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Going to Sochi? Here's the free app you need to explore the area
Sochi is hosting the 2014 Winter Olympic Games next month, and for most visitors, it will be their first time in the Russian coastal city. Sochi is a free app that gives you places to see superimposed on a map of the city, locations of historical sites, loads of photos and even a guide to the area's cuisine. Since the app doesn't require an internet connection except for maps, it's a hefty 265 MB download. I won't be going to the Olympics, but I found the tour of the area to be fascinating. The area is on the Black Sea near the scenic Caucasus Mountains. It's Russia's largest resort city, and the nearby mountains are great for skiing and the other winter events. The cuisine guide was most interesting. The Shashlik (marinated meats on a skewer) and the stuffed peppers looked great. If you want additional detail on some of the historical sites, the Sochi app requires a US$3.99 additional purchase. My only gripe with the app revolves around the home screen. It's designed for landscape viewing, and in portrait mode, some of the icons are off screen. You can scroll to them, but there is no indication that they are actually there. Other related apps are Sochi 2014 Guide (free), and an app that focuses on US Olympic Team members called Team USA (free). The Sochi app is not an app that collects competition results, but it is an interesting look at the city and its culture. The app store has dozens of apps that will help you follow the results; just search on "Sochi" or "Winter Olympic Games." Sochi requires iOS 6 or later, and it's a universal app for all iOS platforms. It's optimized for the iPhone 5, but remember about those hidden home screen icons if you use it in portrait orientation.
Localscope for iOS gets a solid update just in time for your holiday travel
I've been using Localscope (US$2.99) since its debut. Localscope is a discovery app that gets data from 20 different sources to show what is around you with useful background information. The overhaul for iOS 7 looks very nice, with new colors and transparency. Controls disappear in context to what you are doing, so everything is very clean. I tried the app this morning while sitting at the St. Louis airport waiting for a flight. Immediately, a map popped up showing my location, and there were guides to the closest restaurants and other facilities the airport offered. There were even Wikipedia links to more general information about the airport. If you arrive at a place you are not familiar with, Localscope gives you a quick briefing with local knowledge in one place. There's information from Google, Facebook and Yelp, as well as photos from Instagram and Flickr that can illustrate your immediate surroundings. There are also 2D and 3D maps. To me, some of that info is noise, and the app lets you turn off the feeds you don't want to see. I particularly didn't need to see Instagram and Flickr photos. They take up too much screen real estate. Although the app has added a lot more information, it is actually easier to use than previous versions. That's largely due to the GUI changes. A few things are lost in this release. YouTube links are gone until some API issues get sorted out, and Qype has been acquired by Yelp, so results are merged. The timing of the release is great, with holiday travel on tap for many of us. You have a great local guide in your pocket, and it should be in every traveler's collection of apps.
City Maps 2Go offers iOS users offline maps and a travel guide
Between Apple Maps and Google Maps you are pretty much covered on a trip or navigating around town. Both apps have an extensive point-of-interest (POI) databases. For those who want more, apps from Navigon, Garmin, Scout and CoPilot Live are viable alternatives. City Maps 2Go (US$2.99) is not designed for navigation, but for getting maps and travel info before you leave, so you won't require a data connection when you arrive at your destination. It has worldwide maps and tourist information, even for out-of-the-way places. When you first run the app, you're asked for your specific destination. Then you download the info you need. Maps are from OpenStreetMaps, and you get access to Wikipedia and Wikipedia Travel guides. There is a hefty amount of info, including 6,700 offline maps, millions of points of interest and half a million Wikipedia abstracts of sites and attractions. Hotel ratings are available from Booking.com. I didn't find the app all that practical for those with a cellular connection or those who travel to populated areas. The app doesn't provide any direction finding, just your current location. At the very least it should link to Apple Maps for directions. The POI database is weak. I'm in Arizona, and asked for the nearest restaurants. It found a few, but skipped over many long-established possibilities. When I listed locations by distance, places that were 50-70 miles away made it near the top of the list. It did better in large cities, but the database is still inferior to Google's. Although the app touts that no in-app purchases are required, there is a $0.99 Wiki Plus option that isn't explained clearly. A note in the app says Wiki Plus can get you images, elsewhere in the app you can click on Wiki Plus and information appears. It's confusing. For people constantly stuck in areas with no cellular coverage, this could be a worthwhile app, but most of us are not usually in that situation. I found the points of interest listings incomplete, and I thought apps like Around Me and Triposo were far better, and Triposo allows you to download info when you have a cellular connection and use it when you don't. On the other hand, City Maps 2Go has more countries and locations than I have seen in other travel apps. City Maps 2Go is a universal app that is optimized for the iPhone 5 and requires iOS 5 or later. If it provided a bit more downloading feedback and could link to a navigation program, it would be a much better buy. %Gallery-195215%
