Here are the highlights:

• Medicine Park, Okla., is featured at number 9 on the list of The Coolest Small Towns in America. Way to go Okies.
• iPhone really needs to get the Google Goggles app touted in the Sixth Annual Extra Mile Awards story. It’s currently only available for Android.
• An online-only piece about hand gestures is worth a read to help avoid making someone mad unintentionally.

Two other pieces caught my attention. Discount Detours details deals at outlet malls near several European hot spots and Cell Phone Smarts provides tips on how to avoid big cell phone fees while traveling overseas. Since these stories  aren’t online, you’ll have to buy the magazine.

The second item was a compilation of reader tips covering ”the art of cruising.”  I’m not much of a cruiser, but I have enjoyed a couple of voyages with my family and thought many of the reader tips could come in handy on my next family sailing.

Twitter, hotel review sites, travel guides, blogs, Travel Channel shows and the like, Lindberg’s article struck home with me because I have completely embraced the information explosion. A planner by nature, I have visited places for the first time and felt as if I had already been there. Not because it was similar to somewhere else, but because I had done so much research beforehand that the place seemed familiar, often times disappointingly so.

“Part of the thrill of travel is in the mystery it entails, the buzz that comes from trying to imagine what this strange new place will even look like.”

When I travel to a new city, state, country or continent I want it to feel new. I want Lindberg’s mystery and buzz. The challenge will be fighting my tendency to over-plan and research every angle.

In this month’s Reader Tips, Anita from Washington suggests exchanging emergency information with your travel partners. She suggests that everyone in the group enter the full name, date of birth and emergency contacts of every member into their cell phones. A good tip.

There’s also a helpful little article highlighting three hotel comparison sites.

First was an interesting piece comparing different methods for learning a foreign language, a skill I have never quite mastered. Oh, I can stumble along with the typical pleasantries in one or two foreign tongues, but stumble is the best I can do. You don’t have to be out of the country for long to figure out that speaking the local language would come in handy when you travel to a foreign land. According to the article, only nine percent of Americans are bilingual but more than half of Europeans speak two or more languages.

Next was a short piece on surviving an airplane accident. The article, which claims “nearly 96 percent of passengers in U.S. plane crashes survive,” has several tips that can help readers avoid that fatal four percent.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find links to these articles on NatGeo’s website, so you’ll have to grab a copy of the magazine for yourself

The Dec/Jan  issue of Budget Travel magazine has an interesting article about the next generation of smartphone travel apps that use augmented reality technology (whatever that is) to turn the phone’s camera viewfinder into an interactive travel guide.  Check it out at the magazine’s website.

This month’s Travel and Leisure has some simple photo tips that should prove helpful on my next travel trip.