already. The geo-location feature lets Facebook users to check-in (sound familiar?) in uh, places, like movie theaters, restaurants, etc. and share their location with friends.

But before we answer the $64,000 question, let's clear-up on how it actually works. (By no means is this an in-depth Q&A/analysis of Places in general, so take a look at Mashable's guide if you want more.)

How does it work?
It's pretty simple, but you do need the latest version of Facebook's application. (It only works on iPhone on for now, but Andoid, Blackberry users can use it at touch.facebook.com until Facebook includes support). Once at a place, open up the Facebook mobile application, check-in at the place, tag your buddies that are with you, and your check-in will show up in the news feed.

How is it different from Foursquare, Gowalla, and other geo-location apps?
Well, for starters, it's Facebook, which means geo-location apps are no longer niche. According to Facebook, around 150 million users access Facebook Mobile which dwarfs the number of Foursquare and Gowalla users. Now even the most casual mobile user can use it, a departure from the more tech-savvy audience for services like Foursquare.

Additionally, Facebook Places doesn't have rewards or badges, perhaps as a mea culpa to Foursquare and Gowalla. As Facebook continues to grow, perhaps it doesn't want to be seen as a big bully—unlike Google, who's public image has taken a beaten recently—and is actually working with these services to integrate into Places.

So, how will it change the travel industry?
Traveling is about exploring new places, meeting new friends, and getting social so "adding location check-in seems pretty much the most natural thing the social network could do," industry-watching website Tnooz reports. However, it only works in the US for now with plans for other countries coming soon.

Facebook Places will let you share your vacation in real-time (for better or for worse) while continuing the conversation with your friends. Maybe if you check-in to a restaurant, a friend can warn you to skip the veal and try the pasta instead? Or maybe it'll make the dreaded airport pick-up a bit easier?

For travel companies, Tnooz continues, adapting to a Places world will be a bit more challenging. Hotels and tourist attractions will no doubt encourage users to check-in (hello, free PR!) but negative comments and reviews could hurt them. Hotels and attractions could even create customer loyalty, like Foursquare has, and offer discounts or VIP treatment.

What do you think? Will Facebook Places change the way we travel?

Flight search engines are dime a dozen on the internet, and aside from the corporate logos on top of the screen, they all look the same. Most of them feature similar lay-outs: the matrix format, with small airlines logo dotted on one side and number of stops on the other with prices mixed through out. The new site Hipmunk aims to change that with their revolutionary way of displaying flight information.

Hipmunk's goal is to simplify and make it easier to find the perfect flight with an improved interface. For example, all flights are displayed on a signal page, the site automatically hides awful flights and intuitive filtering techniques like dragging departure or arrival time around make it easy to sort options. Also different is the use of tabs at the top, which makes searching multiple flights at the same time easy.

Sure, the layout can be jarring at first, since it's very different from the typical matrix display, but after a few minutes of playing around with it, we grew to like it. The longer the bars are, the longer the flight is, with the layover city displayed when there is one. Flights are initially separated by "agony," a multi-variable rating of flight quality. Click "price" on top to see the flight with the lowest price.

Since Hipmunk is using Orbitz for its data and sends user to them, we still recommend checking out other sites to get the best deal. The site hopes to eventually integrate other travel retailers, TechCrunch reports.

Created by Reddit co-founders, Steve Huffman and Adam Goldstein, the guys told Tnooz their website is still very much in the development phase. There is no office space yet—they code all day on their couch—but they did garner funds from angel investors. Future plans include building brand loyalty and carving a niche out of the "sophisticated traveler market."

Huffman and Goldstein will define Hipmunk a success in 12 months by one metric: if the flight search is made less painful thanks to Hipmunk. To that, we say good luck.

When a friend pulled out her Hipstamatic app, which gives photos taken with your iPhone a retro 70s look, on a business trip a few weeks ago, I thought "Why bother? You can just add those effects later in Photoshop." Then I downloaded the app and, judging from its top-10 rank in the iTunes store, like many other users, was hooked. Last night I found myself making B&W shots of the fries on our dinner table.

