If you look around your next hotel room, there’s a fair chance it will have an alarm clock with a 30-pin dock connector for your iPhone. It’s a popular amenity for hotels to list, since there are some 500+ million iOS devices out in the wild.
But one hotel in Cupertino, California is taking their iOS compatibility to the next level. Starwood Hotels’ Aloft Hotel has announced today that it now has an Apple TV, connected to a 42-inch LCD television, in all 123 of its guest rooms… Read More
In 2011, the FAA green-lighted several commercial and charter airlines to replace their bulky, 50-page paper flight manuals with iPads. And last year, they expanded the rule to allow pilots to use their new tablets during all stages of flight.
So why in the world are passengers still required to power down their electronics before takeoff? No one really knows. And that’s why Senator Claire McCaskill says she’s putting together a bill that would, by law, remove this silly restriction… Read More
Welcome back to the lessons in iPhone photography. I hope you have enjoyed adding a little creative lens flare to your images the last couple of weeks. I have enjoyed looking at them! This week I thought we would do something a little different. I travel quite a bit with my iPhone and as you know by now, I take a lot of photos with it. I shot close to 4,000 iPhone images last year. Today I thought I would share a few tips to improve your own travel iPhoneography… Read More
This is pretty interesting: Qantas, an Australian airline, is now handing out iPads to passengers on all of its B767 airliners. The tablet is being used to provide an in-flight entertainment service, called QStreaming, which features more than 200 hours of on-demand content.
QStreaming is free, and offered to all Qantas Business and Economy class customers. Here’s a brief overview of the new service:
Hotels offer a wide range of amenities for guests-on-the-go. This includes on-site pools, Wi-Fi, bars, and workout rooms. But for one Canadian hotel, this also includes complimentary iPhones.
That’s right, the Opus hotel in Vancouver has started replacing the landline telephones in each of its rooms, with iPhones. And even better, guests can carry the handsets throughout their entire stay… Read More
When traveling abroad, there’s just some things that you should do that are just no brainers. One of them is knowing the exchange rate between your native currency, and the currency of the country you’re travelling to.
In the old days this used to take a little legwork, i.e. reading the newspaper, going to the post office, etc. With the smartphone boom, though, currency conversion is often right at your fingertips.
As is the case with this new jailbreak widget, entitled Currency Convertor. It’s a widget that conveniently sits in iOS 5′s Notification Center for easy access… Read More
If you’re a big traveller, then would it not be convenient to have world clock access in Notification Center?
With a new jailbreak tweak aptly entitled WorldClockCenter, now you can.
WorldClockCenter takes all of the world clocks you have configured inside the stock Clock app, and places them in Notification Center, along with a few extra configurable options. Check out our brief video walkthrough inside… Read More
File this one under “crazy things that Siri can do.” Apparently, thanks to the magic of Wolfram Alpha, Siri on the iPhone 4S is able to give you flight path trajectories. The real kicker is that Siri can use your iPhone’s GPS data to determine if there are planes currently flying about your area.
Now you have a new way to see if your friend is ready to get picked up at the airport! Read More
The folks at mTrip do some of the best travel guide apps for the iPhone around. They have in-depth travel guide apps for 16 cities in Europe, 5 major cities in America, and 7 cities in Asia.
mTrip is currently offering 7 of its travel guide apps for free! Each guide normally costs $5.99, so if you plan on ever visiting one of the offered cities, make sure to grab the guide for free while you still can! Read More
We’ve gone over some pretty nifty charging accessories on iDB before, but this one might take the cake. And if you happen to own multiple iDevices and a laptop, you might want to pay attention.
Gizmodo passes on the news of a new charging accessory from Energizer known as the iSurge. The travel charging station has a built-in 30-pin dock, a USB port, 3 surge-protected AC outlets, and a nightlight… Read More
If you’re planning to travel overseas with your AT&T iPhone, you’ve probably already looked into international data plans, and figured out it was a complete rip off. And yes, you are right, international data usage on AT&T will cost you an arm and a leg.
