J Peterman Counterfeit Mailbag
The folks at the J. Peterman Company are having a great contest with the prize being one of their gorgeous leather Counterfeit Mailbags stuffed with $5000 USD cash. There is no purchase necessary and you can enter as many times as you’d like (once per day) now through December 3rd.
Does J. Peterman sound familiar? Yes, that’s the place where Elaine from Seinfeld (see: Seinfeld – The Complete Series
The safe part of a Crumpler ad pic?
What can I say about Crumpler? They make great laptop bags. They are truly innovative in the way they market their products.
I’ve never been a big fan of the Crumpler US site. They don’t own the Crumpler dot com domain (11/09 – that domain is currently parked by some Internet villian!) so they set up over at Crumplerbags dot com. It’s set up using flash to be a kind of web based vending machine for their products. If you use the lite site it’s much more spartan. The lite site presents all the products and makes them easy to view and if the product is in stock buy. They are real clear about what is in and out of stock. They provide good product info about the bag construction and dimensions.
For a good time with Crumpler check out their European web site at Crumpler dot EU. This site is fun. The products are well categorized and the sites use of small flash graphics is great. There are many more products presented on the European site. Much more of the Crumpler story is presented here.
Crumpler doesn’t have any “will my laptop fit” function on their site but they do post notes from satisfied customers. We hope to get some of their products in for review here.
The Crumpler bags that we like the most are the “Considerable Embarrassment”, a messenger style bag that accommodates up through 15″ laptops. See the “Dreadful” for larger laptops and the “Moderate” for smaller sizes. We also like the “Chester Squander”, a briefcase style bag.
Check out the site Free Shipping dot org for information and some special coupons good for free or reduced cost shipping this holiday season.
FreeShipping.org
We checked to see how many laptop bag and accessory manufacturers were listed. In general many of the major online stores (such as Amazon) were there but we couldn’t find the individual manufacturers there (yet).
We should point out that the folks over at eBags (shameless plug!) offer free shipping all year round!
I was browsing over at at the booq bag site today and discovered Terralinq. The folks over at booq describe Terralinq like this:
If you ever lose your booq® bag with its valuable cargo, Terralinq may help reunite you with your lost bag once it has been located and reported to Terralinq. To make this possible, each booq bag with Terralinq carries a unique item number on a metal label. Registering links a product’s unique number with an identity – yours. Should a registered bag be reported as lost & found, Terralinq will attempt to contact you with a bag’s location and the finder’s contact information.
This sounds like a pretty great system that; if you were to buy some other manufacturer’s bag you would have to pay for. In fact. see i-Trak. That’s what they do. Looking around the Terralinq by booq site it includes a login that lets the bag owner update and maintain their contact information over time. Props to the folks at booq for providing this service when you buy one of their bags!
AP Photo
There are lessons to be learned from the recent arrest of a prolific Phoenix, AZ, Sky Harbor Airport luggage thief (AP, Reuters) .
One important fact noted in many reports is that none of the luggage found at the suspect’s home had a luggage tag attached. The tip here is to make it harder for a would be thief to get the luggage tag off your bag. The folks over at YourBagTag.com sell luggage tags that feature a metal grommet on the tag and attach via a metal cable. If you can make it harder for the thief to cut the tags off and depersonalize your bag; maybe they’ll choose a different target.
I always try to make sure that I have another completed luggage tag attached inside of my bag. I do this this because I’ve had tags break off while on the road and been nervous wondering if the airline supplied tag would hold up. Attaching a second tag inside your luggage provides a way for someone to get your bag back to you if recovered.
Finally, the reporting on this luggage theft seems to indicate that while airlines are getting lean one area they have cut is securing luggage claim areas. As more people figure this out it will only make it harder to travel as less people check bags and bring more bags along. While overhead space is shared you should always try and make sure you laptop bag fits under the seat in front of you. If only as a last resort.
