Apps on Holiday

The weather’s changing, holiday season is coming on strong, and if you’re not exactly the tanning type, you’re going to want to sprinkle your time on a package holiday with some Facebook updates and Angry Birds. Here are some top tips for putting your technology to work while you’re on a break.

•Tripit: If your trip involves more than a flight and couch surfing, you’ll probably have a whole bunch of flight details, hotel confirmation numbers and travel reservations that no one wants to rifle through in a customs line. Tripit is a free app for iPhone, Android and the plain ol’ web, and you only have to forward your email confirmations to their address, and they add that reservation and all the details to your itinerary auto-magically. It’s scary easy and a little creepy, but it saves a boatload of hassle.

•Offline maps: Smartphone maps are great when you’re on WiFi or 3G (when you know where you are), but you don’t have all that on holiday (when you don’t). Saving offline maps of your city destinations means the GPS signal can plot you onto a stored map without using data. There are a bunch of free apps for major cities on the iPhone, and Android can do one better by saving a huge area of Google Maps in the cache. Just look around the area you’re visiting while on the hotel WiFi, and it’ll all still be there when you’re lost in town.

•Translate: Computer translators have gone from massive joke to awkward faux pas in only a few years, but mobile and tablet versions at least put it where you need it. Google Translate can turn your broken English into hilarious foreign versions, and Wordlens, even scarier, means you can snap a picture of foreign words on a sign or menu, and it’ll translate them on the picture itself. Always worth it to avoid ordering the squid by accident.

• Ratings: You know to avoid the restaurant with the English menus, but sometimes that’s about all you can tell just by walking by. Apps and sites like TripAdvisor, Qype and Google Places all have ratings for just about any city in the world, including idiots who expect a 2 star hotel to have embroidered bathrobes. Doing 10 minutes of homework on a decent place to eat can save you an hour of wandering around a shady back alley and settling for kebabs.