In order to make this slightly less ridiculously expensive, AT&T has revamped its international data plan options, basically doubling their offering while keeping the same prices. It’s still way overpriced, but at least you get more data… Read More
M.I.C. gadget is reporting that Apple’s Tim cook was spotted at a China Mobile building yesterday morning. If anyone’s wondering why Apple’s acting-CEO visiting the world’s largest wireless carrier is a big deal, let me break it down for you.
China Mobile has over 600 million customers and is one of the few major carriers left that does not offer Apple’s smartphone. The citing of the Apple executive has sparked tons of speculation around the web regarding his visit… Read More
If you are curious how to go about international travel with your beloved iPhone, then our blog is a pretty handy resource thanks to Sebastien and his many trips overseas. Just make sure you don’t take any advice from Alanna Fero of British Columbia.
The Canadian woman went on vacation to Egypt with her brand new TELUS iPhone, only to return home to a cell phone bill that would make Brad Pitt say WTF? For her 2 weeks on the African continent, Mrs. Fero racked up a $37,000 phone bill due to international roaming while using her iPhone.
As a frequent traveler and an iPhone addict, I always worry to run out of batteries in an airport or worse, in the middle of a flight. I’ve tried various options for making sure I would never run out of juice but I never found the right accessory that would fulfill my needs: convenience, ease of use, light weight.
That was until the peeps at Zagg sent me a review copy of their ZAGGsparq, a 2-in-1, or maybe I should say a 3-in-1 accessory for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and virtually any smartphone out there, but we’ll obviously focus on the iPhone part… Read More
I’ve run into a ton of good apps for the iPhone lately. Rather than picking some and reviewing them one by one, I figured I would just list them all in a roundup. So, here’s some interesting apps that I’ve found recently… Read More
It was a Thursday morning like any other. I woke up at 7:45am to “Kanye West – Addiction” blaring from my Sony alarm clock/ipod dock. I grabbed my iPhone off that dock and hobbled to the bathroom and launched a pre made playlist to listen to as I got ready for work.
For those of you who frequent the blog this is a great example of where my beef with the iPhone’s speaker quality comes into play. But that’s neither here nor there. I updated myself on the day’s technology news using RSS Reader and bouncing around from site to site, once again on my iPhone. Read More
As I was driving along the Mexican border between Phoenix and San Diego yesterday, I received this text message from AT&T, which I assume thought I was already on the other side of the border. The text message was sent to alert me of the prices abroad.
Almost a dollar per minute for phone calls! $20 per MB? Really? That sure is going to be some expensive emails…
The moral of this story, if any, is that you should always be careful what you do with your iPhone when traveling oversea, especially with data which can run in the background and get you bad surprises at the end of your trip.
If you’re going to use your iPhone abroad, I suggest you check out these tips for traveling overseas with an iPhone.
The iPhone is one of the most popular devices that has been made in the last decade and there are now literally thousands of applications designed for it. But with all of those apps to choose from, which ones are best to make sure you take with you on your travels?
Take a look at this list of some of the 10 most powerful iPhone applications available for you to download today.
1. Cheap Gas! (Free)
Cheap Gas! helps you locate the lowest priced gas closest to wherever you’re at and then display a map showing you the specific location. The application utilizes the built-in GPS feature to discover the ten nearest gas stations with the lowest prices according to GasBuddy.com. You even have the option to search based on zip code and determine whether the fuel is unleaded, premium unleaded, or diesel.
2. ExpenseBay (Free)
Developed by Expense Cloud, this application removes the demand to maintain an actual collection of receipts and bills gathered throughout your travels, which puts a stop to any potential misplaced reimbursements. You can easily add transactions and receipt images to your ExpenseBay.com account in a matter of a few clicks, and also modify existing expenses that still require to be billed to a client or submitted for reimbursement.
3. GateGuru (Free)
GateGuru is an application that provides intricate detail about services available at different gates at more than 80 major airports in the United States, as well as several others throughout the world. This application is extremely useful when you want to get a quick bite prior to boarding your flight and you’re not familiar with the airport.
