Brain food for your smart phone
December 7th 2009 21:05
Signature Tune
Terry Gardner, Special to Tribune Newspapers
Torn between thousands of travel applications to educate my iPhone, I began doubting my ability to help my smart phone be all it can be. This list of smart phone travel apps hopefully will spare you such self-doubt. Charges vary by phone provider.
iPhone
--Priceline's Hotel Negotiator uses your iPhone's GPS. Just shake your iPhone and the Negotiator generates a list of recent successful hotel bids nearby, so you can start bidding on a hotel stay.
-- Amazon's Kindle for iPhone lets users read digital books (also available for PC laptops).
iPhone, BlackBerry and Android
--Kayak searches airfare, hotel and car-rental rates. An Android version is coming soon.
--TripIt organizes trip details into one master online itinerary, including maps, directions and weather. Users forward airline, hotel and rental-car itinerary e-mails to plans@tripit.com, and TripIt builds an itinerary, offers itinerary sharing, calendar sync, travel stats and more. TripIt apps for BlackBerry and Android will be released by year's end.
--Sit or Squat helps iPhone, BlackBerry and Android users find a nearby toilet by using the phone's GPS.
Many phones
-- Google maps are available for mapping and directions by car, foot or public transportation using the GPS of the iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Windows phones.
--Layar for iPhone, BlackBerry and T-Mobile G1 is an augmented-reality app that shows nearby places by layering information on top of your camera's view (see Really Long Link
--Skype for iPhone, Nokia N800/N810, Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 and Skype Lite for Android provides free Skype-to-Skype calls and less expensive instant messages and international calls using your phone's Wi-Fi over Skype's network.
--Yelp provides local information on U.S. restaurants, shops, events and more for iPhone, BlackBerry and Palm Pre. International listings are available for Canada, Ireland and Britain.
--Pandora Internet radio for the iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre, Android and Windows Mobile phones lets you create your own playlists
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