Top travel apps: don't leave home without 'em
Make your vacation easier
Taps into chefs, restauranters, bartenders, hispters at Find.Eat.Drink. American cities are covered off, along with London and Spain. Canada gets a little love: Montreal, Whistler, Vancouver and St. Benoit, Que., (solely for Au Pied de Cochon’s Cabane à Sucre). Visit findeatdrink.com or download the free iPhone app.
Finnair lets travellers use Facebook to see who they’ll be flying with. After check in, a seat map displays public profiles to others on the same flight – but only if they opt in to use the program; it’s completely voluntary. Reaction on Finnair’s Facebook has been mixed.
Mosaic by Mixbook is a free app (heymosaic.com) that puts snapshots into a hardcover photo book – and it’s all done straight from your iPad or iPhone. For $20 (U.S.), plus shipping and taxes, a 17x17 cm photo book arrives by mail. There’s a 20 photo limit per album.
Moxtra.com is a free app that brings order to the trip-planning process. Upload packing checklists, itineraries, visa requirements and so on. documents into on-screen binders that can be accessed from your iPhone, iPad or computer desktop. Invite fellow travellers and they can comment in writing or by video conference.
Live City App (livecityapp.com) is tapped into the latest events. Type in the city and you’ll get a real-time listing of what’s going on, mapped out by location. Search results cover everything from Justin Bieber concerts to networking events for Obama supporters, so filter your search.STEVE MARCUS/Reuters
Packing Pro is one of those apps you think you don’t need – until you waste a day in a pharmacy because somebody forget to bring his pills. The app features extensive, customizable lists of what to pack (it even covers pets), plus to-do lists for before you leave.
Turn run-of-the-mill travel reviews into glossy pictorials at Triptease.com. Read and comment on reviews - the writing is decent and many are posted by globetrotters with discerning tastes. Write a review, add a photo, and within seconds your work is displayed like a page in a travel magazine.