Mobile Apps that I found invaluable in 2018
As I wrap up 2018, it’s been an amazing year. The past two weeks have been the best as I’ve been able to stay home and really spend some quality time with my family. (Both immediate and extended!)
In 2018, I logged over 280,000 actual miles on airplanes. Doing the math, that’s about 1,000 miles per working day this year. Which is probably the longest commute I’ve ever had.
One of the constant questions I get is how not only but my family deals with my travel. Here are a few tips and apps we used this year to make things way easier. Some of them are there for the trip and some are there for communication back home. ??
TripIt (https://www.tripit.com/) – I know there are other tools that do this. And even Outlook has some of this built in. But I still find this one of the coolest apps for being able to keep all my travel plans together and share them with my family and co-workers. I’ve even taking the ICS Feed from TripIt and push to a Dakboard (dakboard.com) with Screenly on a Raspberry Pi (Screenly.io) so my family can see where I am on a monitor at home.
Visit A City (https://www.visitacity.com/) – This app is awesome because very often I don’t have a ton of time for personal sightseeing. So, it gives me the highlights of a city and the order to see things in. Great app that helps me maximize my time to see some great stuff. It also helps me figure out how far some things are from others, so I don’t try and crisscross a city.
Rome2Rio (https://www.rome2rio.com/) – Too often Bing/Google/Apple maps only display driving or local transit options. Rome2Rio is useful in it shows trains, planes and automobiles. And it links directly to the train purchase options.
T-Mobile One Plus Plan (https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-37075) – Best Plan ever for a frequent traveler. It includes GoGo Inflight internet for a whole flight as well as international data roaming at 320k data speed. Voice calls are only about a quarter a minute. It makes travel easier as I don’t have to swap out SIM cards when traveling. I then use it in conjunction with Skype, Teams and WhatsApp for keeping in touch with the family back home as well as co-workers. The data isn’t fast enough to binge watch the latest shows, but it is fast enough to allow me to work and navigate where I am going.
International SOS (https://www.internationalsos.com/) – I will be honest, I don’t watch much news here in the USA. And it’s hard to find out what’s happening in cities around the globe. This app does some great stuff if I have a problem, but 99% of the time I use it to get alerts for the cities I am visiting. It will alert me if there are security or travel incidents that would be hard to know beforehand.
UberEats – While I am not a massive fan of the Uber Company, it often saves me from Hotel food. I love being able to order some decent food and have it delivered without costing me 30 bucks for a cheeseburger.
If I get some time on my next flight, I will add in some tricks using Outlook, my phone and Hardware I travel with.
What are your must have apps while traveling?
Marketing Nerd @ Trajektory ??
5 年If you're ever in Chicago, Austin, Boston, Virginia, New York etc. Vamonde is a great sightseeing app. Additionally, I also like Nearify to know what events are going on in the area.?
I found Moovit really helpful on a recent South American trip, great for mapping out how to get from point A to point B, including timetables and links to transport sites.
Vice President, Product Marketing
5 年Thats a lot of miles. Thanks for sharing. Most interesting city visited?
Corporate Executive Chef | 2022 RCA Pioneer Award Winner
5 年Awesome list Ben, thank you for sharing!!
Accelerating transformation with emerging technologies.
5 年Happy New Year Ben! Just a few miles then. I just looked and My Trip It stats which said I was away for 120 days of 2018. It's also been great to be home for a bit of a break. Thanks for the apps list, a couple there that I might find helpful. I also use Seat Guru when booking, Expensify cause you can just forward email or take photos of receipts, Google Translate to at least try a few phrases or interpret signs and menus. I used Trip Advisor for looking at what there is to do around but keen to try the Visit a City App. I also use AllTrails.com to look for walks around the areas I visit to see if I can squeeze in a bit of local nature. When planning personal travel I use a service from Travefy.com with the family for a collaborative ideas and activity capture. Although t-moble is better than the other main carriers I got sick of slow roaming speeds and have opted to use Google Fi. They often roam, and tether, at full LTE speeds which is handy for doing conference calls and quick file transfers while on the road or in hotels with crap wifi. Do you use or know of any apps to tell you if any of your contacts are in the same city? See you on the road somewhere in 2019.