Tap & Say -World Travel Phrases
Learn to speak the local lingo
This is a very simple foreign language phrase book, but unlike printed ones, this app speaks the phrases too. There are ten languages, four of which are European. It would have been nice to have more local ones instead of the Thai and Vietnamese that are included, so it does depend on where you go for holidays and business trips as to how useful this is to you.
It is a very simple app and all the languages are displayed on the home screen. Select one and you will see a list of phrase categories on the left. Select a category and the phras¬es are displayed on the right.
Tapping a phrase speaks it out loud and prints it at the top of the screen. Most of the categories are disabled and in the free app there are just greetings, essentials and numbers. All the others must be purchased and this costs £1.99 for each language or £13.99 for all of them. The iPad version isn’t bad, but the iPhone is obviously more convenient to carry.
Spyglass
Stunning compass information
The 13-page quick start guide and 60-page manual for Spyglass are compulsory reading and both can be added to iBooks for convenience. To say that Spyglass is a fancy compass is true, but that really doesn’t do it justice. It has too many functions to describe here, but it can be very useful for hunting, fishing, boating, surveys, hiking, biking and more.
Hold the iPad up and you get a head-up display of compass and other information overlaid on the live camera image. As you move around, the compass shows the direction and there is also elevation and bearing, altitude, a rangefinder, time, azimuth, GPS coordinates and more. It can also show speed, course and maximum speed information.
Hold it horizontally and a satellite-type map is displayed instead. Your current location can be saved as a waypoint. Waypoints are tracked and pointers are displayed, and there are pointers to primary, secondary and tertiary targets This is an amazing app, but it requires time and effort to master.
Time Travel Explorer HD – London
If you are planning a trip to London, you should definitely purchase a tourist guide showing you all the best places, sights and a guide to the history. This app is an encyclopaedia of points of interest, photos and audio guides. Like normal travel guides, it has a street map with pins highlighting points of interest and an alphabetical list of places. But this app goes further than regular printed tourist guides, with maps to look at from 1746 to today, so you can see how the city has changed over the centuries.
The maps are detailed and you can zoom in to street level and see the names of roads, buildings, parks and so on. Time Travel is a nice feature that smoothly fades one map into the next.
Tap a pin in the map or use the list of places and a window is displayed containing text, spoken commentary and thumbnail images. Content can be saved so you don’t need the internet. It is good, but expensive, and absolutely fascinating.
This is a guest post by Karim who recommends cheap contracts when travelling. iPhone SIM only deals on short contracts are both cheap and convenient. You can find plans from T-Mobile iPhone SIM only which offer huge minutes and data.