I find myself checking the XE.com web site about every other day just for fun to take a quick peak to see how the U.S. dollar is against the Euro. When I was in Europe last November, it was around 1.31 $ per Euro. The $ was down to 1.34 per Euro maybe a month ago. But the $ has been doing better over the last week. It was hanging around 1.285, but today it is up to 1.259 per Euro. An 8% differential is significant, especially for traveling in Europe. Gas is actually cheap in the U.S., by perspective. One thing Americans who are complaining about high gas prices should realize is that during my drive through much of western Europe last June, I did not find one country (out of 9 visited) that sold gas for less than $6 per gallon. That probably helped explain why I saw less than two vehicles on the road that were either large pickups or SUVs in over 2500 of driving from Norway to Germany to Austria to Switzerland, and many countries in between.
 
The coolest new Smartphone application that I have on my Audiovox 5600 phone is called Calc-1. It is not only a great calculator with metric and temperature type conversions, but it has a cool tip calculator. The best best feature in Calc-1 for me during travel is a currency converter that lists all world currencies and auto updates every time I sync my email over the air. So while I travel, I can select the local currency and have the local currency rate calculation up to date.