Here’s the second part of a longer conversation with Dopplr friend and investor Esther Dyson.

Dopplr: How has the quality of commercial aviation changed in the past few years? Feel free to distinguish between US and non-US carriers…

Esther Dyson: The quality of commercial aviation has dropped sharply - but not that much out of line with its pricing until recently. It was simply hard to get good service, and at least in the US all the carriers focused on price to the exclusion of reliability and comfort. On most foreign carriers, you could get better service - but you were paying for it. But there are still some good domestic services available: I use United’s Premium Service between New York and San Francisco and LA. It’s a bit pricier, but you can work comfortably through the whole flight, and that’s definitely worth it. That is, it’s worth it in business class, especially if you book far enough ahead. First class is not worth it.

As for foreign carriers, I like Lufthansa a lot, even though they can be a bit humorless. BA’s service has become a bit careless, but they go almost everywhere I do, so I keep using them as well. Austrian, SAS and the rest of the Star Alliance carriers are also pretty good.

Dopplr: You stay in hotels that have swimming pools. Is that your sole criterion or do you have others?

The pool is a binary criterion: whether or not there is one. After that, there are nuances: What time does it open? (Once I stayed at a Doubletree with a pool that didn’t open until 10 am. I ended up sneaking into the pool of a much nicer hotel I happened to know nearby. (I’m purposely being vague here…. I haven’t done anything so “bad” in a long time; I think it’s good for the soul to feel like a real outlaw from time to time.)

And is it large, regularly shaped, not too full of other people? The worst pools have lots of fancy obstacles - stairs that stick into the water, curves and clever shapes that waste swimming space and interrupt laps. You can easily turn a three-lane pool into a single usable lane with protruding stairs and the like. The pool here in Kampala, Uganda, is lovely and long, but it has annoying curvy edges that I keep bumping into. (photos on request for all of these) Still, I’ll swim in anything rather than miss my morning wet-reboot. Last week, for example, I was at the London Hilton Metropole, where they managed to ruin the pool with two protruding steps, diagonally across from one another, so there was no good lane to swim in.

I occasionally have swimming dreams: Usually the pool is dry, or I can’t find it and wander around in angst. And then there was the actual time (not a dream) in Munich where I was attending a DLD conference at the Bayerhof, which has a lovely pool. I saw it the evening I checked in, all decked out for a party, with beautiful deep blue tiles, a nice rectangular shape (except for steps in one corner), and suitably large. The next morning, I couldn’t even find it at first. They had opened a different entrance for the party, and now I had to take some backdoor route - but finally I found it. There was a sign saying it was closed for the party, but there was no one there, so I decided to go in. However, it was now only half full. Never mind. I jumped in quickly, half expecting someone to come along to order me out, and kept hitting the bottom, because the water was quite low. To my surprise, even though I thought I was figuring out how to swim as horizontally as possible, I seemed to be getting worse rather than better at it.

Suddenly I realized that the water was still draining. As I sat on the bottom and considered my situation, the water barely came up to my waist. So I got out, took a shower and consoled myself that at least I had gotten in most of a half hour. The whole thing was like a dream, where the water gradually drains away and I wake up. This time, I *was* awake.

I went to join my brother at breakfast… and halfway through, remembered I had left my bathing cap in the shower. once more I went into the labyrinth of stairs and doors, and this time I couldn’t even find the shower. Suddenly, though, I heard it, followed the sound, and opened the women’s shower area door. There stood a pudgy little man, fortunately all covered in bubbles, scrubbing away in the very stall I had been using. We stared at each other in astonishment. “But this is for the ladies!” I said in my best German. “Enschuldigung! [Excuse me!]” he replied. Then he turned his back for a moment and turned around again, proffering my bathing cap.

Stranger than most of my dreams!

We’re starting a series of “smarter travel conversations” today. Our inaugural posting features Esther Dyson, an investor, writer and inveterate traveller (and Dopplr friend and investor) who is currently training for the ultimate trip (about which more below). This is the first of several postings in a longer conversation with Esther.

Dopplr: What’s a rough estimate of how many miles/kilometers you’ve traveled in the past 1, 5 and 10 years? What percentage of the time are you away from your New York City home?

Esther Dyson: I really have no idea of the answer to the first question; I’m hoping Dopplr will tell me this December. As for percentage, I’d estimate I spend about 75 to 80 percent of my nights away from home. Of that, probably a third is outside the US. Again, Dopplr will tell the truth in a few months.

