Hot Stuff! Spice Up Your Food With This Cool New Keychain You Can Take Anywhere

Is the Bluesmart carry-on suitcase the luggage of the future? It certainly could be.  Connect the polycarbonate carry-on to your smartphone, fire up the Bluesmart app, and watch in amazement as the suitcase locks itself at your command, measures its own weight when you pull up on the handle, tracks its own location, alerts you when it's too far away from you (pesky smart-suitcase thieves!), and charges two of your e-devices at a time via a built-in "super-powerful" replaceable battery. There's even a nifty outer pocket perfect for slipping your laptop out easily while going through airport security. The whole thing weighs in at a reasonable 8.5 pounds. So what's the catch? Obviously, the $270 price tag—plus $20–$100 for shipping—isn't cheap. But the suitcase also isn't exactly finished: The carry-on is still in protoype stage, but it's raised more than 27 times its initial Indiegogo crowd-funding goal of $50,000, which is both promising and indicative that travelers are very enthusiastic about making jetsetting less of a hassle. If all goes according to plan, the company estimates the suitcases will be delivered by next August; we hear two of the founders have moved to China to oversee production during the next few months. Still interested? To offset the price, you can also use a Bluesmart referral link to get a $20 refund for you and every friend of yours who pre-orders one—rack up multiple orders for a totally free suitcase. (Downside: Your buddies will place the blame squarely on you if the product is a dud.) Will the Bluesmart deliver on all of its promises? Maybe. The creators are already owning up to the possibility of delays with engineering and software development—the app tracks travel data, like countries visited, in addition to controlling the suitcase. Plus, as Engadget emphasizes, all crowd-funded inventions run the risk of never happening.  Skepticism aside, let's suspend our disbelief and assume it will work and will be widely adopted. Losing your luggage forever might never happen again, thanks to GPS tracking from other travelers' Bluesmart apps. And if you can reliably weigh your suitcase in advance, you'll avoid fees—some airlines have weight limits for carry-ons. (Exceed 35 pounds on Frontier Airlines, for example, and you'll have to pay 50 bucks to gate-check your bag.) If you intend to check Bluesmart, the scale will tell you whether you can stuff that last bottle of Loire Valley pinot noir into your bag without paying Air France $100 (not that we're bitter!). Regarding the strong battery: Let's not forget the non-monetary value of not having to sit on dirty airport carpeting and fight other passengers for the last wall outlet to charge your phone. Conclusion? Know that if you pony up the cash, you're investing in a dream. But what a dream it is. Until your Bluesmart arrives, use our favorite tips to track your bag: • Before you leave the house, take a snapshot of your suitcase with your phone. If your bag does get lost, showing the airline a picture will go much further toward retrieving it than describing it verbally.  • Buy your own portable luggage scale, like the $30 Heys America xScale Touch. • Get to the airport early. If you check a bag within 30 minutes of your departure time, it may not make it onto the plane. • ID your bag with your contact information using one of those little paper tags the airlines gives you, plus your own luggage tag, and place an ID card in one of the outside pockets too. Hey, it's better to be safe than sorry.

Busbud is a new online platform that calls itself "the Expedia/Kayak for booking international bus travel." Pop the site up on a laptop or mobile device, and Busbud does indeed look very much like Kayak, with lists of available routes and schedules—except instead of fare prices that are in the hundreds, you'll see you can go from Paris to Brussels for $20, or Los Angeles to San Francisco for $1. That certainly cracks the world wide open for a traveler who's watching her pennies. Choose your trip, and Busbud either takes your payment directly or kicks you over to the bus operator's site (think Megabus, iDBUS, etc.), where you can buy the ticket online. World travelers, take note: One feature that makes Busbud different from other bus-finding apps is its international reach. In fact, routes in Latin America and Europe were the first to be indexed on the site. Busbud has U.S. routes too, but all told, the platform works in 11 languages, 21 currencies, more than 89 countries, and more than 10,463 cities. New countries are continually added, like Spain was just recently.  CEO LP Maurice was struck with the idea for the app while backpacking (and bus-hopping) across South America in 2011. He says he thought to himself: "I wish I had a Kayak or Uber or an Airbnb for buses." A hefty $10.2 million in funding later, Busbud is up and running...and it's not finished yet. Next month, the company is launching its long-awaited Busbud app. Maurice's vision for mobile includes transaction capabilities, so theoretically, with a few swipes and taps, you'll be able to search for and find your tickets, pay for them electronically, and then, as you're boarding, show the driver your smartphone's screen, which will double as your ticket. "It'll be super-useful for budget travelers," Maurice says. Sounds pretty seamless, right? That's why we can't wait until the app launches in November so we can try the finished product ourselves.