Triposo gets major update just in time for summer travel
I liked Triposo (free) when I reviewed it earlier this year. It's a detailed worldwide travel and vacation planning guide. Triposo has just been updated with many new and welcome features, making it an even more useful travel companion. The original version had a definite bias for big-city destinations, but now the app has added more than 22,000 towns with practical information such as locations of pharmacies and public transportation. There are an additional 400,000 points of interest, with museums, historical markers and natural landmarks. More than 50,000 new attractions have been added as well, and they are the more out-of-the-way places that many travelers will love, such as waterfalls, castles and more obscure, but worthwhile places to see away from the big cities. You can also download free travel packs for your area, which contains detailed maps that don't require a data connection. That's a real benefit, especially if you visit some of those small towns. I gave the app a spin on my iPhone, and saw many more points of interest around me than I saw in the older version. The app has a new layout which is very intuitive, and it was clear there are a lot of new and more arcane points of interest when I tested from my location in Arizona. %Gallery-191404% The only negative is the app can find places to visit but has no links to Apple or Google Maps to get directions. It seems a significant oversight in a travel guide. If you are planning a big summer trip, or even want to explore closer to home, Triposo is worth a spot in your travel apps folder. I'd like to see the app continue to add enhancements and add better mapping.
mTrip's travel guide apps are free this week
mTrip has just told us that the company will make 17 of its most popular iPhone travel guide apps free this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Five travel guides will be available for free today (normally US$5.99), and six others over the next two days. Here's what cities you can grab on what day: Tuesday, December 18 (today) Paris Amsterdam Vienna Tokyo Budapest Wednesday, December 19 London Berlin Madrid San Francisco Dublin Shanghai Thursday, December 20 New York Barcelona Rome Istanbul Singapore Prague All of mTrip's free (and paid) travel guide apps can be downloaded in the App Store here. Happy travels!
Inkling releases Frommer's travel guides for iPhone and iPad
Frommer's and Inkling have teamed up to bring the popular series of travel guides to the iPad and the iPhone, says a report in Paid Content. The interactive titles will feature retina-optimized photographs, interactive tours, maps, notebooks, and real-time weather. Users will also be able to share notes and sync itineraries between devices. The series will launch with seven titles covering Costa Rica, France, Alaska, California, Japan, Spain and Great Britain. Additional locations will roll out by the end of the year. The interactive apps are available from US$9.99 to $14.99, deepening on the geographic area covered by the guide.
mTrip offers free iPhone travel guides
For any of our readers planning to take a trip you'll want to check out the list below to see if your destination city is there. For this week only, mTrip is offering its popular iPhone travel guides for free. Different guides are available for free each day of the week. All of mTrip's travel guide apps are usually $5.99, so be sure to grab them for free while you can! The giveaway is in celebration of mTrip's new social sharing features, which allows users to share photos, reviews, and more with their friends through mtrip.me. The schedule: Tuesday, September 6: Paris Amsterdam Vienna Tokyo Budapest Wednesday, September 7: London Berlin San Francisco Madrid Dublin Shanghai Thursday, September 8: New York Rome Istanbul Singapore Prague Friday, September 9: Barcelona Venice Hong Kong Munich Stockholm
Pocket Sherpa for iPhone has promise
PocketSherpa [itunes link] is an interesting idea for a travel app, but it should be used with caution.When you download the free app, you'll be asked to sign up with an email address and a password. When that is done you can click on any place in the world, and have a good chance of getting a contact there you can ask questions of and get some really good local advice. I tried some out of the way places (at least for me) and found lots of people offering good information. In Bristol, U.K. for example, there were 24 people offering advice and 20 people offering to show me around.There were contacts in Newfoundland, and in the Sudan. The developers claim 25,000 travel guides, and 30,000 experts at more than 7,000 destinations.There is also a list of newspapers, so you can read the local news before you go, but the list is not extensive and has a North American bias.The app supports a public Q&A list for many of the locations, so you can get a feel for where you are going without initiating the messaging function.I'm also worried about the security of the searchers and the local guides. While you can keep your communications to just email, many of the experts are offering goods and services like driving you around. There is no way for those people to be vetted, and by the same token an unscrupulous user could do harm to one of the experts. PocketSherpa is a really good idea, but I think there are some red flags about the creators being a broker for physical people-to-people encounters.It's free, so take a look at it and see if it fulfills your needs, but also see if you agree that you would need to be really cautious with direct physical contact.
