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Have you ever made a scene on the Paris metro, flailing your arms about and gesticulating furiously, trying to get directions from blank-faced locals? Or, did you nearly miss the train atop Mount Jungfrau in Switzerland because you didn’t have the right timings?
Travelling in foreign parts can be tricky business. But in today’s world, the information you need to be in the right place at the right time may be in your pocket.
Yes, we’re talking about your mobile phone — but only when it’s loaded with a powerful battery of travel applications that can revolutionise the way you get around the globe. For example, every frequent traveller knows that picking up a few local words can literally take you places. But instead of flipping through the pages of an English-to-local-language dictionary why not use an app to help you out?
Be it the BlackBerry, iPhone or even your latest Windows Phone by Nokia, these apps work on all types of phones. There are hundreds of them which know what travellers want and you can download them by clicking a few buttons. Check out these free and fairly reasonably priced cross-platform apps specifically designed for travellers.
Get organised
WorldMate: This one’s like your travel Man Friday and possibly one of the most comprehensive apps available for frequent travellers. Right from the time you book your flights to your itinerary, you can piece together your trip digitally. Once you register, it starts to pull out your travel details from your email ID. It’ll pick up ticket confirmations and reservation details and you can also forward your plans to trips@worldmate.com to be stored in the app.
In addition to popping up with reminders about your flight or train timings, it also gives you a five-day weather forecast for the places you’re visiting. If you’ve Internet access, it will synchronise the updated layover time between flights. The free version has had over eight million cross-platform downloads. The app also lets you share your trip details on Facebook. It can even send an email summary to anyone on your phone contact list.
Price: Free/ paid (Rs 527)
Size: 7.5MB
Internet: No
Platform: BlackBerry, iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, Symbian
TripIt: This lets you forward your itinerary to plans@tripit.com once you register, and compiles and displays the itinerary once you start the app on your phone. It handles all details like listing your flights, reservations, tours and trips. Once your emails are sent, you don’t require Internet to access your itinerary, since it will download into the phone app. The paid version, TripItPro, gives you mobile alerts about your schedule as well as auto-sharing enabling your family members to track where you are and what time your flight takes off/lands. It costs Rs 2,587 per year.
Price: Free/ paid
Size: 8.6MB
Internet: No
Platform: iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7
Packing woes?
Pack Free: No, it’s not a packing genie that will pack your bags for you. But it’ll help create a virtual suitcase. With this app, you can make a list on your phone of what you need to take with you on your travels. Then you can customise lists on exactly what you need to put into each strolley. You can also view packing list items by groups or as that long list of everything.
Price: Free
size: 1.9MB
Internet: No
Platform: iOS
Packing List: Android users can use this app to organise luggage. It has a pre-loaded master list with basic packing essentials like clothes, toothbrushes, tote bags, iPads and more. You can simply check the categories/ items for the trip, click on ‘Generate List’ and you’ll have a packing list ready in no time. Each item also has note, quantity and weight fields so you can figure out how much space you need. You can share your lists with your travel partners as well and printing out a copy can even help you in case of lost luggage.
Price: Free
Size: 219KB
Internet: No
Platform: Android
At the airport
NextFlight: As the name suggests, the app helps you find the next available flight if you happen to miss yours. It’s handy when you’re stuck in an airport minus your laptop and urgently want to check on the next flight to catch. You can get the list of all the available flights from all airlines for a selected day, departure and arrival times, as well as the terminal and gate information for each flight.
Price: Rs 157
Size: 4.3MB
Internet: Yes
Platform: Android, iOS
Gate Guru: Unless you’re carrying a laptop full of movies, you’ll probably be bored to death between flights. Gate Guru is a great app for those two hours that you have to spend at airports — especially if you want to pinpoint areas of your interest. With Gate Guru, you can find out about every activity possible in the terminal (beyond the check-in stage) even at the remotest airport in the world. All airport amenities are sorted in easy-to-find categories (food, services, shops etc). The app can help you to locate the highest-rated restaurant, shop or service by fellow travellers.
Price: Free
size: 17.1MB
Internet: Yes
Platform: Android, iOS
Wired to wireless
Wi-Fi Finder: One of the most useful apps when travelling is a free Wi-Fi locator. Your phone can pick up Wi-Fi signals from all around, but this app does more than just show you which free signal you can tap into. It consists of a list of 6,83,351 free and paid Wi-Fi locations in 143 countries. The connection hotspots range from high-traffic public Wi-Fi locations like coffee houses, airports and hotels to other public hotspots. You can also filter the Wi-Fi networks by service providers. You need Internet for this app, since it calculates the Wi-Fi spots based on your GPS location.