This coming year, things will be different: I’ll be spending most of the first three months in Moscow. It will be a new experience to spend so much time in one place!

Dopplr: You’re training to be a cosmonaut, which sounds like the ultimate travel experience. How did this come about?

Esther Dyson: It came about in a number of ways/on a number of levels. First of all, as a kid, I just assumed I’d go to the moon, without having to do much in particular to make it happen. I just took it for granted that by the time I was, say, 40, it would be a common thing. My father was involved with the space program, and we had some moon rocks at home, so I thought it was all no big deal.

Then I got a little distracted, for about 40 years, but a few years ago I started paying attention to space again. A lot of people I knew were doing the same: Elon Musk, Space-X; Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, and so on. I ended up starting a conference called Flight School for entrepreneurs in both space and private aviation.

Meanwhile, in about 2005, I was in South Africa with a small group advising President Thabo Mbeki and his government about South African IT policy. (That’s a separate long story!) One of the group was Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Thawte (sold to Verisign), who had recently come back from a trip to the space station as the tk third “space tourist.”

One evening, we all sat around a campfire as the sun set, and 50-odd African schoolchildren were bussed in. Altogether, there were about 100 of us. Once it was dark, a screen was set up and Mark showed us his home videos from space. It was amazing! He gave a fascinating talk about his adventures, complete with clips of him floating around, catching bubbles in his mouth, and so on. The kids loved it, and I’m sure some of them decided then and there to study math and science.

Over time, that led me to invest in the company that organized Mark’s trip into space, Space Adventures. Later on, I went on a tour they organized to watch the launch of the fifth space tourist, Charles Simonyi, from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. (Simonyi wrote Microsoft Word, and now has another start-up Intentional Software, and also a foundation, as well as a website, CharlesinSpace.org.)

At that point, I started casually discussing the notion of becoming a backup cosmonaut with the Space Adventures team. Yes, I would love to actually go, but the trip to space is $35 to $40 million, whereas the backup training is only $3 million.

Whatever… I had vague thoughts that I would do this sometime in 2011 - the year that Sergey Brin is tentatively slated to go. Space Adventures was pushing for spring of 2009, but I was pretty busy.

Then another thing happened: My sister Emily had a double mastectomy. (She’s doing very well now and in fact just won a 5k race, or I wouldn’t tell you this story:) A couple of weeks later I was faced with one of those conflicts: a board meeting here, a conference there, another opportunity somewhere else. “Aaagh,” I thought, “if only I had to have a double mastectomy. I could cancel all these things and no one would complain!”

…and then I realized, good grief! I have to reorder my priorities. So in some odd way, this sabbatical in Russia is my alternative to a double mastectomy - a positive one, to be sure, but the same kind of reset-button experience. And of course, it’s also the answer to another question I think of a lot because of my work on human genetics (through 23andMe and the Personal Genome Project): Suppose you had a high chance of developing Alzheimer’s in a few years, what would you do? Why I’d go train to be a cosmonaut, of course….! and why wait to find out I may get Alzheimer’s?

(This is the first of several parts of a conversation with Esther Dyson. Photo from Esther’s Flickr Photostream, some rights reserved.)

We continue to be surprised, in good ways, by the creative ways people use Dopplr. So here’s a quick shout out to the Oregon (U.S.) State Fair, which puts a “Big Tomato” on the road each year around the state to drum up interest in the fair. This year the organizers used Dopplr to show the itinerary.

Can a plant be a fellow traveller? Unclear, but you can find the mega-veggie’s schedule here — though, sadly, its tour is now complete for this year.

We spotted a nice item in BusinessWeek about Dopplr, but unfortunately couldn’t find it online (yet). Click on the image to see it large enough to read the text…

Everyone hates to enter data twice. A few weeks ago we added a feature that lets you update Dopplr from a Google calendar. Now we’re happy to help you update Dopplr via your Apple Macintosh desktop iCal calendar. Here’s how:

In your iCal calendar, create a new calendar and name it something such as “Travel” or “Dopplr travel” or whatever you like:

Now create a new event in that calendar:

Double click (or click Command-I) the event that now shows up in your calendar and fill in the appropriate information:

This part is important to get right. It helps a great deal if you enter the location information precisely, or Dopplr may guess wrong and create the wrong location on the Dopplr site (which would be bad for serendipity with your trusted friends and colleagues). Remember that Dopplr works with the place names of cities and towns, so make sure you don’t put in a full street address or other details.

