Category: Travel App

Google Trips, the travel planning app that lets you have all your travel information in one place, as a handy update that is rolling out today.  The update is version 1.6 for those keeping score at home.  Aside from the normal smattering of bug fixes and performance improvements, there is now video content from YouTube and Blogger content when you visit a particular thing to do in a location.

To get to this new content, select an upcoming trip you already have in Google Trips or search for a new city, say New York City.  Once you are on the city page, tap on the blue “Things to do” block which will bring up various sites and places to go while you are in New York.  When you tap on one of those places, you will now see videos from YouTube and Blogger content in the new “from around the web” section.

Microsoft has launched an all new travel app named Outings.  The app was actually released last month by the Redmond company made no announcements about it so it went pretty much unnoticed.  That’s a shame because Outings is a really beautifully designed app.

The idea behind the app is simple:  You provide at least five topics of interest and the app will provide you suggestions for those interests.  The content is curated from various travel sites and blogs with outstanding information and photography for those locations.  Once you find one of interest, you can save it or you can indicate that you have been to that location.

There are a lot of travel apps in the Play Store but the newest one, Google Trips, is mighty impressive.  The app launched earlier this week and aims to be the one app you go to for information about your trip and to help you plan it.  Best of all (besides being free) is that it can work completely offline, saving you data usage while you are traveling internationally.  The leverages travel reservations received in Gmail to determine where you are going on a trip and stores that information in the Reservations section of the app.  There you can see your car, hotel and air travel all in one place.  There are other sections too such as Things to Do.  This gives you recommendations on things around where you will be traveling that you can do to get to explore the city you are visiting.  Once you find something you like, tap the star icon for that things and it will be added to your Saved places so you can keep track of them and plan them into your trip.

If you are a user of the TripIt app to manage your travel itenararies, the latest update to the app brings a host of improvements as well as Android Wear support.  The updated build is version 4.6 for those keeping score at home and the big update is Wear support.  Now you can access your trip details from your watch without having to take your phone out of your pocket.  Even better, there is also a new flight countdown timer, exclusive to Android Wear, so you can keep track up to the second when your flight is to depart.

Yelp for Android has been updated for Android Phone users that brings the restaurant, bar and coffee shop searching app, quite literally, closer to home.  With this latest update, which is now available in the Google Play Store, you can add a Yelp search bar to your Home Screen that makes finding a restaurant, coffee shop or bar quicker than ever.  The updated build is version 7.6.1 for those keeping score at home.

If you haven’t used Yelp in the past, it is a service that allows you to search for just about anything near you.  Aimed mostly for restaurants and bars, you can also find things like hotels and business such as salons, spas, petrol stations and shopping malls.  Plus, as a free member of Yelp, you can review these places for others to read and make their own decisions to visit.  The Yelp for Android app has always been quite robust and feature rich and this update should make it that much more powerful for those who use the app and service today.

Yelp for Android – Free – Download Now

We all have those apps that we can’t see how we would get along without them and for me, Transit App for Android is one of them.  The app provides bus, training and city bike information for a wide range of metro areas globally and given that I do not actually own a car I’m very reliant on buses, trains and what we call our B-Bikes.  That’s where an app like this one comes in handy and Transit App is in my opinion one of the best.

This week the makers of Transit App have released a new build of the app which brings an all important reminder feature so you know when your next bus or train is leaving or, more importantly, when the last bus or train is leaving so you don’t get stuck paying for a taxi home.  This latest update, version 3.7.1 for those keeping score at home, brings this easy-to-configure alarm along with some other improvements that bike riders will appreciate.

I should point out that Transit App isn’t just about public transportation but gives you all the options to get from point A to B including services such as Uber and Car2Go.

Transit App for Android – Free – Download Now