Shelling out $350 or more for an Apple Watch is a big decision, but it might be easier to make when you factor in all the nifty new functions that are especially useful for frequent travelers. The newfangled ticker, available for pre-order April 10 and on sale April 24, may not be able to magically teleport you to Sydney in the blink of an eye, sci-fi style (don't we wish), but it could streamline several practical facets of your vacation. 1. Keyless hotel room entry, flight reminders, and more: On top of built-in apps like Passbook, which stores boarding passes and tickets and reminds you when to use them, several travel-related apps will be available for download on Apple Watch, making the watch ultra-customizable depending on what's important to you when you travel. For example: A Starwood Hotels app on the Apple Watch will let you check in the second you walk into a hotel's lobby (no front-desk pit stop required), send you your room number, and enable you to simply wave your wrist in front of your door to unlock your room. And that's not all Starwood wants the Apple Watch to do. It hopes to introduce features like stored preferences that enable your favorite cocktail to be delivered to you when you sit down at the bar, without uttering a word to the barkeep. Will the Starwood app also tuck us in at night? We're sure that's in the planning stages too. Another useful optional feature: The American Airlines app, which not only reminds you when you need to leave for the airport but allows you to check in for your flight from your watch and then gives you easy-to-view details in the air, like how much time is left in your flight, where you are in the sky, which baggage claim you should head toward when you land, and information about your connection. You can continue to fill your watch with apps you personally consider indispensable while you're traveling, whether that's Instagram, public-transit guide Citymapper, Evernote, TripAdvisor, Expedia, PayByPhone Parking, the Dark Sky weather app, language-learning app Babbel, OpenTable, or other fitness- and food-related apps. See a lengthy list of them here. 2. Auto time zone adjustment: Chicago to Barcelona? Manitoba to Venezuela? No worries. Apple Watch automatically switches to the time zone you're in, eliminating that awkward moment spent fiddling with your watch's crown after the plane lands—or after you missed your dinner reservation. Ditto with Daylight Savings Time. Even a Rolex doesn't do that. 3. Maps: Instead of winding through Parisian streets at night while staring down at your phone trying to figure out how to get back to your hotel (not that, ahem, we've ever done that), you can rely on the vibrations Apple Watch sends to your wrist to subtly tell you which way to turn to reach your destination. That's especially handy in an unfamiliar city when you want to avoid looking like a tourist, whether for safety or vanity reasons. Apple also just announced that the watch's battery life will last 18 hours (a.k.a. all day), so finding a place to recharge it won't be an issue. 4. Apple Pay: Double-click a button on the side of Apple Watch, hold it up next to a merchant's payment reader, and boom—you've just paid for a souvenir mouse mug at Walt Disney World in Florida without even touching your wallet. So far, Apple Pay is only available at major chains (think Chevron and McDonald's), but depending on whether this thing takes off, you could be paying for a pork schnitzel in Germany with your timepiece in the near future. That's good for travelers who are nervous about carrying cash or too many credit cards in foreign cities. Even if a thief lifts your Apple Watch, the device senses that no one is wearing it and goes into lockdown mode until a code is entered to activate Apple Pay again. 5. All-day fitness tracker: When you're eating your way through Rome or ordering your third piña colada of the day at an all-inclusive, your usual gym routine can go by the wayside. Enter the Apple Watch's Activity app, including an accelerometer to track your body's movements, plus a sensor that measures intensity via your heart rate. Combine those functions with the GPS and Wi-Fi in your phone that record the distance you've trekked, and Apple Watch spits all that data out in handy little charts, including how many calories you've burned. If you see that you've barely moved that day, save for a leisurely stroll to your beachside lounger, you'll know to schedule a salsa dancing class that evening or a hike the next day. There's a reminder to stand up for at least a minute every hour too—handy for long flights. Conversely, if you're actively pounding the pavement to see a new city's sights, it'll be fun to gauge how much your activity has increased from the norm. Which means more ricotta cannoli for you, guilt-free.

I'm a theater lover, and I'm going to sound a little giddy right now, okay? A new app, TodayTix, helps to take the mystery, expense, and lines out of the Broadway ticket-buying process and literally (I am not misusing that word here) hand-delivers discount tickets to you. I must confess that, even though I'm a total Broadway baby (my dad worked on Broadway when I was a kid, I have written and performed in my own plays and musicals, and my definition of the perfect date is a Broadway show), the Broadway ticket-buying process has always pushed my social-anxiety buttons to the max. Buying tickets by phone or on the Web often means paying full price plus fees, but waiting on line at the TKTS booth in Times Square for half-price tickets has never been my favorite option because of the potential for long lines (depending on time of day). As a consequence, I don't see nearly as many shows as I would like to. Enter TodayTix, a new app that tells you which shows have available seats, lets you buy them at a discounted price, and then—for real—arranges for you to meet a concierge at the theater door who will hand you your tickets. This is the kind of luxe-for-less treatment Budget Travelers can totally revel in: Save money, save time, and feel like a VIP while you're doing it. What shows are are you going to see? This time of year, all eyes are on Broadway's Tony Awards. But here's an insider's scoop: Regardless of who walks away with the big awards this year, if you are in the NYC area I suggest you download TodayTix (for iOS and Google Play) and nab tickets to Terrence McNally's new Tony-nominated play Mothers and Sons at the Golden Theatre. From the moment the curtain rises on a ferociously vulnerable Tyne Daly (who plays a Dallas matron visiting Manhattan 20 years after her son's death from AIDS) to the play's unexpectedly transcendant—and sweet—ending, I was either mesmerized, laughing, or wiping tears. Oh, and if you're wondering where locals grab a bite before or after a show, I'm going to ask you to keep a secret: The Cafe Edison (228 West 47th St., between Broadway and Eighth Ave.) serves the best deli favorites in the theater district for well under $20 per person, and you'll be surrounded not by hordes of out-of-towners but actors, playwrights, and stagehands who love the theater even more than I do. If you want to dine like a Budget Travel editor, order the brisket on rye, a cup of matzo ball soup, and a chocolate egg cream—and tell them Rob sent you.