Some people seek out golf courses and gated communities for their retirement; others choose the ocean. That's exactly what Beatrice Muller, an 89 year-old widow from New Jersey, did. She's spent the last nine years living the life on the high seas, cruising around the world on the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2. Muller finds this much more pleasant than any old retirement home and she plans to keep up her worldly accommodations, except for one problem: the 41 year old QE2 is retiring in November. What is an old, sea-loving woman to do? Find another ship of course.

Muller says despite her preferred ship's retirement, she refuses to return to land. "What would I want to do that for?" she was quoted asking The Times. Her cabin costs about $7,000 a month, and according to her estimates, that's about the same as a retirement home in Florida, just "far more pleasant."

Actually living on the sea isn't as strange as it sounds. Magellan offers a Residential Cruise Line, where for $4 million and up you can buy your own on-board condo. The World is another "seagoing community" popular with the financially secure crowd.

We'll just have to wait and see what Muller chooses as her next home. As for the QE2, it's headed to Dubai to become a floating hotel.

Car rental giant Hertz says it will enter the car-sharing market in a big way later this year.

A senior vice president at Hertz tells the Boston Globe that the company will unveil a new car-sharing program in several major U.S. cities, an effort, in part, to draw more business to Hertz's 1,600 locations that are not at airports.

Hertz is not saying exactly when it will begin its car-sharing program, or just how fast it might grow to include so-called second tier cities like Boston and St. Louis. Also, it has not released rates.

The company has been testing rentals by the hour for some time now, the Globe says.

Hertz would be the first major car rental company to step up and attempt to cut into the market share of Zipcar, currently the car-sharing leader, with more than 200,000 members in 50 North American cities.

UHaul and Enterprise are also said to be contemplating entering the car-sharing market.

Whack me but I found this funny more than anything else: A Spanish couple traveling in Norway wanted to go to Olden to catch a cruise they had left to sort out some health issues. Traveling by taxi, due to a mispronunciation of their destination, the taxi driver took them to Halden instead, which is 560km away. Their fare came to 15,000 Kroners ($2765).

Still oblivious to the mistake, they tipped the driver 1000 Kroners ($184!) and spent the night in a hotel, only to find that there was no cruise ship waiting for them -- that's when they realized that they were in the wrong city. They jumped back into a taxi and and head towards Olden which was 610km away and the taxi ride cost them another 15,300 Kroners ($2,820).

So their pronunciation error cost them over 30,000 Kroners (over $5,300), the approximate cost of 2 round the world tickets.

Funny thing is, Spaniards don't pronounce "h"; so they would pronounce Halden as "Alden" -- which sounds more like Olden than Halden. When they try to pronounce the "h" it's very strong and sounds like a "khhhhh", so I'm not quite sure how they ended-up going to Halden. Perhaps the driver saw they were rich and decided to dupe them.

My daughter is approaching driving age. Gaad! Let's just say, I'm not thrilled. Dings and dents abound in Columbus. This is a city. It's not that people drive like maniacs, but there are many cars and many possibilities for an amiss to happen while navigating the roads. Dents and dings are the mildest forms of mishaps.

One day though, it's inevitable; my daughter will be driving. To get her ready for the day when she hits the road on her own, I've come across a guide that could come in handy. In July's Car&Travel: New York, a AAA publication, is a blurb on AAAStartSmart, a newsletter that is geared for teen driver education.

Developed in partnership with the National Institute of Health, the on-line newsletter, published every two weeks, covers topics such as driving at night, teen passengers' seat belt use and drivers' distractions. It gives tips to parents on how to set limits and what limits to set.

I can see how this newsletter might help illuminate the issues that occur with teen drivers to help parents know what to expect and how to prevent a problem before the problem ever has a chance to happen. For example, setting limits such as not letting a teen drive with other teens in the car since teens are a major distraction for teens.

To get the newsletter go to AAA.com/StartSmart and register.

Frequent travelers on any metropolitan subway system know that the two major means for fare tracking and billing are via magnetic strip and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). And every nerd and his RPG character know that those systems can be both readable and exploitable.

To see how secure the Boston subway system was, several MIT students decided to run an analysis on the security of the infrastructure; what they found was a little disturbing. By simply wandering into unlocked doors, opening unlocked cabinets and peering around they were able to find keys to the system, get access to network hardware and find and copy employee identification.

On looking into the security of the magnetic and RFID systems, they were able to reverse engineer the code on the magnetic stripes and reconfigure the data to post $653 to a subway card. Similarly, the group analyzed the RFID contents and were able to disassemble the code.

The students point out that numerous transportation systems around the globe use these systems and technology.

Naturally, all of this quite illegal -- the students were just illustrating a point to the MBTA that there are security vulnerabilities in the system that can fairly easily be exploited. Hopefully, they and the company that makes subway infrastructures perks up and makes some serious security changes as a result of this reserach.

Check out the full 87 page presentation on the execution hosted at MIT.

