Are you one that travels a lot for work? What about traveling as a hobby? Certainly, both are a yes answer for me. And I definitely like to prepare ahead to avoid the stress and hassle that often comes with travel. So my supercharged travel apps add a lot to our preparation.
Consider these favorite travel apps.
I love to read, learn, and try new things. Like new apps for my smartphone and iPad.
Often, I’ll see something that I want to try, save and connect with other new apps I am using.
Ideas that come from previously unconnected planes of thought, as Mootee states.
In 1865, Gregor Mendel published the paper that established him as the father of genetics. However, it went largely unnoticed until it was rediscovered decades later and became widely recognized as one of the great discoveries in the history of science.
Why do some ideas quickly spread far and wide while others go nowhere at all? It’s an excellent question, isn’t it?
There are many apps for travelers like me that can be a big help in this regard. And less stress and hassle? Yes, very good for that also.
Ponder for a moment … the iPad, Cloud computing, and Apps. A few years ago, they barely existed. Now they’re an integral part of our lives. That swift journey from nonexistent to indispensable seems to happen a lot these days.
But it gives us unlimited access to improve our learning and utility for things like travel through apps and idea connection.
This makes you think: What travel apps were you not using two years ago that today you can’t imagine living without today?
Here are my favorite travel apps:
Dark Sky
A weather app with startling accuracy, its interface tells you things like:
Light rain starting in 22 minutes.
It also shows you beautiful weather maps that let you play local-news weather experts. Nothing wrong with imagination and fun along the way, is there? It’s like a wizard.
Wunderlist
A free app that lets you create shareable lists of favorites—be they restaurants, sites in a city, or movies. Always cool to have a short note of your favorite places to recommend to friends.
But it’s better known for its shareable to-do lists. A great way to keep organized.
Localeur
Another travel app to collect and focus on local experiences at destinations, recommended by people living in that city. Each writer has a profile and a photo, explaining who they are and what kind of interests they have.
Founder Joah Spearman explains that although Localeur does pay their contributors, the app aims for recommendations that read like a text or an email to a friend.
PINTEREST Panorama.
Pinterest
Do you use Pinterest for posting your images? In addition to searching travel-related pins, now you can search locations, to see photos and articles that other users have posted on Pinterest.
It has been a year since these Place pins have launched, and now over 70,000 place pins are uploaded per day.
Wow. There are also city boards, where pins are mapped out so that you can plan an itinerary in advance.
If you are interested in sightseeing by theme, there are also themed boards.
Check
This free app keeps track of all your bills, and also monitors your bank and credit card accounts. Most importantly, it tells you when there’s a mismatch between the two — i.e. when you’re about to get charged an overdraft fee.
I hate to pay fines and late fees, what about you?
Word Lens.
Word Lens
A great free app for international travelers, Word Lens visually translates printed text into your language in real-time.
When you snap a photo of a sign or document, it shows the image to you in English. The translations are not always 100%, but they are certainly good enough to get by on. Hello, food menus.
An interesting free app to help you avoid getting stuck in traffic as infrequently as possible. Drivers share real-time traffic delays—accidents, traffic jams, and the like—so that you can avoid them.
Here is a short video about how to use WAZE.
This app has saved me countless hours when traveling in my car. It’s a community-based traffic and navigation app that delivers traffic and road information.
According to the company, over 30 million people have downloaded the app and input information to help fellow drivers.
Users receive alerts about police activity, accidents, road hazards and traffic jams in real-time. Waze will redirect you when there’s significant congestion on your original route. There’s no charge to use the app.
This app gives you real-time data on transit info in 50 cities in the US and Canada. Want to know when the next bus or train is coming?
And, if it’s not there, the status and reason for the delay? Talk about reducing stress and helping to prepare.
QuickVoice
Looking for an app when you are on the move and have an idea you don’t want to lose? This app is the 21st-century version of the Dictaphone and is very easy to use.
With one touch, you can record, stop and save. You can also send up to 5MB audio messages for free. If necessary, you can upgrade to QuickVoice Pro for a fee and send audio messages via email up to 20MB.
BestParking
One of our daughters and her family live in Riverdale, just north of Manhattan. My son in law is always using this app to find the cheapest parking in NYC. It can be used for daily and monthly parking in 70+ cities and at 110 airports in the U.S. and Canada.
Type in your destination and length of time. BestParking will then populate your screen with nearby garages and their rates based on your information. It even offers special discounts, which, if selected, will be sent to your phone.
The app takes away the hassle and stress of trying to decide where to park when traveling for business.
The bottom line
With companies today, contending with new dimensions of competition– shaping malleable situations, adapting to uncertain ones, and surviving harsh ones – all require new approaches.
Teamwork is one of the new collaborative cultural norms in creating high-performing and faster-moving teams, and within collaborative communities, to lead in the imagination age, in today’s fast-changing world.
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
