Loading up your portable device for Vegas

A few days before I travel, I like to gather up information about my trip and load it up into my iPod Touch (substitute iPhone or netbook as needed) so that I have it handy.  Airport/hotel layouts, itineraries, schedules, etc., can be very useful to have quick electronic access to without requiring Internet access wherever you’re at.  I use “Air Sharing Pro”  to load the jpg’s, pdf’s, and other files onto my iPod for convenient viewing, however there are many other apps that do the same thing.

Here’s what I’m loading up, and you might too (links where appropriate):

• Your flight itinerary.  Print it to PDF.  Go ahead and get it now and review it, but save it marked with today’s date and get it again right before you leave, because this stuff changes often.
• Airport maps, especially for places where you’ll have a bit of a layover.
  • GTR – I think I know where everything is
  • ATL – Nice maps in PDF format
  • LAS – Ugly interactive maps – Bad for this kind of thing, might want to take some screenshots and save them
• Caesars Palace, which is designed like a labyrinth to keep you inside and gambling
  • Map of the casino area
  • Best map of the conference area that I could find
• The Riviera
  • Interactive map that you’ll want to screenshot
  • HUGE convention brochure PDF with a map – Chop out what you need
• Las Vegas Monorail map – Print-option is on the site, print to PDF. (edit: Here is another option, might be a little more phone-friendly, thanks to @eugk on twitter)
• Frequent flyer and hotel reward program numbers
• Some documentation of your hotel reservation
• Your Black Hat receipt and registration location/times!  Also have a printed copy of this as you will need it and identification at BH registration.
• Schedule of talks you want to attend.  There’s a great online app for the Black Hat schedule where you can put together your own and share/print it.

Test it all out once you get it on your device to make sure the formatting is good enough, and that your PDF’s aren’t too “heavy” for a portable device.  You can always just take screenshots of what you really need out of them, as jpg’s and png’s are very easy to view.