• Packing cubes. They’re awesome. Use them. They save tons of space and is great for finding things fast w/o messing everything up.
• Etymotics ear phones. Better, lighter, and smaller than Bose or Sony. Fits snug in your ear for those long flights. Trust me, it’ll reduce your flying fatigue by a lot and will tune out noisy people around you; plus, you’ll hear your music better.
• Don’t want to pay for Etymotics or Shure isolating earphones but want to relieve much of the stress of flying? An easy go-around is to get a nice pair of ear plugs. I know this sounds silly, but I’ve used quite a number of different styles and materials of ear plugs. The best ones I’ve found (if you can find them) are 3M branded ear plugs. They’re made of the similar material as memory foam and when they’re still cold, squish really thin to put in your ears. I think the ones I used eliminated up to 35db of noise. That’s pretty darn good. Most others work just fine, but for me, I stay far away from the wax type’they just seem like they’ll get messy. Oh, and get a small, light weight case for the ‘plugs. There are few things worse than finding dirty ear plugs at the bottom of your bag. Who wants to put those back in their ear? Yes, get some ear plugs. You’ll be that much less tired while flying.
• Multi-time zone watch. Call me lazy, but watches that show multiple time zones are very nice when you’re traveling the world. You can always keep your watch set to home time and just refer to your cellphone in whichever part of the world you’re in. More often than not with the new cellphones, ‘network time’ will work with your phone.
• Promax backpack.  A very nice find. Fully functional and well-built.
• On long flights, along with my carry-on luggage, I always include a ‘junk pouch’ of sorts. Call it what you will (murse?), but the junk pouch is good for all sorts of things while on the flight (e.g., ipod, headphones, tylenol, mints(!), vitamins, journal, etc.). You don’t always want to get up out of your seat to grab stuff from the overhead bin, so it’s nice to have something small-ish to stash in the front seat pocket. I recommend something to the aspect of the Eagle Creek Pack-it Sac since it’s not too large. Get one that’s see-through and plasticsized, just in case. Oh, and don’t forget to take it with you when you deplane!!

Here are some reviews I’ve done for products I own.

• REI: PacSafe Carrysafe 100 -”Great to change out your original OEM camera strap of your SLR with the PacSafe camera strap. Instead of having your camera strap advertising what you’re wielding–CANON(!!), NIKON(!!), etc–this one keeps you lower profile. I like the peace of mind that a person cannot come by and slash my strap with the built-in wires. In addition, the longer straps allow to sling over the neck and shoulder like a messenger bag and swing it out easily when necessary. No longer do I need to keep the camera strap around my neck (read: tourist) or wrap it around my wrist for safety.

  Things I would improve: the straps that connect to the camera need to be sturdier and more non-slip. After a few days of heavy use, the strap came out. Luckily we were sitting at a restaurant when I noticed. I’ll have to finagle it to stay put now. It’s a necessary improvement since many users will have multi-thousand $$ cameras on there.”

• REI: REI Waist Stash (money belt) -”REI products to me are often associated with quality. We took this to Europe on our last trip and by the 2nd day I noticed the waist belt starting to come undone from the pouch. By that evening, while we were walking about, the strap completely came off. NOT a secure money belt by any means.”
• eBags: Weekender Convertible Backpack – “Overall, great bag. Wife and I took this to Germany for a week and packed it in with Fall (40-50deg) weather with plenty of space for all our stuff. Mind you, we used packing cubes and Pack-it Compression bags to reduce space. This backpack was built sturdy with quality materials and I’d use it again on another vacation trip that I need to be mobile and w/o a wheeled suitcase. Fit is good, and even at 25-30lbs, it didn’t feel too heavy (I’m 5’10″) with the chest strap and occasional use of the waist straps. I would echo some other reviews that it would be nice to include a 2nd loop to make this into a side shoulder case. Also, the compression buckles really need to be improved–when pulled on hard to compress the bag, the buckles often come loose.”