DIY travel

You do your own plumbing and drywall, so why not print your own boarding pass, check in and out of your hotel at self-serve kiosks (Say, the Fairmont Vancouver Airport Hotel) and catch the return flight – all by yourself? (If you’re a misanthrope: all without speaking to another human being.) As long as the principle isn’t applied to room service, we’re okay with it.

Out-of-the-museum audio guides

A new generation of audio guides is reinventing not just how you take a tour (like the GeoBici bike with GPS technology or Talking Street’s cellphone guide led by celebs like Sigourney Weaver) but what you visit. Subscribe to piPod, and your iPod will sniff out New York’s best pizza. Life on the road is now a real slice.

Transformation tourism

Travellers won’t be content to do the Eiffel Tower. Instead, they’ll want to bake artisanal bread in a barn in the French countryside. They will bike to that barn instead of drive. The loaves will then be handed over to local food banks. Vacations will be life-altering events rather than just a prelude to the screen saver slide show.

Nouveau mapping

Ditch that unfoldable map of Manhattan. Google Earth serves up a mind-blowing view of New York City with a series of satellite photos. Down on street level, maps.A9.com zeroes in as if you were standing right on the corner. Alkemis Local mashes the two sites together. Or you can always stay at the Carlyle, which equips guests with pocket GPS navigators for a visit that virtually gets rid of getting lost.

Home away from home

* The Canary Wireless Digital Hotspotter detects Wi-Fi signals, helping you get connected on the go .

* The Slingbox transfers the cable channels you subscribe to at home to any PC worldwide, so you can watch your favourite home team game from Singapore to San Francisco and beyond.

* It’s already joined google as a verb. Skype ’s VoIP service lets you be local in up to 10 countries, so you can take a call from Chicago while in Paris, say, but cut out long-distance charges. Word out.

The future is now

* Operating just outside of Fort Lauderdale, Zero-G offers wannabe cosmonauts a flight in complete weightlessness. The cost? A cool US$3,750.

* Another flighty idea, still at the design stage, is WATG’s airship hotel . A sort of cruise ship of the skies, the slow-floating zeppelin gives passengers the chance to get on and off and has a view that is ever-changing.

* Those who can’t get their fill of Temptation Island can now do reality in reality. Reality Village , part of the Bravo Club in Sardinia, Italy, puts guests through a slew of challenges while filming them. At night, the day’s events are screened and judges pick a winner who gets to choose one lucky guest to spend the night with in the deluxe holiday suite. What will they think of next?