Adventures in travelling - 4. Tripping on the iPhone

iPhone ... Not my favorite gadget ... in fact there's more than a few things I don't like about it, but when it comes to being a travel companion it's Numero Uno for the moment or at least until the Android sheds it's baby teeth and can take a real bite of the app market.

1. This one's on fire, even if you're Dancing in the dark - Bruce Springsteen
Sometimes you need a flashlight to unlock something, or look in your bag, or just read something quickly. Times like that are a-plenty when you travel .. so go get the free flashlight from John Haney Software.

Price: *Free*

2. Money, money, money must be funny in a rich man's world - Abba
Quick how much is 4800 Baht in US Dollars? Or how much should you get for 800Euros in Laotian Kip or Cambodian Riel or Thai Baht, and how many Canadian dollars is that? When you need to juggle all of this you need Currency by Jeffery Grossman.

Price: *Free*

3. Look around you, ... come to me, you're there when I need you - Little River Band
AroundMe is wonderful. It uses GPS to locate you, and then tells you what's all around you ... ATMs, Restaurants, Bars (this alone saved my life every night), Movie theatres, Hospitals, Gas stations, Hotels ... you name it, it's got it. Accurate, relevant, and easy to use, with Maps, distance from current location everything you need and nothing else.

Price: *Free*

4. Picture yourself in a boat on the river ... with tangerine trees - Beatles
The iPhone camera can take some superb pictures, and I have the proof on my facebook journals. Okay it can't zoom, it cannot do bokeh, and it's hard to take night shots, and at 2 megs you're not going to be able to posterize it, but the lens is sharp, and somehow it has a knack of capturing the right tones and nuances, but it does take some practice.

Price: *Free*

5. On a dark desert highway ..., Welcome to the Hotel California - Eagles
The problem with backpacking and making up your itinerary as you go along is that you need to be able to get a place to crash in the evenings.
If you want to check in any time you like ... you need Hostel Hero. I used it throughout my trip to find and book hotels (there's a small booking fee) and most times the reviews and the pictures were spot on.

Price: *Free*

6. In my pocket a piece of paper ..., as I wander through the streets - Cat Empire
Personal Assistant may simply be the best app ever just in terms of how well it helps you keep track of your personal stuff ... Credit Cards, Bank Accounts, Frequent Flyer miles, Investments, Bill due dates, Expiration dates, ebay bids, even (where supported) cell phone usage, your Starbucks card (I know WoW heh) ... strictly speaking you don't need this for travelling but when you're on the road the ability to monitor all of this from a distance allows you to take that two month backpackers route you always wanted without having to lose a lot of sleep in the process.

Price: *Free*

7. I still haven't found what I'm looking for - U2
uPackingList is great to get organized for the trip, with various checklists for activities, things etc ... what makes it insanely great is the amount of thought that's gone into the listed items ... takes the headache out of trying to remember all of the lists. And the whole thing is fully customizable ... you can setup your own lists, add/delete items etc

Price : Both *Free* and paid versions (not sure what's in the paid version)

8. Wherever you go, whatever you do ... - Richard Marx
The Lonely Planet city guides - don't leave without it, but hey now you can get them in your iPod for quite a few cities and that means that much less weight to lug around. The indispensable and still the best written of all the guides out there imo. The depth and coverage they provide can go a long way to making sure that you can trip the light fantastic without falling down the wrong stairs.

Price : .99 for the Lonely Planet App and $15 for each city guide

Note : There is a free app called Quintessentially City Guides that provides a more abbreviated version for over 40 cities. It's pretty good in it's own right.

9. If I could save time in a bottle - Jim Croce
Trip Journal allows you to capture pictures, take notes with GPS info and assign them to waypoints that you can later track on a map. A set of waypoints can be collated into a trip. It certainly makes it easy to share your trip experiences, but the idea of typing notes using the &^%@# virtual keyboard on the iPhone is enough to give me the heebie Jeebies so wasn't all that great for me, but hey it is indeed useful but for just note taking I'd much prefer using iJot ($2.99) instead and that's what I ended up using a lot.

Price : $1.99 (the free version is seriously crippled with 3 waypoints only)

10. If you could read my mind love, what a tale if words could tell - Glen Campbell
iTranslate does a fantastic job of translating phrases from one language to the other, but if you don't know how to read scripted languages such as Thai or Arabic it's not going to be very useful without also buying the voices (which is not available for all the languages as yet). So yes it may not work everywhere but where it works such as English to German, or French to Italian etc it does the job.

Price : *free* (Each voice costs $1.99 extra - 16 languages are covered). Also comes with a $1.99 plus version (not sure what extras come in there)

Note : There's also a MyLanguage Pro that can transliterate plus does 20 language voices, not sure what else it provides ... costs $4.99

11. Keep on talking - Mobb Deep
Global.AQ Lite lets you send text messages for free (it's based on about 1 credit for messages to most credits and they give you seven credits per day). Incoming texts send to your Global.AQ Lite is free, so this is a great tool to use on wi-fi networks when you're travelling.

As an aside using go-sim or the national geographic international SIM card or anything similar allows you to get incoming calls for free in about 70 different countries, if you want to keep the same number through your various trips and get a better rate than your normal roaming charges. However it is always going to be cheaper to get a local sim in the places you go to, and this is usually my preferred option. I use Global.AQ and emails to send people my numbers as it changes ... Recently I went through seven different countries in two months and I could have used an international SIM card for that to save me the hassle of getting different SIMs in each place. The costs are getting cheaper and cheaper each year. Its anywhere between 50 cents to 2$ for outgoing calls, incoming is free in 70 countries and ranges between 35 cents to 1$ for others. So it's a good emergency option. Once somebody comes up with a decent dual SIM phone you can have both, a local SIM for cheap/outgoing incoming and an international SIM for folks to get in touch with you.

Also VoIP products like Skype/Truphone/iCall etc can be used to make/get calls as well, so that's always another option as well. Not sure if I like being tethered to a wireless net just to do this though as they all work off the wi-fi zone.

12. Rock the Casbah - Clash
All said and done what's the point to all this travelling if you're not painting the town red right?

:)

For starters check out ClubMonk, Eventful and Locly to find out clubs / see what's happening around you, get Google Latitude to locate the friends you made on your various soirees using their cell numbers (they need to have Google Latitude on their phone for this to work), and then finally use AirMe to share the pics of the event with your mates