Category: General Articles

A good App is a beautiful thing. It does its job day in and day out simply, intuitively, and efficiently. The best Apps have an art to them, a certain design elegance. That’s the cream of the crop. Most of the ones I find are rated capital “G” for Garbage and uninstalled within minutes. I am the uninstall King. There are a few though that I wouldn’t leave home without. The best Google Apps were covered in a previous blog. Here are the best of the rest:

Dark Sky-Hyperlocal Weather–

The Dark Sky Company

You can’t make travel plans without some idea of the weather. I must have tried a ton of Weather Apps over the years. They were not worth bothering with. That is until I ran across Dark Sky. I don’t know where these guys got their crystal ball but their weather predictions are the best available. Also their maps feature covers the entire planet and is stunning.

Moovit: Bus Time and Train Time Live Info

Google Maps can do most of the same things, so why use Moovit? Moovit is for public transportation only. The interface is clean and easy to use. Moovit will show Trams and Train routes when Google sometimes doesn’t. Download Moovit as a backup insurance policy if nothing else.

Open Signal—

better signal and faster data

Open Signal will show you where the nearest cell towers and Wifi hotspots are. This will tell you which way to move for a better signal or where to go to get Wifi. If you are cutting the cords from your cell carrier, like me, you can see the beauty in not wandering down the street, hoping for a signal. I recently used Open Signal in Bryggen, Norway to find a hotel Wifi while I was sitting in a public park. Cool.

NumberBarn

Be Number Smart

Did you know you can port your existing phone number? Do you even know what porting your number means? Here’s the deal. Let’s say your phone is out of contract. You have had the number a long time and don’t want to pay the ridiculous call fees while you are on an extended European vacation but you don’t want to lose the number permanently. You can port (translation: move) your number over to NumberBarn so you don’t lose it. You can then go to Europe or Wichita for that matter and use a free Wifi calling system like Google Hangouts for your calls and texts. Voila! Your $100 a month phone bill now drops to as little as $2 a month and later on if you want to go back to a regular carrier, you simply port the number back out to your new carrier. Numberbarn will even notify you when the old number receives a text.

Turbo VPN

If you travel outside the US sooner or later you will find yourself blocked from some of the services you are used to. You need a Virtual Private Network. A VPN makes your computer look like it is in the US when in fact you are in Europe, Asia or wherever. Maybe you can watch some programs on Youtube that are blocked in the region where you are now. Maybe you can see Netflix. Maybe not. The problem is that restrictions on VPNs are tightening due to their use by scammers. There are a lot of VPNs out there. Turbo has some ads and works about the same as most. It’s free. If it works for what you need, fine. If not try one of the paid VPNs.

So that’s all for Apps for now. You can travel comfortably for a long time on the ones I have listed. But if you do run across a new one that knocks your socks off, let me know. I do love a good App.