4. HopStop (Free)
Similar to the website service available at HopStop.com, this particular application offers in depth public transportation directions and advice. Regardless of whether you are journeying by bus, subway, cab, or even walking, this iPhone application will enable you to get to exactly where you are heading.
5. Flight Track ($4.99)
Flight Track monitors every part of your domestic and international flights together with live updates and gorgeous, zoomable maps. Examine gate numbers, flight delays and cancellations for more than 5,000 airports worldwide.
6. FlightCaster ($1.99)
This app uses an innovative formula that tracks information on every single domestic flight within the last decade and then matches it to current conditions to predict delayed flights. At the moment FlightCaster only supports U.S. domestic flights.
7. Free Wi-Fi Finder (Free)
Free Wi-Fi Finder does exactly as the name implies. No matter where you are in the world, it will use both your iPhone’s GPS feature and network capabilities to to uncover free Wi-Fi Internet access.
8. SitOrSquat (Free)
SitOrSquat allows you to track down the closest restrooms nearest to your present location. You can check out close by restrooms on the map or in a list categorized by distance and see which ones are open for use. Not only that, but you can read reviews and ratings, and even see photos of the toilets so that you know what awaits you.
9. AroundMe (Free)
Developed by TweakerSoft, AroundMe easily determines your location and helps you pick the closest bank, gas station, hospital, hotel, restaurant, supermarket, and so on. You can view a comprehensive listing of all of the businesses inside the chosen category and see how far they are from where you are at.
10. Urbanspoon (Free)
Urbanspoon uses a unique slot machine system that determines a high quality restaurant that you can try when you’re hungry, but not sure what exactly to eat. Just shake your iPhone until you find a suggestion that suits your tastes. After locating the restaurant, you can read ratings and even compare your choices with friends. At the moment it is available in most cities in North America, along with London, Melbourne, and Sydney.
This is a guest post by Melissa Tamura. Melissa ranks online schools for the Zen College Life Directory. She most recently wrote about becoming a Massage Therapist.
I had done a little research online before flying to Vietnam about the communication network there. Reading the many positive comments about the infrastructure of this country, I flew there very confident that it wouldn’t be much of a hustle to find a SIM card for my iPhone.
After going through the very unfriendly Vietnamese customs, I headed straight to the Viettel booth inside the airport. Viettel was not my choice. It just happened to be the only phone store I saw inside Hanoi’s airport.
A woman welcame me and asked me what I wanted. As usual, I was pretty clear that all I wanted was a good data plan for my iPhone as well as a few minutes of communication so we can call hotels, etc, in the country.
For about $8, I got a SIM card, 100,000 Dongs of talk time and an extra 50,000 Dongs of bonus time. To activate the data plan, she took my iPhone and sent “3G on” as a text message to the number 161. I immediately got a text message back saying that 3G was activated. Very good.
Now what I wanted to know was the cost of 3G. She was unable to tell me and after calling her own customer support, she came back to me saying they didn’t know but that I shouldn’t worry too much about that because 3G is very cheap in Vietnam. Ok, not really the answer I expected but there was nothing I could do.
On my way to the hotel, I tried to call Viettel customer service myself, only to be turned down several times in Vietnamese. Since my taxi driver spoke English, I asked him to tell them I wanted to know the cost of 3G and if there was any monthly plan I could sign up for. They didn’t know. Hmm, I started wondering if they knew anything at all. Anyways.
I decided not to worry too much about that and started surfing the Vietnamese 3G to email, tweet, blog and more. Turns out I used crap loads of data until I had to recharge my SIM. I didn’t make any “scientific” study about it but it was clear that data was dirt cheap.
Viettel doesn’t allow internet tethering but I remembered that someone commented on my last travel post about Laos, giving me information about custom APN settings to allow tethering. Sweet! I had tried help.benm.at and unlockit.co.nz to download the custom APN but none of these site had them available.
A big thank you to Thy for telling me about custom APN for Viettel and VinaPhone. Without him, I would have probably been incapable of tethering my iPhone while in Vietnam.
