Triposo
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Triposo Travel Belt vibrates to help you locate attractions (video)
A decade ago, all but the most connected of travelers would leave phones and other devices at home, opting instead to plan visits to restaurants, museums and other tourist sites from a paperback book. Now, with mobile data and services like KeepGo enabling cheap roaming when you're abroad, there's more incentive to bring those gadgets along, powering exploration in real time with crowdsourced recommendations from a mobile app. One such application, however, will soon employ an unusual solution that'll let you keep your handset tucked away, without wandering astray. The Triposo Travel Belt communicates with a companion app through a wired connection -- developers opted for a standard 3.5mm cable that plugs into a headphone jack, rather than Bluetooth, keeping things simple and maximizing compatibility. After you select a destination, the app will push directions through the headphone jack to four vibration motors, which activate based on your orientation and the direction of your destination. The belt will vibrate in the front, back, or either side to guide you to a pre-selected address or POI. There's a working prototype out and about, but the creators need some cash to get the belt to production. You can help with a $30 $50 Indiegogo pledge, which should get you a Travel Belt in hand by February. There's a demo video, too, posted after the break. Update: Since going live with its Indiegogo page, the company has raised the price of the belt from $30 to $50.
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.
Triposo is a worthwhile travel guide to everywhere
If you travel a lot, Triposo (free, universal) is a great addition to your app arsenal. Triposo has guides for pretty much everywhere, even out-of-the-way places for US travelers like Afghanistan, Chad, Latvia and Zambia to name just a few. In addition to country guides, there are city guides for most of the bigger cities around the world. The app is basically a shell for region-specific data you download while planning your trip. Once it is downloaded, you don't need an online connection to use it. The guide gives you an overview of the destination, along with detailed maps of its largest cities. The app includes a currency converter, weather and some useful phrases. In big cities, you get restaurant guides and suggestions for nighttime entertainment. %Gallery-178756% I downloaded the Arizona info. It was 50 megabytes, and reasonably complete, with lots of suggestions for outdoor activities. There was usually a brief description of the location, and often some info culled from Wikipedia. The only city with great detail was Phoenix, but the app showed hundreds of places to go all around the state. As you venture outside the large cities, the maps lose detail. Triposo is a really useful app, and a nice partner to the Crash City Guides that I looked at a few days ago. The only negative I found for Triposo is that while the app will show your destination on a map, there are no directions to get there. A lot of apps will link to Google or Apple Maps, making navigation easy. That's a pretty significant weakness of Triposo, and one I hope to see fixed soon. Having said that, Triposo can get you information on just about anywhere in the world, and that makes it unique for something you can carry in your pocket. If you travel, you're sure to find it valuable, and I recommend it. Triposo is a universal app and is optimized for the iPhone 5. It requires iOS 5 or greater.