It's true, you could simply take regular photos and add the film border or coloration later, but it would be so much work, you likely never would. The addicting thing about Hipstamatic is that it makes even photos of mundane things look like art immediately. Unlike other "effects" apps, it attempts to mimic actual retro camera lenses, films and flash gels. For $1.99 you get three lenses and three film-types, but you can (and likely will) buy more in the app, giving yourself hundreds of combinations. To help you narrow your choices, here are ShinyShiny's top 10 settings, and here's Photojojo's demo of all possible pairings. Check out the Flickr Hipstamatic group for inspiration, and once you've mastered the app, enter Hipstamatic's monthly contest.

One more great thing about the app is its back story. I initially assumed it was called Hipstamatic as a play off of retro-loving hipsters (especially because one of the upgrade packs is named after Williamsburg, the hipster world capital in Brooklyn). But in fact, the Hipstamatic 100 was an actual camera developed in the 1970s by two Midwestern brothers. Their idea was to make an inexpensive plastic camera that would allow anyone to become a photographer, but before the product could really get going, the brothers were killed in an accident. Their older brother set up a site memorializing them in 2007, inspiring the app creators. Read the story here.

(Android users, check out Vignette and Retro Camera; they're not quite as spontaneous, but produce similar effects.)

Hipstamatic app

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We've given lots of love to Google Maps in this blog, but Microsoft is mounting a real challenge to G's dominance with its Bing Maps.

Stealing a move from Google's own playbook, Microsoft is letting anyone with the coding chops build new services on top of its map platform, even running a contest for the coolest. The result is some pretty awesome creativeness and handy tools for travelers. In addition to the standard traffic reports and restaurant finders, a new Taxi Fare Calculator will tell you how much that ride from the airport is likely to cost. (HopStop does the same thing, but only for a handful of cities.)

And my personal favorite feature: Destination Maps, which lets you create maps of an area of your choosing in a sketch or treasure-map style—it'll even output a high enough resolution map for you to print. Perfect for your next pirate-themed road trip.

[Note: on a Mac, the site only seems to be working with Safari at the moment.]

Bing Maps (via Gizmodo)

Monsoon Vulkano

Late summer brings the NFL and baseball post-season—in other words: Things you want to watch, live, no matter where you happen to be traveling. Direct-to-cellphone TV service FLO may be dead before it really began, but there are other ways to move what's on your TV or computer at home to whatever device you have with you.

A new device called the Monsoon Vulkano is like a TiVo and Slingbox in one: It records TV and then streams or downloads those recordings, as well as live TV, to your mobile device or laptop. The questionably named device (Tornado Mudslyde was taken?), even lets you change channels remotely, and claims it works over a 3G connection. It also streams photos and music off your home network, as well as video from services like Hulu or Boxee. Really want to follow the home team but don't live at home? Buy your parents one of these (or a cheap Slingbox off eBay) and stash it behind their TV.

If you care less about live TV than stored movies, a new service called ZumoCast joins existing services Air Video and StreamToMe in sending any video stored on your computer to your phone or iPad, automatically trans-coding it into the right format on the fly. As long as you have a solid connection, these can be a really good way to show off home movies on the road without hogging your phone's memory.

Monsoon Vulkano (via Gadling)

Books, magazines and sewing could be a thing of the past on long-haul flights thanks to new in-flight entertainment (IFE) options being developed by Panasonic Avionics Corporation that look radically different compared to what airlines offered just five years ago.

Announced in early July, Cathay Pacific Airways and Panasonic will deploy state-of-the-art technology, which will enable passengers to surf wireless Internet, use mobile phone services and watch enhanced personal televisions, including the ability to stream movies and shows from iPods into seat-back screens. The Hong-Kong based airline is the first globally to provide these new services fleet-wide and will launch in early 2012.

Virgin Atlantic announced a similar agreement in June with Panasonic Avionics, but the technology will only be available on Virgin's Airbus 330 fleet with a "strategy for full connectivity" in the near future, according to a press release.

The biggest, and perhaps most controversial, part of the new system is the ability to use cell phones on-board, no matter where the aircraft is.

"There's always been a demand—phones have been on airplanes for a long time [but] service cost has been very, very expensive," David Bruner, executive director of corporate sales and marketing at Panasonic Avionics, told Truth.Travel's Paul Brady.

