A month from tomorrow I’m setting off on what can only be described as “The Trip of a Lifetime”. I’ll be boarding my first ever long-haul flight and heading to Japan! I’ve wanted to visit the land of sushi and cheap electronics ever since I was about 13 and read Super Play, a magazine that was as much a monthly love letter to Japan as it was a source of Super Nintendo news and reviews.

Being so far from home brings with it a problem. How to keep in contact with those back home? I’m sure a lot of my family and friends will be interested in following our round trip through central Japan, taking in Tokyo, Mount Fuji and Kyoto. Postcards just don’t cut it any more. When I was in Turkey last September I posted 5 cards, none of which arrived at their destination. Add in the distinct possibility of me being home for weeks before a postcard from Japan has even had a chance to leave the country and it’s obvious a more hi-tech solution is needed.

So what am I going to do? Well, while I’m there my wifi and GPS-equipped phone (I’ll be taking an iPhone 3G with Nokia E61i for backup, most probably) will be my best friend, allowing me to send updates about what we’re doing via Twitter while my photos are geotagged and uploaded to my Flickr account. This means people back home will not only get regular updates about how we’re getting on, they’ll also be able to see photos *and* the exact location they were taken on a map!

It’s fair to say that most of my family and friends are not all that clued up on things like RSS feeds, so they’re not going to be already subscribed to my Twitter and Flickr. No, what I need is some way of bringing all this content together so they can just bookmark a web page and come back to it at any time to check up on the Japanese adventure. There are several options out there for doing this. I did consider setting up an account on Tumblr, for example. Instead, however, I’ve gone for the current darling of the Silicon Valley set, FriendFeed.

FriendFeed allows you to collect everything you do on various web services and put it all in one easy-to-find place. There’s more to it that that - the community side of things is great for discovering new information and content - but on the most basic level it’s about putting your life in one place. Here’s my FriendFeed profile, for example.

FriendFeed has recently launched a ‘Rooms’ feature. This allows you to cordon off your own little area, away from the bustle of the main FriendFeed community. Rooms can be Public, Semi-Public or Private, allowing you to control who gets to see the content. Those who are worried about their privacy and sharing things with strangers could set up an invite-only room. That could allow only their family to view or comment on their holiday snaps etc. Being someone who’s already sharing all this stuff anyway, that doesn’t bother me. I’ll still be setting up a room, however, as it’s a convenient way to create a separate ‘Holiday Feed’.

This plan, of course, relies on easy access to free wifi. I’m hoping some of our hotels will be obliging on this front. Nearer the time, I’ll post details of the room up on here and you can follow my holiday without the need for anything as archaic as postcards!

[Image credit: Kamoda on Flickr]