Fodor's Travel Apps for iPhone

Fodor's Travel Apps for iPhone
Fodor's is known for its on-the-ground research, and lively, thorough writing about all of its covered destinations, from corner restaurants, to major museums and other attractions.
Also, unlike a lot of travel and map apps, which simply dump a lot of information into a searchable form, Fodor's makes many editorial choices and recommendations. For example, "Fodor's Choice" identifies what to see, where to eat, where to stay, shopping, and other categories with editor-researched picks.
Since the app is on a GPS-equipped iPhone, it knows where you are (with your permission) and provides the type of location-centric services we've become accustomed to, including showing where you are, and what's nearby.

Pros
Download maps and store them in-app to avoid data-roaming charges overseas.
Well-researched destinations with well-written descriptions.
Guidance on what to see, and where to eat, stay, etc.

Cons
Available for only five cities so far.

Description
Compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad only.
Free in-App download required for offline maps
iPhone OS 3.1 or higher.

The maps are of very good quality and really help ease navigation when you have them open. Other tools, such as detailed subway and train maps, with color-coded and ID'ed stations and lines are valuable to the traveler.
Maps include digital "pushpins" for all of the listed locations, with additional info and links to websites. You may also use a map filter tool to select for what you want to see - "Greenwich Village / Music Stores" - for example, and the map will show only pins for your selection.
Overall, Fodor's Travel Apps for iPhone provide the solid and reliable experience and well-researched information you'd expect from a long-time industry staple.

National Geographic World Atlas HD

In its World Atlas HD app for the iPad, National Geographic states it "utilizes our highest-resolution, press-ready images, providing you the same, rich detail, accuracy, and artistic beauty found in our award-winning wall maps and bound atlases." The map set, which pops beautifully on the bright, high-resolution display of the iPad, includes a globe (that you can spin!) and country-level resolution for the entire planet.

When internet-connected, you may drill down (via Bing Maps) to street level. This maps app is a great educational tool for kids. Each nation has a pop-up flag and facts set. Be sure to get the HD version for the iPad.

My Topo Maps Pro by Trimble Outdoors

If you are an outdoors-person, and like to dream and plan trips with the help of topographic maps, My Topo Maps Pro by Trimble Outdoors for the iPad is a great solution. With this app, you may manage, download, and archive topo maps. The app includes 68,000 maps covering the U.S. and Canada, with 14,000 of them digitally enhanced and updated. With this app, you may view five different map types: topo of course, plus streets, hybrid satellite view, aerial photo, and terrain.

You may download to your iPad an store as many maps as your iPad's memory will allow, so you don't need an internet connection to use the maps in the field.
The app also includes useful planning and navigation tools, including a multi-function digital compass, a search feature covering 10 million points of interest, and a ruler to measure the distance between two points.
You may also register for a free account to save trips to the Trimble Trip Cloud for storage and for syncing between devices.dist

Tripit - Travel Organizer

Frequent travelers know what a juggling act flight, hotel, rental and other bookings can be to track and organize. The Tripit app for iPad consolidates your travel plans, and automatically organizes them for you. Tripit combines your trip details to create a single, set-format itinerary on your iPhone or iPad that gets synced across your i-devices, as well as the Tripit.com website.

 

To build your Tripit itinerary, simply forward confirmation e-mails from flight, hotel, rental car, rail, event, and other types of travel confirmations to a Tripit e-mail address, and it will build your schedule and even keep friends, family, or co-workers informed, if you wish. Tripit also includes a built-in turn-by-turn-directions navigation app to help you reach your destinations, right from your itinerary.
A Tripit Pro version will update you on flight status, consolidate your frequent flyer information, and monitor your travel plans for any unexpected changes or delays.

All iPhones from the 3G model onwards and 3G iPads have what is known as assisted GPS

All iPhones from the 3G model onwards and 3G iPads have what is known as assisted GPS or A-GPS and this works in several ways. Firstly it uses phone mast triangulation and Wi-Fi hotspots to obtain a quick and dirty fix on your location, normally to within a kilometre or less, depending on the area. This is then used to help speed up the acquisition of GPS satellite signals, to provide a more accurate position, this time to within a few tens of metres. The GPS function does work without a network connection but it can take a minute or more for it to lock on to the satellites and work out your position.

The network connection is also used to update map information and provide extra detail, though clearly you are not too worried about finding the nearest McDonalds or Post Office bobbing around on the North Sea. As a matter of interest iPhones and iPads send details of your location to Apple. This is used to maintain a crowd-sourced database of phone masts and Wi-Fi hotspots, which is supposed to help refine the initial location fix. Apple is keen to make it clear that this information is encrypted and anonymous, though a bug discovered in 2011, now fixed, revealed that an unencrypted file on iPhones stored a year’s worth of time-stamped location data. This data is still retained, but now only for 7 days.