HearPlanet for iPhone now lets you see
HearPlanet Premium [App Store link] is a new and enhanced version of the free iPhone app HearPlanet. The premium version is U.S. $5.99. HearPlanet Premium gets your location from GPS, or you can enter any location manually. It then provides quite a bit of text information, generally sourced from Wikipedia. HearPlanet can tell you what is around you, like tourist locations, museums, geological features, and read the descriptions out loud, or you can read them yourself without the audio. The app has worldwide coverage. We took a look at the original HearPlanet and found much to like. Apparently, we weren't alone, as 300,000 copies of the travel app have been downloaded. One of the most requested features from users was maps, and now HearPlanet contains detailed maps of many locations. The maps are sourced from the Open Streets Map project, and are quite attractive to look at. Other similar apps can link you to Google Maps, but they throw you out of the program. HearPlanet Premium has everything in one place.When you find locations, there are often thumbnail images that go with an entry, but you can't enlarge them. One of my suggestions for the free app was the inclusion of phone numbers, pretty important in a travel guide, but since the source of much of the information is Wikipedia, there still aren't many phone numbers that I could locate. The developer says there are phone numbers, and as data sources are added the amount will increase.The maps allow you to zoom and pan, giving you a good idea of what is around you. You can reference the maps while the program is speaking, and the ability to look around while learning about a location is very nice. HearPlanet premium is a nice upgrade from the free version, which is still available at the app store. If you want the addition of maps, HearPlanet Premium is the way to go.HearPlanet and HearPlanet Premium both run on the iPhone or iPod touch. Of course the touch does not have GPS, but it can usually derive your location via Skyhook's WiFi capability.Check out a few screen shots in the gallery below:%Gallery-49056%
Gameplay Wishlist: WotLK travel guide
Our recent in-depth look at the flood of information concerning World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion gave us some cause for speculation. Specifically, the news about the multiple-rider mounts has given us an intriguing idea for a new way to make money in-game.There are two levels to this idea, and they both revolve around players who don't have access to high-speed mounts of their own. One briefly wonders why this change in transportation was implemented, but only briefly. Once the possibilities become clear, there will undoubtedly arise new uses for the piggyback functionality that are still somewhat nebulous at this stage. With no further ado, our ideas after the jump.
Travel to Kyoto with your guide, a cartoon monkey
DS Motte Tabi ni Deyo Kyoto (Let's Journey to Kyoto with the DS) is the latest travel-guide game on the DS. This one comes from Coo Design and, like the name suggests, contains maps and tourist information about Kyoto. It also allows you to enter a starting point and calculate travel time to destinations within Kyoto. Of course, minigames are also included.The game contains a search function that allows you to find attractions not only by location, but by season as well. Most importantly, the game is presided over by a monkey mascot who looks exactly like Data from Mega Man Legends. You can't go to Kyoto without ... a monkey who looks like another monkey.
Non-Game Boy: Serious games before they were cool
Since the release of Brain Age in Japan, Nintendo has turned their attention toward casual, nontraditional fare for adult audiences. Much of it, like Brain Age, is casual game material with a slight educational slant, but other successful DS releases, like Cooking Navi and Eigo Zuke, are not games at all, but rather educational aids and tools designed to use the DS's unique interface. They're all doing massive business, which makes it difficult to laugh at them no matter how silly they are. But Nintendo was not the first company to attempt to sell application software on a gaming system, however. That distinction probably falls on BASIC Programming for the Atari 2600. Nintendo wasn't even the first company to sell application software on a Nintendo handheld. In fact, Game Boy non-games appeared in 1991. They didn't change the face of gaming. But they make for an interesting historical footnote now, and isn't that better than selling millions of copies? It is for us!
