Technology and Apps

Spinlister is a bike-sharing network in more than 40 countries, including the US and Canada. 

Either using the website or a free app (download from iTunes), the user inputs the location where he wants to rent a bike. Spinlister directs him to a page with a photo and price plus details (such as suggested height of rider) for each bike listed. A click on the bike owner’s name brings up his contact information. Payment, either by credit card or PayPal, is managed through Spinlister.

Quito Tourism has launched a new app for Apple and Android called “Quito Ecuador Travel Guide.” 

The app, which works offline, has listings of tourism attractions in each area, including restaurants, hotels and bars. Nearby attractions have listings with directions, phone numbers and entry fees. Download the app from the App Store or Google Play.

In the letter “GPS Travails in Belgium” (Nov. ’13, pg. 17), a subscriber wrote, “At the tourist office (in Aalst), we explained that we would like to travel some of the ‘gray’ (secondary) roads shown on the maps. I was told that with the introduction of GPS and mobile phones with map apps, maps were not being printed anymore!”

In years past, beyond pointing at objects and pantomiming, travelers who did not speak the national language in another country but wanted to communicate would use a foreign-language phrasebook or dictionary to point out words or they would find someone to interpret for them. The electronics age has brought amazing new options.

I have not used a language-translating app overseas, but a very important question to ask about such apps for smartphones is ‘Does it need to be connected to the Internet to work?’

The best language-translating apps require Internet connectivity. Getting such connectivity for free (via WiFi) in the middle of a random street in a random nation is very, very unlikely. To use such apps, you need to have paid for 3G or 4G Internet access in that nation.

MILES ABERNATHY

Austin, TX 

The Cliffs of Moher Visitor Experience has launched a new free app called “Cliffs of Moher” for Apple and Android. The app provides an audio guide and accompanying photos for 12 marked sites on the cliffs. Download from the App Store or Google Play.

For our 10 days in Belgium, May 2-11, 2012, my husband, Ed, and I decided to buy our own GPS, a Garmin nuvi255 for $160, rather than opt for one (for an extra $210) with our Budget rental car. We did have to load it with European maps for an extra $100, but, this way, we had something we could take home and use in the US. We dubbed the GPS, which had a female voice, “Jill.”

The app Waterkeeper Swim Guide, available on iOS and Android devices, has data on many beaches in Canada, Mexico and the United States. The app detects the user’s location and shows which beaches are safe to swim in, accessing recent data from government agencies and local Waterkeeper Alliance chapters. The data is also available online at www.theswimguide.org.

For Android and iOS, the app City Maps 2Go ($1.99) allows users to download maps for cities and countries around the world for offline use. Users may also download a layer that includes the most popular Wikipedia articles about features on the map. 

Mike Harrison of Castle Rock, Washington, wrote, “With hundreds of thousands of apps out there today, it is very difficult to sort through them to determine their usefulness for travelers. It would be nice to hear from people about which apps they found helpful in planning trips and how beneficial they found apps to be that they used overseas.”