As for complaints from other passengers, Bruner suggested adding "quiet zones" but on airlines already equipped with airborne cell phone technology "no one’s complained and there is ambient noise in the cabin anyway," he said.

But the implementation of live television on board is proving to be a bigger challenge, Bruner said, adding "[it’s] the most radical thing we're doing." Live television during flight is a passenger favorite, especially news and sports, but there are many hurdles for it to happen like global content rights, encoding (and decoding) the stream, and financial issues.

Virgin Atlantic and Cathay Pacific will be doing "similar types of installations" at a cost in the six-figure range, Bruner said. Airlines, however, have full control over what type of personality the system has. (Virgin's will be a "little cheeky, a little fun.")

As for pricing per passenger, it depends on the airline. "We need to have different services at different prices to expand utilization by the people on board... We try to match the pricing at hot spots around the world," Bruner said. Sports and premium content could cost more and different cabins might have different access costs, he hinted. And other services, like updating Facebook and Twitter through IFE, might be available for a fee of around $5.

This past weekend, walking the streets of design-mecca Stockholm, I finally pulled the ugly and bulbous bumper case off my iPhone 4—I just couldn't cover its beautiful industrial design with that chincy plastic anymore. But I'm still sufficiently afraid of the dropped-call and dropped-phone risks of a naked device that I'm shopping for something new. And if I can't just go raw, I figure I should at least go custom. Here are five cool ways to personalize the iPhone or other gadget.

While a thin vinyl skin offers a minimal amount of protection against serious falls, it will solve your antenna woes and keep the device scratch-free. I've used clear ZAGGskins and the InvisibleShield screen protectors on my iPods for years and can attest to the amount of abuse they can take. The surface is also just tactile enough to enhance your grip without getting stuck in your pocket. Now the company offers custom skins—back, sides, or both—for several phones, tablets and laptops. Just upload your artwork and design away.

GelaSkins has a similar product that's highly rated in forums. It adds a skin for the non-screen parts of the front and even generates a custom wallpaper for your screen to give you a true 360° design.

Bamboo: Though I hate the idea of covering the sleek steel sides of the iPhone, Oregon-based Grove's custom etched bamboo cases are seriously tempting. They add only a little bulk and offer light and dark bamboo. If you're not feeling creative, pick from one of their "artist series" designs. Lead time is up to 12 weeks for a custom case, so I may wait for their coming iPad case instead.

Plastic: Uncommon's thin polycarbonite cases probably provide the best drop protection short of rubber and a little ridge around the screen should it fall on its face. The custom design isn't just a sticker—it's actually baked into the plastic so it won't peel off over time.

Aluminum: Or maybe I'll just go with ElementCASE's industrial version of the bumper, the Vapor. Machined from a block of aluminum, the company claims it lines the inside with a special shock-absorbing material that also fixes the antenna issue. Right now, you can only get "Vapor" laser-etched on the side, but a custom option is coming. Of course, if you're carrying a metal-encased phone, writing "badass" on the side is probably just redundant.

Add one more thing Google Maps can do for you: find hotel prices. The new functionality, which started to roll out in March, is expanding to more users in the coming weeks, according to Search Engine Land.

By simply typing in "hotels" and a city name, Google displays hotels prices per night, reviews, and an external link to book the room through a variety of different providers like Hotels.com and Expedia.

Google has cautioned that this is just an "experiment" and has no impact on how hotels are ranked, adding that the function is simply "to make this aspect of your trip planning more speedy and efficient."

When we searched "hotels Pittsburgh" around 4:30 p.m. today, 10 hotels popped up with one hotel offering 25 percent off for a weekend night.

Thew functionality has industry insiders buzzing. Hospitality.net wrote this will "create a huge impact on the travel industry" and create a path for monetizing Google Maps. But The Motley Fool wrote Google is simply sparring back at Bing, who already has this feature—but could hurt online travel agencies if Google integrates this function correctly.

Although Search Engine Land said this feature is "unrelated" to Google's purchase of ITA Software, this could leave competitors wondering how to fight back if Google creates its own online travel agency.