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(ARA) - A job that requires a lot of travel might initially sound glamorous and jet-setting, but any business traveler who has logged countless miles will tell you differently. Imagine all the headaches of travel - the ones you forget once you've spent a blissful week on the beach - compounded in a seemingly never-ending cycle. Delay after delay, scrunched seat after scrunched seat. Days away from the family that add up to weeks and months. But because travel for work is a necessity, many new innovations are designed to ease the discomforts of it and mitigate the inconveniences it presents. Here are a few ideas to make things easier for business travelers and frequent fliers. Mail matters
Not everything can be delivered via e-mail these days. Bills, letters, packages and other snail mail deliveries inevitably pile up while you're gone, and can be a major concern. If there's no one there to pick them up, they can be a tip-off that no one's at home, and they can be a target for identity thieves. As an added bother, there's always the potential that you'll miss an important delivery that needs immediate attention. For people who are gone a lot, whether it's for business or a seasonal change of location, a new service has the potential to bring old-fashioned postal mail into the fold of high-speed modern communication. Mailbox Forwarding offers a unique new mail forwarding service that is great for anyone who spends a lot of time away from home. Customers are given a box number at a secure mail processing facility where they can have their mail sent. When a new piece of mail arrives, the front of the envelope is scanned, and the system sends an email alerting you of the item's arrival. You can then log in to an online site, view the mail that has arrived, and choose one of three actions. If you need to view a document, you can request to have the envelope opened and its contents scanned for viewing online. Mail that must be physically handled can be bundled and forwarded anywhere in the world. And unnecessary or junk mail can be shredded and recycled at the click of a button. Traditional mailbox services, like P.O. boxes, can't receive packages, and there's no way for travelers to know what's been received. The service starts at $9.95 a month (on a month-to-month basis), and the first month is free. Go go gadgets
For your luggage, there are numerous ways to overcome some increasingly common problems. If you've ever suffered through the ordeal of a lost bag, you're wary about it on every subsequent flight you take. If the thought of having to wait for an airline to sleuth out a bag makes you nervous, look into luggage tags that actually act as a tracking device. Your information can be stored on a secure server, and be connected to your individual luggage tag, which has a bar code. If the bag goes astray, the tag can be scanned, and you'll be notified about the location of your bag. Anyone who's bought a plane ticket in the past couple of years is all too familiar with the maddening frustration of bag charges and ever-shrinking weight limits - and the simultaneously skyrocketing penalty fees for going over them. While there's not much you can do to avoid the bag charges, you can arm yourself in the battle against baggage weight surcharges. If you want to go all out, there are self-weighing bags that clue you in to how close you're coming to the limit. But if you're not in the market for all new luggage, hand-held scales give you a digital read-out of your bag's weight. Just attach it to the handle, lift and hold until the reading appears. A plain old phone just doesn't cut it anymore - it's the case for most people, but particularly so for business travelers. Smart phones that combine Web capabilities, e-mail, synching with standard office programs and wireless service are now a necessary luxury. The bonus is that they can also be used for fun, too, from sending photos to listening to music to playing video games. If you're going abroad, look into a SIM card for your smart phone that will eliminate overseas phone charges and give you the ability to make local calls without racking up exorbitant fees. Courtesy of ARAcontent
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