Those of you interested in downloading the custom APN settings to tether your iPhone in Vietnam on Viettel or VinaPhone should go to Giaitri.net. The site is very slow and all in Vietnamese but it clearly says “Internet Tethering” at the top. Then you just need to select your carrier and install the custom APN, then reboot (don’t forget to reboot).
While I can’t say I’m impressed in any way by Vietnam (no offense to my Vietnamese friends but many bad things happened to me there), I have to admit that their network seriously kicks ass! It is my far the best network I’ve seen so far in my travels. That’s mostly due to the fact that their network is so new that they pretty much have the latest and best technology available.
The only time I didn’t have signal was when I was 30 feet underground visiting the tunnels of Cu Chi. At all time I had coverage, with at least Edge and in most cases 3G. 3G is burning fast too, which was really handy when looking for hospitals… but that’s another story…
I had to recharge my SIM with 150,000 Dongs, which is about $8 and this last me forever. Definitely the best and cheapest data plan I had been on.
As a side note, it is very easy to find free Internet everywhere in Vietnam. 90% of hotels, bars or restaurants have free wifi available (not even password protected). Vietnam is the most “Internet friendly” country I have ever visited (except for the censorship of Facebook.com in North Vietnam).
I’m now back in Thailand and I am typing this post from the airport, tethering my iPhone thanks to the great (but slow) DTAC network. The network is not as good here as it is in Vietnam but I don’t mind it if I can get my health back. We’ll be in Thailand for about 3-4 weeks, then heading to Kuala Lumpur to catch a flight to Paris.
If you’re traveling with an iPhone in Vietnam, I hope this article will help you figure things out, especially for tethering your iPhone.
Questions or comments, please feel free to write a comment below!
After about 5 months of traveling through Australia, New Zealand, Bali, Thailand, and Cambodia, my lovely fiancee and I decided to check out Laos. Before even going there, I had a bad feeling about the place.
I had done some research online to find out what seemed to be the carrier of choice so I can enjoy the freedom of the Internet on my iPhone. I found some contradictory information and was more confused than not. I gave up on my research thinking that as usual, I’d be able to find a SIM card for my iPhone while at the airport in Laos.
Well, we got there and nowhere was a phone shop to be seen. After settling in our hotel room in Luang Prabang, we went for a walk around town and I bought a SIM card from one of the zillion stores that sell them.
There are several carriers to choose from. I went with Tigo because that’s what the lady at the store gave me. It could have been any other carrier, I don’t think it would make a big difference in the end.
I asked the lady about Internet. She said “yes yes”. After a few months spent in South East Asia, I can tell when someone has no idea what I’m talking about, and she clearly was just saying “yes” to please me and close the deal. So anyways, I have nothing to lose but my $2 so I get a SIM card, pop it in and bingo, it’s working without requiring me to tweak the APN settings.
So now I can enjoy calls and data on my iPhone, in Laos, on the Tigo network. Turns out there is no 3G (not a big surprise), and Edge is painfully slow. What’s more annoying is that this data plan is costing me a fortune. The $1 credit I was given when I bought the SIM card was gone in 4-5 tweets.
There had to be a better plan than that. Like I did in Cambodia, I have to be able to subscribe to some kind of plan that gives me unlimited Internet for a good price.
I went back to the shop where I got my SIM card and asked the woman about plans. She was absolutely clueless. To this date, I still think she had no idea what I was talking about. So I asked her the phone number for Tigo Customer Service, which she gave me.
I called Customer Service, hoping someone would be able to help me figure out the best option for me. Well, if I hadn’t hung up the phone after 15 minutes, I think I’d still be trying to get in touch with them. Basically you just go through an automated menu with no option to talk to a real person. I managed to find an alternative phone number for Tigo’s offices and the phone rang and rang forever, with no one answering.
I was really really pissed. I think I was more pissed than I would have normally been in such a situation because I didn’t really want to be in Laos in the first place. This whole phone thing was just an excuse for me to justify even more my desire to leave this country asap.
For the next few days, I just recharged my iPhone plan $5 at a time each day. I spent about 4 days in Laos and decided to go back to Cambodia.
Next step is Vietnam. This should be fun!
Oh, did I tell you I shot a bazooka in Cambodia?
