Top Travel Apps for iOS

With the holiday fast approaching, sometimes the hardest part is getting home. Whether you're carpooling with friends, flying home or taking a train, technology apps can make the process of getting home or getting away so much easier. Here are just a few of the top travel applications for your smartphone.

Kayak

The first, and often most difficult, part of getting home is figuring out how to do it! Depending on where you live, flying may be the best option. Simply deciding to fly is only half the battle. Now you have to choose from the 6+ airlines that fly out of Syracuse Hancock International Airport (and the hundreds that fly out of connecting airports). Finding the cheapest flight comes down to picking a good date and time…and that's where Kayak comes in.

Kayak allows you to do blanket searches for flights based on budget, time, date of departure and airline preference. It can show you deals you had no idea existed and makes the process of booking a flight so much easier. The free application is available iOS (for iPhone and iPad), Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone and if ads bother you, they offer a $0.99 paid upgrade to remove them.

 

TripIt

No matter how you decide to travel, keeping track of your plans can be a daunting task. With parents forwarding you confirmation numbers, changing flight times, alternate bus schedules and e-tickets, it can be very difficult to make sure you get where you need to on time. When you receive a confirmation email from anywhere you book, simply forward it to plans@tripit.com.

TripIt instantly recognizes reservations from 3,000+ booking sites including cruises, restaurants, concerts and more. You can easily share trip plans with family or colleagues directly, or let Facebook and LinkedIn contacts know when and where you’re headed.

TripIt is available on iOS (for iPhone and iPad), Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, free of charge. TripIt also has a "pro" version that features a travel assistant designed to find deals and provide more comprehensive coverage.

 

Flight Board

One of the most frustrating parts of flying is trying to figure out if your flight will be delayed. There's actually a ton of flight tracking applications that require you to input your flight information but something a little different might be nice. Flight Board is a companion application to Flight Tracker Pro, a full-featured flight tracking application.

Flight Board mimics the displays found in airports that can show the status of every flight of an airline or into/out of an airport. It's a cool way to view flight status and can provide you with a ton of information to help you figure out baggage claim numbers, where to meet your ride and much more.

Flight Board is available for both iOS (for iPhone and iPad) and Android for $3.99.

 

Waze

Travelling isn't always all about flying. Sometimes, home is just a simple road trip away. In that case, you should not leave Syracuse without Waze, a social GPS application. In addition to providing turn-by-turn navigation, you become part of a local driving community in your area and the app can help keep you safe, avoid traffic and save you time.

After typing in your destination address, just drive with the app open on your phone to passively contribute traffic and other road data, but you can also take a more active role by sharing road reports on accidents, police traps, or any other hazards along the way, helping to give other users in the area a 'heads-up' about what's to come.

Waze is available for iOS (for iPhone and iPad) and Android for free. While the app is still pretty new, as the community grows it will only continue to get better and more useful.

 

Gas Buddy

As gas prices continue to rise, the hardest part of any drive is not getting killed at the pump. If you're trying to save a little on gas, Gas Buddy can certainly help. You can quickly find the closest gas station or the one with the cheapest prices and sort your results by distance, price or company. In an emergency, Gas Buddy can be a real life-saver if you're stuck on a major interstate and don't know when the next gas station will appear. The Gas Buddy website is constantly being updates with new prices and changes as they happen so you should always be able to access the most accurate information, wherever you are.

Gas Buddy makes the experience social and provides some great incentive to report pricing on gas. For every report you submit, you earn points to prizes and weekly competitions to win free gas, vehicles and other prizes.

Gas Buddy is a free application available for both iOS (just for iPhone right now), Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone.

 

Oink

Sometimes, getting to where you're headed is only half the fun. It's once you get there that you really start the adventure. Whether you're headed back home or to somewhere else for a vacation, you should try out Oink, a new social application that lets you rate the things around you. Instead of just saying you like a place, you can tell people what pizza to try at your favorite restaurant, how to get your coffee at the local Starbucks and where to go to have fun.

You could easily find the most popular items on a menu and see if a friend has tried anything there. Then if there's something you like, it’s just a single press to rate it and share it with friends. Oink is a new social app created by Kevin Rose, the tech star behind projects like Digg. Here's the catch with Oink… it's not ready yet. Oink has released a "builder" application that tasks the public with creating venues, adding content and getting the site off the ground. This is your chance to get your ideas onto a social project that will soon go viral and become hugely popular.

The Oink app is free for iOS but will soon come to other mobile platforms as well.

 

foursquare

Yup, had to mention it.

Especially for those of us in the iSchool, it never gets old to talk about foursquare and the addictive product that @dens and his team have created. No matter where you're headed for break (or anywhere for that matter), you should be checking in and contributing to the awesome location-based community around you.

Like many other social platforms, foursquare only gets better with more usage and with the most recent release, the application is better than ever. With a "radar" feature to tell you what's going on around you, check-ins at specific movies and events and even more awesome badges and tips, if you haven't already downloaded it, now is the time to get foursquare on iOS, Android, Blackberry, Palm and Windows Phone.

 What app are you using to make traveling easier? Leave it in the comments, contact John at jburke01@syr.edu or tweet him @JohnBurke.