Mauricio: Plan on traveling internationally with your iPhone? Don’t. At least not until you watch the rest of this episode.
Welcome to AppJudgment, Revision3's mobile phone application review show. I’m Mauricio Balvanera. Now, when it comes to having Internet access while traveling abroad with your iPhone, you essentially have three options as I learned while recently traveling through Spain and France. One, pay for an AT&T international data plan but make sure you know what you're getting into. It's going to cost you $25.00 for 20 megs of data usage for the month.
Want to do some math? Revision3.com’s front page is just under three megs. Ignoring page caching if you loaded our site seven times, you’re all out of data for that month and if you loaded just one more time at $0.005 per kilo byte, you just earned yourself a $15.00 refresh buddy. If you decide to go with option number one, good on your money bags. Be sure to download AT&T’s myWireless app to watch your money burn you sick bastard.
Option number two is to go rogue and jailbreak and unlock your iPhone in order to use an international SIM card. There’s tons of resources online to guide you through the process but unless you know what you're doing, it's not an easy project for the typical iPhone user. And if you're saying, “Mauricio dude, it's totally an easy project.” Yeah, that's because you know what you're doing.
Option number three is by far the craziest. Don't use the Internet. Disconnect. No data. Now, this is going to be difficult as the first crucial travel comes to mind is Google Maps with GPS. Of all apps, that's what you're going to need the most, right? Wrong. You need a map with GPS preferably a map with all the map tiles you need pre-downloaded. Open maps for the iPhone is going to do a bang up job with these tasks using open source maps. Before you head out into the Internet list of biz, find the area you'll be traveling to and download all the tiles you need. Galileo works too but in order to cache the tiles, you’ll need to visit every detail of the map you’d like, a little too tedious. If you're going to major city, say Paris, developers—have maps preloaded. Now remember, GPS uses no data but you'll have to disable airplane mode. Don't worry. You'll be fine picking up another carrier, just make sure Data Roaming is off. Also tell your friends not to text message you since it’s ¢50 a ping.
I've got a few more apps to your travel giddy bag but first, let's check in with Eileen for the hot app of the day.
Eileen: Hey everyone, Eileen here. Today's hot app is more of a concept. Today, we're talking about augmented reality. Phones like the Android and the iPhone 3GS have the capability to layer digital information on top of what you view through your open camera. So, like you see here with the Yelp app. You can find the closest restaurants, clothing stores, banks, etcetera with the help of your phone's camera and compass. Now, Urbanspoon just updated their app with this scope feature. I’ve never heard of My Friend the Chocolate Cake. I might have to check that out. Cool!
Now, there's also Wikitude. A little clunky when you have all the options checked off for a huge distance to cover. So, what’s to expect? Now, the latest to break into the augmented reality space is Layar, a self proclaimed augmented reality browser. Now, I like the gripping of content here, hotels, 3D apartments, Bands in Town and it opens even here. Of course, it didn't always work like Mr. Movie. Come on, no movie theaters within 11 miles of me? Major fail.
Now, there are some bugs and the searches aren't always exact but cool concept, right? Let us know what you think of the hype, oh and all those apps I mentioned, they are all free. Now, back to Mau and his top travel apps.
Mauricio: Thanks Eileen. Okay, now that we know where we are with offline maps, my next question is what to do? You can carry around travel books from Frommer’s or Lonely Planet. You already know where I am headed with this, don’t you? They have iPhone apps, lightweight, searchable, updatable, mappable, sortable, don't look like a touristable. All your other needs should be taken care by AppBox Pro. They have a currency exchange, unit converters, tip calculators. There's even a great translator on there but unfortunately, that particular app requires a network. Speaking of which, if you are in dire need of WiFi, spots will direct you to the nearest paper used hotspots.
All right, let's break down the pros and cons with a few of these apps. OpenMaps is going to give you a compass mode, detailed tile downloads and point-to-point directions. Features like Address Lookup won’t do you any good if you're not online and removing pins isn’t exactly intuitive but that's pretty nitpicky. Download OpenMaps. Frommer’s and Lonely Planet offer guidebook apps but Frommer’s is going to give you the best range of cities and superior content. Lonely Planet's phrasebooks are great but if you’re looking for a good eats, good sleeps, good sights and nightlife, Frommer’s is the way to go. It tends to—you into touristy parts of towns but honestly, if you're looking for off the beat and past culture, go talk to the locals. Download Frommer’s Guide Books.
AppBox Pro is essentially the Swiss army knife of app that's going to help you well after your traveled are done with. It's a bummer that the translator app doesn't work offline but the currency app is going to be a fantastic reminder of how bad the dollar is doing lately. Download AppBox Pro.
If you have any recommendations for travel apps, let’s talk. Go to revision3.com/forums and join the conversation. I'll have a couple more travel apps for you to check out there. You can also go to revision3.com/appjudgment and check out our growing library of application reviews or reach out to me directly at twitter.com/maubrowncow. You know actually, there is one more function on your iPhone that’s going to enhance your traveling experience, a function so good is literally going to open up your eyes of the world.
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