Five Advantageous Apps For Domestic Travel

You're planning a family vacation, spring break with friends, or a soul-searching road trip across the US. You're going somewhere you've never gone before, somewhere you haven't been to in ages, or somewhere you want to explore thoroughly. You can live vicariously through recommendations from friends or simply perform a google search, but how can you take your travel experience to the next level? The answer is technology through mobile applications. The five I've chosen cover all the travel essential categories: booking, coupons, photos, documentation, and entertainment. Leverage your smartphone or iPad and download these five free Advantageous Apps for Domestic Travel available on all devices.


Kayak- Kayak is one of the best sites for booking services. It lets you look for cheap flights, hotels, and car-rentals and pre-pay for them if you so desire. It lets you map out your trip agendas, tracks to see if your flight is on time, lets you know when the price you're thinking about paying changes, syncs to Gate Guru (an app that I will cover in my next blog), lets you see airfare trends, and even has a currency converter within it. Need I say more?


Yelp- Yelp is personally one of my favorite apps, and I'm pleased it makes the list for best travel apps. Self defined, "Yelp is an online urban city guide that helps people find cool places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play, based on the informed opinions of a vibrant and active community of locals in the know. Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what's great — and not so great — in your world." You can search anything from enchiladas to Urban Outfitters and it will show you how close you are to them and how long it will take to get there. It also provides you with great deals to make your trip worth every dollar.

Pocket Ranger- Pocket Ranger is a State Park Guide at the tip of your fingers. If you're the outdoorsy type, are looking for beautiful park scenery to eat your lunch, need a new running path, or are even just wanting to take the kids out of the hotel to let them run around- this is the app for you. Simply download whichever the Pocket Ranger for whichever state you will be in. My favorite function of it is "Parks Near Me". This lets you incorporate your GPS settings and instantly see how far away you are to a park. For example, I'm in Cedar Falls and it comes up with the results displayed above. 

Photaf Panorama (Android)- This awesome app allows you to take panoramic photos of every sunset, scenic exclusion, and even your beautiful college campus in the early AM. It can upload directly to Facebook, and lets you move the image around on your phone to see each and every angle.  

Photosynth (Apple)- Photosyth is the Apple equivalent and takes Photaf a step further by adding in a social element. You can see other people's panoramic images and search popular ones. Download these apps for your own optimal travel photo taking experience!

Trip Journal- The Trip Journal app was rated as a #1 Travel App by Google. It lets you do tracking, recording, documenting and sharing. It is a very simple way to pull together all the aspects of your vacation since it is integrated with Google Earth. My favorite aspect is saving my locations, pictures, and notes in the same place so I can share them  more easily and keep separate trips organized as shown below.

What other apps do you use for domestic travel? Have you had any good experiences with any of the apps above? For all of you international travelers- stay tuned for the next blog!

Electronics ONboard

Most of us have endured the sensible nagging of flight attendants and officials upon boarding planes. We're used to the drill; turn off your electronic devices before you watch the safety video and keep them off until it's announced that you've reached a safe height. There are those of us who are dying to turn up Michael Bublé to keep our blood pressure down and flying fears at bay, those of us who absolutely can't stop flipping the pages of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn on our Kindles, and some of us who just want to beat that next level of Candy Crush. As rumor and news has it- the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) is looking at revising their policy of not allowing the use of electronics below 10,000 feet. As the way things stand now, your favorite devices must be powered down before you buckle-up. The reasoning has been for our own good- that our devices may cause interference with the airplane transmissions.  Countless passengers have experienced the reality of not following these rules and have gotten a harsh tongue-lashing for not following suit. Good news for you Alec Baldwin, the times are changing. Flyers and customers are now more attached to their electronic devices than ever before.  Until now, the severity of the chance of  personal devices interfering with a plane's technology has been reason enough to instantly turn off all electronics. For some like me, if these policy changes go through, my flying satisfaction will skyrocket- I will no longer have to furiously chat-up the stranger to my left to keep the mind distracted of my fear of flying.

It has been a debate in recent years whether this is a valid policy- some experts in the field believe it is rational, others think it needs overturning as "evidence is largely anecdotal". With reason, emailing and text messaging using WiFi while taking off or landing is not expected to change. The update would allow us to use our iPads, Kindle's, and apps already downloaded on our smartphones during the entire flight on airplane mode. We live in the age of technology- it is time that airlines match this.

This is why an advisory board is recommending the update in the ban of electronics below 10,000 feet. The New York Times reports that this advisory board has submitted their recommendations for this new policy to the FFA with hopes that new changes can be made as soon as next year. Technology and travel are finally starting to come to a meeting of the minds- just how it should be!

Do you think this policy should be over-turned? If so, how it would affect your travels?

Top Four Influencers of Travel and Technology on Twitter

Today is #traveltuesday. For those of you taking full advantage of this marvelous trending hashtag, you're in luck! Or, for those who will be or may be be beginning to dive into the research of planning a trip, this stll applies to you. When you are out exploring a new, exotic destination it can be cumbersome to sort through which travel recommendations to take to heart. It is overwhelming enough to search the hashtag #traveltuesday and see some results and see within seconds the top of the page displaying that it needs to refresh to show the 50+ new results. I have spent time combing through Twitter looking for who the leaders are of Travel and Technology to help you better figure out which Twitter accounts to be sure you start following when you're on the move. To rate these I looked at the content tweeted, whether or not the account was verified, the Klout score (an actual measure of influence on social media), and number of followers. Here are my findings:

1. Bringing in first place is @TravlandLeisure or Travel + Leisure. They have a Klout score of 89, and the highest percentage of Twitter influence as 43.2% of their Klout. They have 542,049 followers that they've engaged with their 11,819 tweets. In the past few months they've tweeted enticing travel and technology articles about recent news with the FAA easing restrictions on electronic devices, answering questions about whether airline prices fluctuates based on the amount of searching, new technology such as the idea of a solar train with capabilities of going up to 700 mph, as well as discuss top apps for scoring last-minute hotel deals.


2. A close second is @lonelyplanet or Lonely Planet. Their Klout score was a 95, with 38.3% of that being from twitter. @lonelyplanet has 1,264,592 follwers with 25,123 total tweets. I really liked their technology viewpoint in their article they tweeted about most wanted travel gadgets. I noticed that readers frequently re-tweet and actively respond. Actively captivating their audience made them a very close contender for first.


3. The next most influential twitter account is easily @TripAdvisor or TripAdvisor. They had a Klout score of 85, with 41.7% of that being from Twitter. They have 990,435 followers with only 9,241 tweets. Their mantra is "Helping travelers plan and have the perfect trip." This creates interaction in where they give out not very well known traveler tips, have interactive photo contests for travelling with pets, as well as do a very good job of linking to their website, app, and Facebook page.


4. Last, but certainly not least of the most influential Twitter accounts is @CNTraveler or Condé Nast Traveler. Their Klout was a 90 and of that 40.7% was from its Twitter interactions. They have 388,688 followers for their 8,461 tweets. Their recent tweets have been consistent with keeping the traveler up to date on the government shut down in addition to its impact to national park services. Their technology perspective on travel was appealing as they tweeted how the iPhone's iOS7 would make you better traveler. It also had very unique tweets such as "Would you stay in an ice hotel?" Definitely not something most of us consider on the regular.