Can The iPad Be A Viable Navigation System

Can the iPad be a viable navigation device? To find out I travelled thousands of miles using the iPad and one of the latest Brodit holders in a variety of rental cars. The experience was interesting, and I found that given the correct location in the car the iPad was a superb replacement for the traditional PND style navigation system!
For the last couple of months I have been in the United States. One of the things I was testing out was navigation using the iPad. This was partly in response to a challenge from a household SatNav company telling me that the iPad was no good for navigation. From this you can surmise that they do not produce an iPad App.
The two prerequisites for using the iPad as a SatNav are: navigation software; and a mounting solution.

The mounting solution I was looking at needed to be portable as I was going to be using it in different rental cars. The other thing I needed to look for was some form of powering of the iPad. I was going to be driving for some long distances and couldn't rely on the iPad's battery to last when stressed out with Navigation, Audio, and the normal email etc all running.
Continue reading to see how...

How To Use an External GPS Device with Your iPad or iPhone

If you bought a Wi-Fi only iPad and now you wish you could use GPS with it, this is the guide for you. Follow along to hook your iPad up to an external GPS unit and/or GPS-enabled smartphone phone. There are a few reasons why you may want to undertake this quick project. Among those reasons: you have a GPS device with a long battery life and more accurate results than your iPhone or you have a Wi-Fi only iPad and want to add in mapping capabilities using GPS instead of coarse Wi-Fi location data.

For this tutorial you’ll need the following:

• An jailbroken iOS device (we’ll be using an iPad)
• BTstack GPS (Available in the Cydia store from the Big Boss repository, $5)
• A GPS receiver capable of sending coordinates via Bluetooth (we’ll be using an Android phone)

Our instructions are specifically geared towards pairing an Android phone to an iPad but this technique can also be used to pair a TomTom GPS unit to an iPhone or an iPad, or any other number of combinations of external GPS devices and iOS devices.
Before we proceed, we’re going to stress again that you need a jailbroken device. This hack specifically takes advantage of a the ability of a jailbroken device to turn off the default Apple Bluetooth stack and replace it with the BTstack.

Installing BTstack GPS

Launch Cydia on your iOS device and use the store search function to search for BTstack GPS. By default you should have the BigBoss repository active, if not you’ll need to activate it by navigating to the main Cydia screen and clicking “More Package Sources”.

Once you’ve located BTstack GPS install it (the application is $5 and you can pay using PayPal or Amazon Payments). If you’re not sure if you want to shell out $5 for the application you can download it as a demo. In demo mode you’ll be able to see if your GPS device will connect properly but BTstack GPS will not share the GPS information outside of the primary application.

After the application is installed hit up the Settings menu on your iOS device. You’ll want to do two things. First, look under the General Settings menu to make sure the native iOS Bluetooth is turned off. Second, look under the Extensions menu and click BTstack. BTstack, no iOS, should be checked.

Installing an Android Bluetooth Forwarder

If you’re planning on using this technique with a stand-alone GPS device, you can skip right to pairing your devices—you may want to check your manual before jumping down to see the BTstack GPS pairing procedure. We’re using an Android phone as a GPS device and as such we need to get our Android phone to start broadcasting the GPS signal via Bluetooth.
Currently there are about a half dozen applications on the market that meet the needs of someone who wants to link their Android GPS chip to an external source via Bluetooth. It is apparent from the comments on the apps that many of them work or don’t work on a model-by-model basis. Consider yourself forewarned and be willing to try two or three before you find a perfect fit. We had luck with Bluetooth GPS, alternatively you may want to try out ShareGPS, Network/Bluetooth GPS, or Bluetooth GPS Output. Start with Bluetooth GPS and if it doesn’t work move on to trying the next ones. We wish it was more straight forward than that but this whole procedure is a bit unorthodox and most phone companies didn’t design their handsets with the idea that you’d be using the GPS off the phone.

Pairing Your Devices

At this point your iOS device is using the alternative Bluetooth stack. Now it’s time to check out the actual GPS application paired with the BTstack. There should be a new icon on your springboard, simply labeled GPS. Click on that and you’ll see a very Spartan interface that simply lists the devices. On first launch is should say “Searching…” and if you have your Bluetooth device in discovery mode it will appear shortly. In the screenshot above you see our Android device after we scanned for available Bluetooth devices and the pairing prompt we sent the the iPad. In the screenshot below you see the result of that pairing prompt:

Once you connect the two, BTstack should kick you over to the mapping screen. If it doesn’t just tap the name of the paired device in the device list. You should see something like the following:



After a few seconds the GPS signal will fully resolve and you’ll see additional information. If the connection does not resolve then you need to try out a different GPS application on your Android device or double check that your stand-alone GPS is capable of transmitting the coordinates.
Once the resolution stage is finished can then fire up any application on your iOS device that is location-aware and it will use the new GPS coordinates provided by your external GPS unit. Success!

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