IT SEEMS the iPad was the pressie du jourthis Christmas. Something of a get-out-of-jail-free gadget, one gift fitted all, with everyone from teen to grandparent apparently happy to be on the receiving end. And given that, incomprehensibly, Amazon's Kindle reader went out of stock in Ireland and the UK a couple of weeks before the big day, Apple's tablet had all those to-be-filled stockings to itself.
The iPad is made to travel, of course and thanks to the ever increasing range of apps, is made for travel too. Here is just a tiny sample of useful ones:
Wi-Fi Finder
You’re only on half-pad if you can’t access the internet on your travels. But given the punitive mobile data rates and roaming charges around, it makes sense to uncover your nearest Wi-Fi hotspot. This is one of the best tools.
Wi-Fi Finder locates free or paid for Wi-Fi hotspots in over 140 countries, at almost 300,000 free and paid-for sites. Thanks to the iPad’s GPS, it’ll tell you precisely where the closest hotspot is and how to get there. Forget those pesky museums and funky cafes, where’s my wi-fi? There’s lots of other functionality besides, such as saving favourites, adding hotspots you find and sharing via e-mail or social networks. (You are networked socially, aren’t you? You wouldn’t want to keep anything to yourself.)
CostWi-Fi Finder app – free.
AllSubway HD
It’s the ultimate graphic design challenge perhaps: a city’s underground or subway map. As anyone who has tried to decode a cross-city trip on an unfamiliar metro can testify, not many have the clarity of Harry Beck’s classic London Tube map. This is a useful little app for the regular city traveller. AllSubway has comprehensive metro and light rail maps for more than 100 cities around the globe, including London, New York, Barcelona, Sao Paulo, Moscow, even Tokyo. New cities are being added all the time; Oslo’s tramway is one of the more recent, although the Luas and Dart haven’t made the cut yet. Perhaps they’re waiting for our Metro North to be completed.
You can zoom in and out and view your maps in portrait or landscape format and you don’t need to be online to access them.
CostAllSubway HD app €0.79.
XE Currency Conversion
I’ve had the XE site bookmarked as a favourite in my desktop browser for years – it’s great for online shopping comparisons – and it was one of the first apps that I downloaded to my iPhone. The iPad version is more of the same – a simple to use, yet incredibly comprehensive currency converter. You just put in the currency amount, what you want to convert to and click. You can set up the currencies you check often, shake to reset or even convert to obsolete currencies.
CostXE Currency app – free.
The World Clock
Without having used it, the fact that this frequently appears in top travel app lists might seem a little peculiar: how much time info does one need? (Indeed, check how many under-25s you know who don’t wear watches at all anymore and you could believe knowing the time is so last century.)
But The World Clock gives such an all-encompassing expression of time, from its database of over 230 countries to its engaging interface, that it’s much more than just a glorified clock. Of course, there are all sorts of alarms and alerts, but it’s how it gives you the time of day as much as the info itself, I think, that users rate.
Of course, you might just use its multi-timezone clock display to suggest your daily world straddles the globe. Ego? There’s an app for that.
CostThe World Clock app €0.79.
All these iPad apps are available from the App Store in iTunes and many work on your iPhone, Blackberry or Android too.