Fun with Walt Disney, renew your BATW membership NOW, and a taste of what’s in store for our members in 2010. Of course, lots of good wishes for a healthy, contented, and adventuresome new year for you and peace to everyone around the world. ———— Important: Please remember to...

Thanks to Sheila O’Connor for this tip she picked up from a U.K. writers’ newsletter: “The best times of the day to send email queries are one hour before lunch and one hour before quitting time according to an item in Bob Bly’s Direct Response Letter.  ‘People spend more...

David Page sends a link to tips on “How to Develop a Personal Brand as a Writer” by Kim Grant, author of 47 guidebooks, who writes, “Choose your weapons wisely.”

Just when you thought you had Twitter and Facebook under control, the New York Times runs a story about people’s social networking sites being hacked with spam that’s sent to the contacts in the accounts.  Brad Stone‘s December 13th story “Viruses That Leave Victims Red in the...

Tony Tocdaan and Brad Newsham in their taxi in 2001 For the past 20 years, Brad Newsham has been friends with a Filipino rice farmer named Tony Tocdaan. In 1988 Tony led Brad on a trek through the famous rice terraces of Banaue. In 2001 Brad invited Tony to America and drove him from the Golden Gate...

Congratulations to Diane LeBow whose story “Tea in Kabul: An Activist Witnesses a Nation’s Struggle for Peace” will be included in the forthcoming Traveler’s Tales‘ anthology, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010, due out in February 2010. Twenty-seven stories were selected...

Here is all the information you could ever want to know about the cool new travel-photo app that Lee Foster has just released: Lee Foster's travel-photography app Lee Foster has released his first travel app in the Apple iTunes App Store. The title is “San Fran Photography Guide“. ...

David Laws tells us that “at the meeting at wonderful holiday party at the Walt Disney Family Museum, several members asked for links to a couple of videos I have been involved with at the Computer History Museum this year.   The following two videos are posted on the Computer History Museum...

Lee Nelson sends this note: The online travel magazine iNeTours.com recently added Washington, D.C. as its newest destination. Two dozen articles about government buildings such as the Library of Congress, White House and Capital, Smithsonian Institution museums, monuments, war memorials and other attractions...

Erin van Rheenen is back in Costa Rica (as well as Panama and Nicaragua) blogging and doing research for the third edition of her book Living Abroad in Costa Rica.  Apparently she’s traveling alone the rivers and checking out caimans, agoutis and other fascinating Central American critters.