Hitting the road soon? Don’t leave home without covering all your bases with these must-have travel apps on your mobile device. From entertainment options to logistics and maps, these applications will make your time away from home easier and more interesting with just a few taps of a touchscreen.
Pandora
Image via Flickr by Ivan McClellan
Make sure you’re never at the mercy of local radio stations and clunky piles of CDs again. Pandora is a fully customizable Internet radio app that only plays the music you like. Create stations based on songs, artists and genres you enjoy, then use the simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down interface to improve your listening experience.
TeleNav
The TeleNav maps and directions app is a go-to source for all the travel info you’ll ever need. It provides voice directions, detailed route maps, progress reports and even traffic alerts for trips long and short.
Movies by Flixster
Just because you’re away from home, it doesn’t mean you won’t want to see those summer blockbusters. Flixster uses a simple area code input system to bring up local movie times, theater locations, reviews and vital stats about the films you want to see. It even makes purchasing tickets from your smartphone a snap.
WorldMate Live
Managing a travel itinerary can be a big hassle. WorldMate Live helps you organize your travel plans, including airline info, hotel and car reservations, meeting times and mapping. It’s also handy for overseas travel by accessing international clocks and providing currency exchange calculators.
Shazam
If you hear a song in your travels that you absolutely must remember, Shazam is a miracle tool. Just tap the app to record a bit of the song and wait for Shazam to search its massive database to find the artist, title and album of the song. The app even allows you to purchase the song right then and there.
MLB.com At Bat
This is the top app for baseball fanatics everywhere. At Bat lets you access live broadcasts from multiple markets, plus it connects you with up-to-date scores and stats so you’ll never miss a game again.
Kindle
Traveling with even one book can be clunky, so avid readers should look into the Kindle app that lets you keep an entire library on-hand that weighs no more than your mobile device. Kindle lets you browse, buy and store as many books as you want.
Ambiance
This nifty little app lets you set the tone of your experiences, literally. Ambiance has a catalogue of sounds that can transform noisy airplanes and boring car rides into everything from a seaside vista to a bustling café.
Contacts to Excel
BYOD is a new corporate trend, so you may need to bring your mobile device on work-related trips as well as your desktop. Contacts to Excel lets you access your master contacts list from anywhere to keep your company connected. Contacts to Excel is a simple app that lets you import and export contact info in an Excel spreadsheet so you’ll never misplace a lead again.
FancyTran
International travel often comes with a language barrier. FancyTran uses some of the best translation software on the market to break that barrier in over 60 languages, both in text and speech.
With the right apps, you’ll be fully equipped to tackle any travel challenge. Wherever you go and whatever you do when you get there, remember that there’s an app to make every experience smoother and more secure.
Article by Emily Green
