Gadling

Today's photo comes to us from Flickr user andreakw, who captured these brightly colored beach shacks during her visit to Melbourne, Australia. The bold paint schemes and quirky color choices immediately caught my eye. You can almost picture yourself sitting there, staring at these shacks, rows of beachgoers thronging about and laughing in the rolling surf behind you.

Have any photos from your travels you'd like to share? Why not add them to our Gadling group on Flickr? We might just pick one of your shots as our next Photo of the Day.

Even with cheap flights and hotel rates, Paris can be an expensive place. But, you have to go at least once ... preferably as often as possible. So, I was pretty psyched to see the new deal from the Hotel Jules, a pretty stylish place in the 9th Arrondissement. Through the end of the year, the hotel is offering two nights, daily breakfast (continental or in-room) and a two-day pass for two people that gets you access to the city's major museums.

At only €152 ($212) a night, this is an absolute bargain. For anything less in Paris, you run the risk of staying in a real dive (please learn from my painful experience, not to mention that to which I subjected my wife on our last trip to this city).

The cost of tradition, it seems, is $7 billion – the amount Utah pulls in from tourism every year. Officials figure they can add to that number by selling wine with dinner, among other liquors and situations.

You know what ... it just might work.

I know a lot of people by liquor in New York, and I vaguely remember seeing people in Boston, Washington and Chicago spending cash on booze, too. It happens from coast to coast, as of July 1, 2009 without exception.

The private club rules that are now assigned to history were not particularly severe, but it's not hard to see how they could become a pain in the ass. Annual membership fees started at $12, and you needed a separate membership for each bar. Tourists could buy temporary memberships, starting at $4 for three weeks, but they could only bring up to seven guests into a bar with them.

Hotels built the membership fees into their room rates, so they could drink at the hotel bars without fear of misstep. Bars that served only beer didn't require memberships.

Yeah, you need needed a chart to keep the various rules straight. Now, it's pretty easy. Belly up to the bar and order yourself a shot!

Here are the hottest gadget deals for today, Sunday July 5th 2009. Remember, these deals are often only valid for just one day, so act fast before they are gone.

Need directions? Check out this TomTom ONE 130 (refurbished) for just $47.68 after a $20 mail in rebate. Every time I think GPS units can't get any cheaper, up pops a deal that proves me wrong. Click here for this deal.

Woot is selling the 60 minute version of the popular Flip Mini digital camera for $74.99 (plus $5 shipping). Click here for this deal.

Now Apple has found it in their heart to allow real GPS applications on the iPhone, you'll probably want a better way to mount the phone in your car. This Griffin WindowShield iPhone mount is perfect for that. It is on sale at Newegg for just $14.98 with free shipping. Click here for this deal.

The Plantronics Voyager 855 has long been my favorite Bluetooth headset. This stereo headset features an extending boom and can be converted to a mono headset in seconds. It is currently on sale for just $31.49 with free shipping. Click here for this deal.

One monorail crashed into the back of another at Walt Disney World early this morning, killing one driver and shaking up a family of six. According to the park's statement, "Today we mourn the loss of our fellow cast member. Our hearts go out to his family and to those who have lost a friend and co-worker."

The monorail, according to a report by CNN, was shut down, as the park works with law enforcement to figure out just what happens ... and what comes next.

As this story develops, we'll keep you posted.

[Via @Mashable, Photo via @weathermanfsu]

The 2009 Tour de France got underway yesterday with an individual time trial through the streets of Monaco. The Prologue was a short and fast 15.5km (9.6 miles) sprint that started with a steady climb and ended with the riders screaming back down the hill towards the finish line. At the end of the day, time trial specialist Fabian Cancellara took the stage victory and the famous Yellow Jersey, while the real contenders for the race, such as Alberto Contatdor and American Levi Leipheimer, lurking just off the pace. Lance Armstrong, making his return to the Tour after a 3 year layoff, finished in 10th.

Today, the race heads out onto the road, leaving Monaco behind, with a 187km (116.1 miles) stage through southern France. The route will pass through some rolling hills, but will mostly favor the sprinters who will be competing for the Green Jersey, while the climbers will wait for the seventh stage, when the race moves away from Barcelona and into the Pyrenees, where they'll begin their competition for the Polka Dot Jersey worn by the King of the Mountains.