In the example above, we’ve created a marketing meeting on June 2-4, 2008, in the windy city of Chicago, which is in Illinois in the U.S. Notice that we wrote “Chicago, IL, United States” — not because Dopplr would be likely to get that particular city wrong but rather to illustrate how we recommend you enter the place name. (If you enter a simple city name and we get it wrong in Dopplr, don’t worry — you can fix it, and we’ll tell you how below.)

Also in this example, we’ve put in a note, “Make sure ad rep is there” as a reminder to ourselves. It and the title of the event “Marketing meeting” will be published on Dopplr, but only in your private trip notes there. In other words, nothing you create in your personal calendar — apart from the dates and places — will be viewable by your Dopplr fellow travellers.

OK, click “Done” and the trip will show up in your calendar. Then go to the menu and select Calendar-Publish:

You’ll see the box below. Select “Publish on: a Private Server” from the pull-down item.

Of the options in Publish calendar, Dopplr cares only about one: “Publish titles and notes.” While you may have selected the others, and may well use them in your desktop calendar, they won’t have any effect in Dopplr. You may also want to check “Publish changes automatically” so you won’t forget to update; the only disadvantage is that Dopplr may first record a trip to “New Event” before you finish entering the details, but that’s ok, because when you do finish it’ll update.

When you select “a Private Server” you’ll see this input box:

OK, now go to your Dopplr page and be sure you’re logged into your account. Click on “Your account” at the top and then on “Import trips from external calendars” on the page where we have various account settings. (direct link)

Near the end of that page you’ll see a paragraph that says:

Alternatively, you can publish a calendar from iCal to the following private server URL (no username or password required):
https://www.dopplr.com/upload/[and a long set of letters and numbers]…./

Copy that link into the Private Server address in the iCal form (we smudged the url but you get the idea):

Apple insists on a username and password. Make something up; you don’t need to put in your Dopplr username/password, as we don’t require it for this step. But you do need to type in something.

Click “Publish” and you’re done. You’ll see a note before you get back to iCal telling you how to let people know if you want them to be able to subscribe to this calendar outside of Dopplr (though we confess we’re not sure why you’d want to do that).

Now you’re set. In iCal, make sure to “Refresh” the exported calendar — right-click on the travel calendar you’re exporting and choose “Refresh” to update our server. (Remember, you can also tell iCal to “Publish changes automatically”.)

Now go back to your Dopplr page. Voila, the trip(s) should be there, as below:

When you click “More details on this trip” you find, in the private note — not the one seen by fellow travellers — the notes you put into iCal when you created the trip. You can still add a note for them to see in the “Add note” box at the bottom of the trip page.

Important: We strongly recommend that you edit trip dates and places only in iCal (or other external calendar). If you edit in Dopplr you’ll break the link back to the external calendar, and there’s nothing we can do to fix that.

If Dopplr does bring in the wrong place name, we recommend that you fix it this way:

Click the “Edit this trip” link (on the right in the above image). Let’s imagine we really intended to go to a different Chicago (and had put it in the original iCal trip as just “Chicago,” which Dopplr would interpret to be the big Illinois city as the most likely candidate. Type “Chicago” (without the quotes) in the Destination: field and wait a couple of seconds. You’ll see some activity followed by this screen:

This invites you to see other places called Chicago, and gives you a link to click to see them. Click it and you’ll see this:

Copy the name of the city you actually intended — in this case we’ll choose Chicago Heights, IL, United States — into your clipboard. Copy just the text, not the hyperlink. Now — very very important — cancel your edit. Do not click the “Done” button.

Next, go back to iCal and paste in the correct city name. Like this:

Click “Done” and the iCal trip event will be updated. So will Dopplr:

We wish we could make this part easier. But iCal and other external calendars tend to publish in one direction only.

Let us know how it works for you. We’ll be adding tweaks and fixes.

AP: EU Allows Mobile Phones on Airplanes. Under the plan approved Monday, cell phone users could make and receive calls through an onboard base station. They will be allowed to turn their phones on after the plane reaches 10,000 feet, when other electronic devices such as portable music players and laptops are permitted. But a host of issues remain, from the cost of mid-flight phone service, to backlash from those who dread the thought of being trapped for hours listening to one-sided conversations.

Uh, oh…

I have no issue with someone making a mobile call in a quiet and unobtrusive way, preferably turning away from me and others so that we’re not bombarded with information we really don’t want to hear. Even a quick call to let someone know that the plane has landed is fine with me. It’s the loud, long, and ultimately selfish mobile callers who raise my ire.

