I recently went to the Caribbean for a two-week vacation with my sister, a friend from work, and my two dogs. I didn't bring a laptop, but I did decide to bring my iPhone. And I wanted to pack it up with some apps that would provide some vacation fun. Here's what I found:
- AntiMosquito: self explanatory, only there were no mosquitoes for me to test it on. Damn it!
- TnL: Thunder & Lightening - it tells you how far away the storm is and you can see if it's moving towards you or away. Love the premise. And we got rain (more than wanted), but no thunder or lightening. Foiled again!
- World Tides: Simple but cool app that shows you when high & low tides are, but also how the tides evolve over a day (it isn't just high & low). Fun interface. Love it.
- IridiumFlares: so apparently it is possible to know exactly where satellites are and where the sun is, and to predict when someone in a certain place will see it flash like a shooting star. Reviews for this were positive, only the first time I was ready to see one, I didn't realize it was military time, so was 12 hours too late. Then it had a problem loading location. So it's not perfect, but I would get it. I just clicked it, and it says there will be a fantastic one Wednesday morning at 5:19am and 19 secondaon this Wednesday at 5:19am. They should have an alarm feature.
- StarMap: This is very cool. Basically shows you the constellations above you. They should add the Iridium flare map. I'm all about app efficiency! There is another one like this called "StarWalk," and it has cool animations/sound effects -- but I tried using it three times, and it only confused the hell out of me. I recommend StarMap unless you are a super star geek.
- CricketSong: Tells you the temperature based on the crickets. Ok, obviously you can get the temp on any weather app. For me, this is for cricket fanatics and anyone who loves that science shit. Unfortunately, our crickets weren't that loud and the ocean was louder. So I kept getting an error message. But I will be using this is Boston at the first sign of crickets, and I am very excited (super cricket geek?).
- Dog Tricks: So we're bringing dogs. We wanted them to have fun too. This app has instructions on a bunch of tricks you can teach your dog. It does other stuff that I didn't really care about. I had another app that supposedly would bark just as you took a picture so you would get a perfect pose from your dog on click, but the actual audio didn't work, so I deleted it (can't remember what it was called). Cool idea though. Lemme know when it works. Or better yet, add it to "Dog Tricks."
- Sunlight: Cool visualization of where the earth is in darkness/light at any given time. But is only cool once or twice. Then you would just rather see the sunset/sunrise time. If they added that and moonphase too this, it would be cooler. App efficiency, people. Build it in! There are only 148 apps allowed on your phone at once.
- Luan: (accent on the "u") This is the moon phase app I like best because if you click this tab that says "Gregorian" (no idea what that means) -- you get a visual map of the moon on each day of a month. There is one called MoonPhase, but while it allows you to search by date, I'm never thinking more than a month in advance, so it's just way easier to see the month view. I definitely don't need to option to see the moon visualized as "real," "cartoon," or "cheese." Though I do like the "werewolf warning" option. That is the only reason I haven't deleted it.
- Pano: If you have a sick view on your vacation, this lets you capture a panorama on it to show off on your iPhone. Stupid fun. (Which is always good.)
My friend Joe suggested we all download Scrabble b/c a group can play and take turns on the iPhone, but I opted to bring the actual travel Scrabble board game. Then they had deluxe Scrabble at the villa. Some things should not be effed with. If you are on the Acela on the way to a business meeting, fine, do the iPhone Scrabble thing. If you are on a a terrace overlooking the ocean with friends and dogs, play the real game (after you are done passing the iPhone to check out the zillions of stars and constellations not visible to you in ordinary life).
And bring a crossword puzzle that requires you to use an actual pencil, and a book with real pages you can turn between rum punches on the beach. Yeah, a little technology can be fun. But a lot of no technology is a really good thing. Though do Twitter so we can all live vicariously through you.
So where was your last vacation, and what apps did you pick up just for the trip? Talk to me people. It's getting lonely over here!