Price: Free
Size: 4.3MB
Internet: Yes
Platform: Android, iOS
WeFi: This app too helps you find free Internet around the hotel or that guest house you’re staying in. It automatically detects and adds free and useable Wi-Fi connections to your list.
Price: Free
Size: 11.6MB
Internet: Yes
Platform: Android, iOS, Windows, Symbian
Picture this
Instagram: Voted by Apple Inc. as the ‘App of the Year’ of 2011 for the iPhone, Instagram is the fastest way to share an image with anyone in the world. Launched in October 2010, it now has over four million users. What makes it different from just any other photo editing app is that it stylises your pictures with several editing tools. For example, from sepia to black-and-white, you can choose from 10 different colour filters.
Why do you need it while travelling? Because the app links directly to your Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Flickr and Posterous accounts, so you don’t have to wait to come home to upload your pictures. You can share them in real time. Just sign up once you download the app and link your social networking accounts to it. Whether you’re in Machu Picchu or Burkina Faso, the images go live as soon as you’re hooked to the Internet. In case you don’t want to share the pictures immediately, you can also save the edited images in your phone.
But if you’re strict about your privacy, then this app is not for you. All photos are public on www.instagr.am and visible to anyone using Instagram.
Price: Free
Size: 11.3MB
Internet: Yes
Platform: iOS (Android app in the making)
Postagram: If you’re a fan of the conventional postcard, this app is for you to spread holiday joy with instantly. All you have to do is print and mail photos from Instagram or pictures from your phone library and upload them to Facebook. The images will look like postcards with a small message attached on the side. You can even email these postcards to your friends and family. The company also delivers physical copies of postcards to anyone you want, anywhere in the world within seven working days — for Rs 51 (99 cents). The app however, comes free.
Price: Free
Size: 4.2MB
Internet: Yes
Platform: Android, iOS
Toilet tricks
Sit or Squat: If you’ve just guzzled down your favourite draught beer and had a plate of spicy nachos, you most definitely need to find the nearest loo. And this app does just that. Sit or Squat is a toilet locator with 1,15,524 paid and free toilets across the world listed in their directory. The Internet on your phone uses your GPS location to tell you where to take a whiz. You can also contribute by clicking a picture of a toilet you find and uploading it to the list with details.
Price: Free
Size: 3MB
Internet: Yes
Platform: BlackBerry, iOS
Find Toilets: This is another app that tells you where a toilet is, the time of day it will open, what the facilities are and its exact location. But it only lists loos in Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria, Luxembourg, Germany, Norway, Finland, Sweden, UK, Croatia, France, Ireland and Estonia.
Price: Free
Size: 2MB
Internet: Yes
Platform: Android
Money matters
XE Currency: This is a handy app to find out the latest currency rates, live. Even though most phones have an in-built app for this sort of conversion, this app can store the last known currency rates and you can convert them without any Internet access.
Price: Free
Size: 2.2MB
Internet: No
Platform: iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7
Smart talk
Google Translate: If you’ve been fumbling with pronouncing phrases you’ve read in the Lonely Planet guide book, you can safely try out the Google Translate app. It will not only translate in up to 60 languages, but also has voice recognition for you to learn how to pronounce a word or a sentence correctly.
Price: Free
Size: 2.1MB
Internet: Yes
Platform: Android, iOS
Google Goggles: This is perhaps one of the smartest apps for travellers. You can click photographs on your phone and search the Web for a translation. It can assist you to read text, landmarks, names of books, contact info, or figure out what artwork you’re standing near, find logos and even tell you whether the wine that you’re contemplating buying is good or not. You can translate from signs in English, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Russian.
Price: Free
Size: 1.12MB
Internet: Yes
Platform: Android, iOS
Hunger pangs
Yelp: If you’re wandering the streets of America or admiring the architecture of Venice and suddenly feel pangs of hunger, this app will bail you out. Intended as a great way to connect local businesses together, Yelp was launched in 2004. The cross-platform app that it has created, can help travellers find an authentic place to eat, say, a burrito or bruschetta across US, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium. You can even find a dentist in the locality, a boutique or if you even need to find a local mechanic around, the app will ever so kindly oblige.
Price: Free
Size: 2 MB
Internet: Yes
Platform: iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7
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