To make the point that the chatter is intrusive, I sometimes visibly listen to the person who’s talking, and even take notes if obviously listening doesn’t work. Amazing how quickly these folks wrap up their calls.

This also works when people around me are having a loud conversation and ignore requests to lower the volume. (Most people in my experience simply don’t realize they’re bothering others, and are glad to tone it down when asked politely.)

Of course, my ultimate defense is listening to music with my noise-canceling headset. That should not be necessary in a halfway civilized world.

Heathrow’s one-bag carry-on restriction has been lifted, thank heavens. Now you can carry on your roller bag plus your computer case or other small bag separately.

Also, you no longer have to remove the computer from the bag. Seems that Heathrow has new gear that inspects it inside the case.

Anyway, small progress at an airport that has had its share of traveller woes…

A Sunday Times (London) magazine article today, entitled “The new dotcom boom“, discusses Dopplr among other companies, and has a great picture of Matt Biddulph and Matt Jones. The photo is only in the print edition, not the online one.

As MattB tells the newspaper, “We’re trying to recreate the joy of travel, rather than the queues and grief.”

Fortune magazine has an extremely kind item about Dopplr in an article entitled “Web 2.0 gets down to business” — a look at how applications such as this one are becoming a vital part of modern business. The magazine quotes several Dopplr users including JP Rangaswami, a managing director at British Telecom:

(He) has become a heavy user of this tool for sharing travel itineraries. (He also has 500 friends in Facebook and follows 300 on Twitter.) Before Dopplr, which launched last December, it took repeated e-mails to keep contacts informed of his whereabouts. Now his 140 Dopplr contacts know where he is at any moment.

“You can really optimize your time when traveling,” says Rangaswami. One Dopplr friend recently saw he was going to Dublin and out of the blue recommended a good Indian restaurant.

We’re also happy to have been listed among PC World magazine’s “101 Fantastic Freebies” in the new issue.

We’re happy to announce that we’ve just added a feature that is among the most requested by all of you: subscribing to your online calendar and adding trips from it into Dopplr automatically.

Today we’ll explain how to use Google Calendar with Dopplr - although this feature works with any calendar that can publish an iCalendar feed to the web. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to do it.

First, create a new calendar. We suggest calling “My Travel” or some such thing, but of course that is up to you. When you create it, do not make it a public calendar unless you want the whole world to be able to find it via Google search.

Now, in your new Google Calendar, create an event as we show below. Set the dates in the “When” fields. Be sure to put the location in the “Where” field (that’s the most reliable way to tell Dopplr what your destination is, although we’ll also scan the title and description for place names if we don’t see a location).

IMPORTANT: To help ensure that Dopplr understands your actual destination in the Where field, please make sure the city name goes first, not after a street address. For example, “San Francisco, 21 Streetname” will work, whereas “21 Streetname, San Francisco” will unfortunately confuse Dopplr. Also, if you’re using a common city name — such as Cambridge — you’ll get better results by giving more information, e.g. “Cambridge, MA” (Massachusetts in the United States) or “Cambridge, United Kingdom”. Dopplr is smart but can’t read your mind; we’re working on ways to make this process easier for you.

Once you’ve finished entering your information about the trip, click the Save button.

Below, you’ll see the event in your calendar.

Now, under “My Calendars” (below left), click the down-arrow link next to “My travel” (or whatever you called your travel calendar). You’ll see this:

Click “Calendar Settings” and look at the “Calendar Details” tab in this screen:

At the bottom of that screen…

… click the ICAL button next to Private Address: — this is very important if you want to keep your travel plans private to yourself and your trusted Dopplr travellers — and you’ll get a pop-up that looks something like this:

Copy that URL into your clipboard. Now go to your Dopplr page and click on “Your account” (at the top of your page). Then click “Import trips from external calendars” and you’ll see this:

Paste in the URL you copied from your new Google calendar. Dopplr will look at that calendar, and let you know if it’s found some trips. In this case it found the Amsterdam trip created in our example. Click “Subscribe to calendar”.

And automagically it’ll appear on your Dopplr calendar. That’s it. Now when you update your Google calendar, Dopplr will discover the changes and reflect them on your Dopplr page. There will be a note of it in your journal and in your email alerts.

Note: If you change something in Dopplr you’ll break the link between the external calendar event — but not the entire calendar, whew — and Dopplr. (Trips you create in Dopplr won’t affect the Google calendar, however, or break the connection.) If that’s a concern, you may want to do all of your updating of trips from the Google Calendar.

Coming soon: Apple iCal to Dopplr.