Over the next three weeks the top riders in the world will compete in cyclings premiere event. In total, there will be 21 stages, covering more than 3500km (2175 miles). The race culminates on Sunday, July 26 on the Champs Elysees when the leader rides into Paris with the Yellow Jersey.

There's still money in rental cars, according to the latest from the New York Times. In May, the average rental rate (airport) for a compact ride was $345.99 for a week – as long as you booked it seven days in advance. That's an increase of 73 percent from $199.65 in May 2008, according to Abrams Consulting Group, which watches this stuff. As of mid-June, the 2008-to-2009 change was narrower: $210.38 to $347.44 (up 65 percent).

The price increases, it seems, are our own fault. Demand is down 15 percent, which forces the rental car companies to cut their fleets back – ultimately engineering a shortage that pushes up prices. So, if we were renting more cars, they would be cheaper.

One of the side-effects of this dynamic is that cars are staying in the rental fleets longer. Remember when you'd never see a rental car with more than 30,000 miles on it? Well, don't count on that threshold any more. The average rental car's age is now up to 11 months – that has to be forever in dog years – as companies try to extract as much value from each ride as possible.

There are a few ways you can find a cheaper rental car, which you can learn after the jump.

Happy Fourth of July everyone! I know you were probably expecting a photo of fireworks, but this photo really spoke to me as a natural firework in the sky. I'm not a huge fan of fireworks anyway -- at least not in the physical sense. I am, however, a huge proponent of emotional fireworks, and photos like this set those off for me. The world is a beautiful, wondrous place. And we should appreciate the freedom (it's Independence Day) and luxury (we live in the United States of America) to travel the world and snap photos like this one.

Today's Photo of the Day comes to us from one of my favorite Gadling photographers, localsurfer. This one was taken on a journey down the Rufiji River in Tanzania on a quest for surf. There are hippoes in that water!

If you have some great travel shots you'd like to share, be sure to upload them to the Gadling pool on Flickr. We might just pick one as our Photo of the Day!

Once your barbeque is finished and you've cleaned up the long, you'll probably want to leave the house for your next meal. You've done your share of cooking and coped with the mess. When you're looking for a restaurant to make your life easier tomorrow, check out OpenTable's list of top shops for Best American Cuisine. The winners come from 2.5 million OpenTable user reviews of more than 9,000 restaurants. And, since these are quintessentially American restaurants, you'll extend your celebration of independence by an extra day.

Since all this is so close to July 1, you can also use it as a way to stretch Canada Day a bit. The food really isn't any different anyway, except for a few moose dishes, I suspect.

Caroline Potter, billed as OpenTable's dining expert, calls this "a great time to be an aficionado of American cuisine. From a melting pot of culinary influences, today's chefs have created a cuisine that is truly our nation's own."

So, ready a long list of restaurants that will blow your independence-oriented mind? Look for them after the jump.

Naples, Florida. Bethpage Black. Pebble Beach. St. Andrews. These are the sorts of places that come to mind when you think "top spot for golf." But, Los Cabos? Mexico? Prepare to have your illusions shattered: Fiesta Americana Grand Los Cabos Golf & Spa Resort – a destination whose name you just can't say quickly – picked up the #9 spot on Golf Digest's world hotspots for golf (if you can actually call a place known for golf a "hotspot").

The golf course and resort with the long name pushed into the top 10 in the magazine's "50 Best International Golf Hotels Outside of the United States" category. The win was helped by The Ocean Course at Cabo del Sol, designed by Jack Nicklaus (or at least under his name) and ranked #1 in Latin American. The other attraction, The Desert Course at Cabo Del Sol takes #5 in Mexico, also according to Golf Digest.

Alberto Gurrola, general manager of The Fiesta Americana Grand Los Cabos Golf & Spa, is understandably psyched about the Golf Digest honors, saying, "The Fiesta Americana Grand Los Cabos Golf & Spa Resort has long attracted guests for its spectacular, idyllic background, where the desert meets the sea as well as its soothing SOMMA WineSPA and, of course, its world-renowned golf offerings."

Now, I'm not going to say that the spa is a great place to drop the wife when you dash off to play 18 holes, lest I invoke the ire of a commenter yet again. Simply, if I were married to a golfer, I'd run off to the spa while she goes out to chase a little white ball.