I recently got my iPhone as an upgrade to my old Blackberry. In this article I’ll discuss two of my favorite apps, and why they’re so useful to me. One is a must-have for frequent travelers, and the other is my top navigation app.
The Best App For Frequent Travelers
TripIt was one of the first apps I installed, and for me it’s the killer smart phone app. I covered it in more depth in a recent review, but here are the basics you need to know.
To get started, create your account on TripIt, and register your e-mail address. The next time you book a trip, forward any e-mail with booking information to [email protected] and the app does the rest. TripIt builds up your itinerary for all your trips, including flight bookings, hotel information, and more. It will store your confirmation numbers, give you easy access to details such as hotel addresses and phone numbers, and even provide a link to a map of the area you’re visiting. You can connect with friends who are frequent travelers and TripIt will automatically alert you whenever someone in your network is visiting the same town as you.
TripIt also gives me additional helpful tips. For instance, I can see that one of my upcoming flights is on a small plane. It has limited overhead storage, and TripIt recommends avoiding the C seats as they are especially cramped.
The Best Free Navigation App
There are a number of paid navigation apps, but unless you have some extreme requirements you may well be able to get by with one of the free apps. In particular, Waze combines some nice features with some very cool community based input.
Navigation apps have come a long way, and Waze has all the features people expect. You can view in 2D and 3D, as well as choose options such as auto-zooming based on your speed or on the distance from the next turn.
But what sets Waze apart is the community input. Users are known as “Wazers”, and the idea is that as Wazers come across heavy traffic or other incidents they are able to report conditions in real time. Other Wazers get to see these reports and know exactly what’s going on around them. Wazers can also update maps, so new roads can be filled in very quickly.
As a sense of community, it’s pretty cool to see an icon on your screen indicating another Wazer is nearby. (You choose just how much information you want to share with other Wazers.) And Waze is designed to quickly learn the quickest routes for your regular travel.
There are a ton of apps to pick from, free and paid, but these two should be among the first you install.