To say at this point in time that new technologies have revolutionised our way of life is already obsolete. Nowadays, we live with the arrival of more and better apps and software that make our daily tasks easier.
If we look back 20 years, we can remember when travelling or getting to know a new city was a lot more complicated than it is today. You could hardly check the bus and train timetables if you weren’t in the station and forget about even finding the shortest route to the museum you wanted to visit.
However, today, if you want to be the boss of the city, all you need is a mobile phone.
We start with an app based on collaborative mapping, Waze. The users themselves provide info, and the app offers different routes based on the data drivers offer in real time.
You can navigate using the voice system that alerts you of possible alterations or detours, accidents and speed limits. The big advantage is that it’s a free community-driven GPS app and you don’t have to keep an eye out for updates. It works very well in urban areas and saves you a lot of time in big cities. The interface is simple and straightforward, yet it’s effective and extremely easy to use, and it’s free to download from the Apple app store and the Google play store.
The best offline option is Maps.me. This is great for city journeys and also areas with little coverage. You can download the maps on your phone and save them on the SD card, which makes it very practical for phones without much memory. It’s a free app and works on maps created using OpenStreetMap, a collaborative community of volunteer editors who update the routes with all types of information.
Tourist Eye is somewhere between an app and a tourist guide that’s based on a selection of content created by the users themselves. It’s easy to use and also offers the possibility to share experiences on social networks with texts, photos, GPS, and maps, and it comes with information about restaurants, hotels and places of interest to tourists…
It’s an extremely handy app as if you don’t feel like investigating yourself you can follow one of the routes already prepared by other travellers.
There are also other apps that focus on travel aspects apart from routes. One example is Packing Pro that helps you make lists when packing your luggage. Depending on the time of the year, the type of trip and the place, it will tell you if you need that woolly hat or not when you’re still not sure what to pack…
Last but not least is Around Me, a very useful app to quickly find information about your surroundings. If you’ve run out of petrol, you need to take out cash from an ATM, or you need a pharmacy then this app will tell you the nearest places.