Talk about mobile homes and all I think of is a caravan, and my newly discovered Mini-Motel. So when I came across this illustrative list of futuristic mobile homes, I was left slightly flabbergasted. You have:

• The "M-ch": A micro-compact home which is a little cube of a house you can take anywhere (but you would need a crane!). Suitable for 2 people, it's enough to sleep, work and cook in. Oh and slightly more expensive than a tent (Euro 34,000+).
• The SkiHaus: Built for exhausted skiers on high peaks, if you can organize for a helicopter with the snap of your fingers, you might want to look at the SkiHaus. It's a lightweight, all-aluminum structure that weighs only 315 kg.
• A Peak Lab: A cabin that can be hung outside a cliff.
• The Point Lookout: A beach-hut on a tripod.
• The M-Igloo: An mobile igloo style bedroom.
• The Orb: A holiday park home for the younger "style conscious" generation. Apparently these houses even float!
• The Lifepod: A green housing unit you can take anywhere as long as you have hauling power.
• The Walking House (see image): Definitely my favorite, yes it gets up and walks! However this one is still a prototype - but not for long, I hope!
  

And there are even more types of these things that include SUV's and shipping containers turned into homes and hotels. Have a look at the full list here.

There is a new travel service that operates out of Albany, New York. Javian Jet Traveler doesn't own jets, but helps connect private jets with people who are looking for rides.

Frank Figliomeni, the owner of the company, thinks, as far as he knows, that Javian Jet Traveler is the only one like it in the United States.

According to this article in the Daily Gazette, although, primarily serving people living in the central region of New York, Javian Jet Traveler's data base includes 50 private jet companies across the country.

In a nutshell, if Figliomeni finds out that a private jet is interested in carrying passengers, he creates a flight package to connect customers to the jet.

Taking a private jet isn't cheap, but as Figliomeni says, if people join together with others, the price is doable--kind of. Making a tidy income would help. The example he presents is three couples sharing a twin turboprop plane to Martha's Vineyard for a weekend trip.

The total cost is $3,000. I would guess this is the cost for going from Albany to Martha's Vineyard and back. That makes the trip $500 per person.

If you can't afford the plane to Martha's Vineyard, drive. My friend who lives near Albany said that you can drive there in about six hours. But, then, if you left after work on a Friday, you'd miss out on dinner while overlooking the ocean. Instead, you'd be rolling in about midnight, and stumbling into your hotel room.

This was a week of a wide range of travel news that captured the essence of variety in the entertainment world.

• On the classy end of life, Josh posted on a museum exhibit about Finding Grace Kelly in Paris.
• On the opposite end, Iva gave us the scoop on a character actor who hit a flight attendant and a police officer.
• Also, on the bad behavior side, Aaron offered details about a flight attendant suing televangelist Joel Osteen's wife.
• If you want to see for yourself how celebrities behave, Grant told us about celeb spotting in Ann Arbor.
• To see what a famous person's private jet looks like, check out Sir Richard Branson's sweet number.

There was also a wide range of details about how air travel can make you or break you.

• U.S. Airways now charges for water.
• Homeland Security can seize your laptop.
• JetBlue will offer a passengers a pillow and a blanket set for a price.
• Delta will offer in-flight Internet.
• United Airlines' seats came loose and rolled backwards during take-off.

So, that's more than 5, but I saw patterns. Have a wonderful weekend!

It depends on my mood whether I want to chat to the person next to me when I travel. I'm quite happy reading my book, listening to music, gazing outside the window, or taking a nap on a train/bus/plane. Although not often have I had the misfortune of being stuck with an annoying chatterbox in the next seat, I have had many mental episodes of I-just-want-to-break-his-jaw-so-he-will-keep-quiet.

That's when I wonder: how long before transport systems with private, one-person seats become a norm?

Australian designer Hamit Kanuni Kuralkan probably had his share of bad next-seat passengers in order to come up with this design(see image): a train with personal booths or capsules to sit in by yourself.

Although not a bad thought, I look at the design and the words that override everything possibly positive about the idea are "claustrophobia" and "depressing". What if I pass out? And what happens if I want to travel with a friend?

I rather have some open space and an annoying neighbor.

[Via: Boing Boing]

If you've passed through airport security at more than a few airports in the past year, you've probably noticed Clear security lanes. The Cliff Notes version of their service is that they take a retina scan, store some info and let you get through screening faster -- for a fee, of course.

I have to admit, I don't know anyone that uses it. Most business travelers I know fly either in First Class (so don't have to go through the long security line) or plan well enough in advance to anticipate long security lines (so don't worry about it). And I think that some people are concerned about giving biometric and personal data to a third party to store in a database -- you know, that whole privacy thing.

But surely a security company would keep tight control over and even encrypt that private data, right? Not necessarily. According to cbs5tv, a Clear laptop at San Francisco International airport was boosted the other day, along with the personal data of over 30,000 members in the system. New applications are on hold while the company that operates the checkpoint, Verified Identity Pass Inc., tracks down the notebook.

I'm glad I didn't apply for a Clear Pass last year.