I am currently on a trip through parts of south east asia and the US with Steve Gravell and Tobias Köppen. Naturally I couldn't leave my Eee PC or iPhone at home, so during the trip I have gathered a few tips for the geeky traveler. Nothing revolutionary, but I found these apps and websites to be quite helpful. In my usual manner I also complain a bit and suggest improvements. If you have any additional recommendations please add a comment.Maps
Unfortunately the holy trinity of Google maps, GPS and an unlimited data plan is one short when abroad. Without a data plan you are plunged back into the dark ages again and roaming is not an option. Luckily there is an iPhone app called oMaps that allows you to mark certain areas on the map for offline use. Perfect for getting the city map while you are in a hotel room near wifi, mark a few places you want to visit and off you go.
oMaps uses OpenStreetMap as the data source, the license used enables the offline mode. OpenStreetMap builds its map from user contributions so some areas have excellent coverage whilst others are lacking. You can help out by contributing straight from your iPhone, although I had limited success with that so far.
Music
Music is essential on a trip, perfect for all those long bus, plane and boat rides. I love the Last.fm iPhone app but unfortunately we are once again back to the problem of not having a data plan and no offline mode. I decided to give the Spotify app a go. It allows you to select playlists that will be available in offline mode. I can easily search for and add new albums as I go on the trip and have them synced while I am near wifi. The price is quite hefty at €9.99 a month but worth it when on the move.
As many others I would kill for being able to run the app in the background. When me and Steve drove to Napa valley I was using the phone to navigate, which meant we couldn't listen to my music at the same time. It was also the most ass-clinching car ride in a long long time, but that's another story. While I am at it, how about adding some sort of playlist rss subscription feature to the app? For example I read the music blog Let's pretend we're bunny rabbits. They regularly post playlists with a spotify link and I'd like to see that automatically pop up in the Spotify app.
Steve and I were having a few beers in a horrible bar in Kuala Lumpur when the DJ announced that the next song was part of a competition. Figure out what song it is and you win two pitchers of beer. Steve had the great idea try out Shazam. Shazam is a nifty service and iPhone app that can figure out the artist and title of a track from about 10 seconds of audio. After a couple of tries Steve got a result. We won the two pitchers and subsequently had the worst hangover of the trip the next day.
Pictures
Unlike Tobias who brought three cameras on the trip I travel light. I decided my iPhone camera is good enough for the few pics I bother taking. I use Pano to take panorama pictures. It seems AutoStitch is also good or even better, but I haven't tried it. Then I use the official Flickr app to upload the pics as soon as I get near wifi. That way friends and family can see what you are up to as you go along.
Communications
Besides e-mail I post various updates to Twitter using Tweetie. Of course the Skype app is also useful for keeping in touch with the old world. The only problem is that access to wifi and the overlap of waking hours in the different timezones rarely happen at the same time.
What to do?
Steve had the great idea of creating a custom Google map that we can all add places to visit to. We started looking at various sources for ideas on what to add to the map. I found wikitravel to be a great source of general location information. We picked the first couple of accommodations from tripadvisor reviews, it worked surprisingly well. We also managed to get friends and friends of friends to add their own tips to the map. Thanks everyone!
The only problem is that the maps app on the iPhone doesn't seem to be able to read custom maps. Google Earth was supposed to do it but we can't get it to work either.
I started using Foursquare when it launched in London just before I left on this trip. You simply "check in" using the app when you get to a restaurant, bar or another venue of some type. Basically scrobbling for places instead of music. Unfortunately there is no way to get recommendations from the app yet. It now roughly knows what kind of places me and my friends like in London. From that data I want it to tell me where I should go when I get to a new city. I can't even figure out how to get it to give me a list of places my friends have been to the most number of times.
Aardvark is a service that can help you find the answer to questions that normal search engines struggle with. Instead of looking up the results in an index it forwards the question to real people via various IM services. Aardvark keeps track of what kind of topics their users know enough about to answer and routes questions accordingly. It has worked quite well so far, it is especially worthwhile when your travel question is sent to a local that hopefully knows a lot more about an area then fellow travelers.
Games
Rock band and Civilization for the iPhone are quite fun and suitably time consuming. Unfortunately they also eat tons of battery, so make sure you don't draing the phone completely. Rock band has a multiplayer mode that works over bluetooth, perfect for playing on planes to discover that they don't crash when you do so.
Wifi
I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of hostels and restaurants who provide free wifi. Often they are password protected though, so it takes a while to grab someone that knows the password and understands why you are waving an iPhone around. All phrasebooks should contain the important phrase "Excuse me, what is the wifi password?" from now on.
On some networks just trying the classic passwords such as "1234567890" often work. At other times I have considered trying out wpacracker, but that is probably both illegal and not very economical, but looks like fun. It basically lets you use a couple of hundred machines to run a dictionary attack against a network password for a small fee.
DATA!
As you may have noticed throughout this post, I feel castrated when without internet access. It is amazing how quickly one gets used to having it everywhere. I will try almost anything to get my fix, except paying the roaming charges. Having the cost tick away makes me stressed out and constantly thinking about it.
Since the stay in the US would be roughly two months in total I thought it would be worth getting an AT&T subscription with unlimited data. It cost about $70 per month, I earned that money back the first day compared to paying the UK roaming charges. Thanks to Karl for helping me out, thanks to the AT&T staff for eventually figuring out how get it set up for a dirty foreigner like me and finally thanks to the guys who released the software that I unlocked the iPhone with.
I am longing for the day when one can travel around the world without the fear of getting a million dollar phone bill. Luckily the EU seems to be working towards lower roaming costs, but only within the EU of course. It's a great first step.
I have been looking for a pay as you go sim card on some of the places we have been to, but there doesn't seem to be any that I have seen that provide unlimited data plans for a fixed cost per week or month. I welcome any suggestions for how to get around this issue when abroad.
