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Apps and Books
App of the Month: FriendCash
Traveling in a group can be complicated, not only because of the difficulty getting everyone moving but also when it’s time to pay the bills. Someone always has to take on the chore of collecting the money, paying for the meals, tours and museum tickets. But now thanks to FriendCash, everything is simple and, above all, less cumbersome. Figuring these things out usually takes a bit of time, but this application makes traveling in groups different. Everyone will know in real time how much money is owed, whom it owed to, and (most importantly) who owes you. by iphone.appstorm.net Once you start using this app, you’ll soon see how simple it is. You can track several different things at the same time. And even though we’re focusing on travel, FriendCash can do much more. It is widely used among members of the same family, coworkers, and even in stores. To use it, you first need to enter the number of participants in the “pot” and their names. These can be added directly from your address book. The rest is very intuitive. When it’s time to pay and you’re without cash, pay by card and the app will add things up. It also includes a section to specify how the money was spent and by whom. Then each group member automatically is proportioned “an amount owed” for their share of the food. And in debt section, the person who paid with a credit card will see the sum of the others’ minus his or her own. All this is done by the app. You won’t have to think or get...
#3travelingredients: Discover the perfect travel destination for you!
How many times have you had great expectations towards a trip, but had no idea of where to go or which destination to pick? To help you decide on the perfect destination for your next holiday, we have come up with this hashtag: #3travelingredients. Using this hashtag you tell us the 3 things that are absolutely indispensable for your trip and we will reply with the ideal destination for your next adventure. How it works? All you need to do is tweet: #3travelingredients plus the 3 most important elements your trip should include. We will reply with the travel destination that best reflects your wishes. Why 3? 3 is the symbol for perfection and we want your trip to be perfect. Why ‘ingredients’? Because organizing a trip is a little bit like preparing a cake. It requires love, patience and passion. Here is an example: #3travelingredients sun, culture, freedom = Barcelona Well, would you like to give our #3travelingredients a try?...
App of the Month: Sighter
I don’t know about you, but when I travel, I like finding places that pleasantly surprised me; those places that you can’t find in any travel guide. Sometimes I get to know about this places because of recommendations of a friend who has been there or maybe a local in that city who told me about it, in any case, it is always pleasant to wind up in a place that isn’t surrounded by tourists making pictures like crazy. Being a big fan of street art around the world, I’m always eager to discover the most incredible works of art on walls and ceilings, which is something that a lot of people like checking when looking for a new destination to visit. From Banksy to totally unknown names, we’ll find art on the streets, because lots of it isn’t located in museums. What is it? If you like street art, you´ll love this app of the month. Sighter is an app that consists of photographs taken by its users, which allow you to discover the best-kept secrets of every city you visit. It also lets you upload your own photos so that others can discover the spots that you liked the most. In addition, each photo comes with a detailed location, so the GPS feature identifies where you are to show you the uploaded pictures of a sight next to you. When you are very close, it becomes a ´hot and cold´ game. If you like photography and underground culture, you´ll just love it. Photos Sighter My opinion: Sighter is the perfect app for people who want to discover...
App of the month: Slango
Tell me if this sounds familiar to you: You have proudly finished your [PLEASE INSERT WHICHEVER LANGUAGE HERE] course and you are finally headed to a destination where you can show off your newly acquired knowledge. But after trying your new found skills on a local you quickly learn that whatever you have learned in this course was a bit slightly outdated and real people don’t talk like that. What to do? Don’t worry: There’s an app for that! Where some people might think I’m mockingly using this phrase given the perks of technical advances these days, I’m actually being serious. There really is an app that helps you to be “down” with the locals and in the founders’ words “helps travelers to look less like a stupid tourist, and more like a globetrotting legend.” Our app of the month is Slango, an app that breaks language down into a variety of categories that really matter from ‘The Basics’, ‘Eating’, and ‘Sleeping’, right through to ‘Picking up babes’, ‘Potty mouth’, and ‘In the sack’. This review is by our product manager Giampaolo. My view: This app is a major revelation for me. Where has it been all my life?! Ok, I’m done being dramatic now, but truth be told I think it was about time that someone came up with a language app that teaches you useful expressions. Many of us use learned languages for the first time when we go on trips and people I meet on the road don’t tend to ask me to recite conjugations of a verb. If I have to be completely honest, I...
App of the month: Jet Lag App
If you are a constant traveler and suffer the discomforts of jet lag, here you’ll get to know a useful application for you to download to your tablet or mobile phone. It is very effective! What is it? It is a tool that works with your usual sleep pattern, your flight hours and the time difference between your starting point and destination to suggest you a strategy to minimize the effects of jet lag. Why does Jet Lag occur? Long flights don’t give enough time to our bodies to get used to a change of time zone mostly, because our biological clock gets desynchronized. You’ll notice it immediately, because jet lag involves a series of very annoying and, in some cases durable, symptoms. The most common of these symptoms is fatigue and feeling permanently sleepy, but some people can also have digestive problems (including vomiting), memory loss, dehydration, loss of appetite, disorientation, , apathy and irritability. This doesn’t happen for everyone though. The longer is the flight and, of course, the more time zones you’ll travel, the more you’ll notice the effects of jet lag. Ah ! as a curious fact, jet lag can be also called “the time zone change syndrome” or , much more complicated, ” desynchronosis”. We tend to notice it less if we travel westward, because time lengthens to our body clock. However, when we travel eastwards, jet lag is noticed significantly more. Our app of the month is the Jet Lag App. This review was written by Diana, one of our external bloggers. My personal review: For just 2.63 Euro, Jet Lag App will...
App of the month: Postagram
It seems like an eternity ago when people were still sending letters and postcards from their holidays. Thanks to advances in technology messaging or communicating over the distance in general has become much easier, particularly thanks to smartphones. This development over the past years has lead to the drastic decline of actual mail. To capture memories from our trips the camera is an indispensable companion, but nowadays less people print out their pictures and they stay “digitally locked up” on our computers or phones. Since August is the epitome of the holiday period, we think it is time to bring postcards back! This month we chose Postagram as app of the month, an app that allows you to send your pictures from your phone, computer and even social media accounts as real postcards. This review is by Laura, digital marketing analyst. Photo: Postagram My view: My sister lives with her family in France and I live in Spain, like our parents. My nephew is nearly two years old. Since he was born pictures of him are being sent via email and cell phone almost on the daily between all family members. At the moment my sister is here with her family to visit. Her husband’s parents live in Canada and they don’t get to see my nephew all the time. My sister was actually the one who pointed this app out to me as they’re using it to send personalized postcards to the grandparents in Canada. It is a very cool way not only to send postcards, but also to share pictures. Over the weekend we took some really good...
App of the month: City Maps 2Go
At Only-apartments we want to make an effort to make travelling better. Whether you are travelling with your family, your partner or friends it is safe to assume that the smartphone has become an indispensable travel companion. For this reason we have decided to review a new app every month to help you get more out of your trips. The app of this month is City Maps 2Go – an app for iOS and Android that lets you download maps on a mobile device which can then be used anytime without data connection. This review is by our Content Editor Maike. My View: Let me just start by saying that I have personally not been able to use the app on a trip yet, BUT so far it has come in very handy to share tips with anyone visiting me in Barcelona. Here is why: The maps are accesible without data connection and there is lots of useful information neatly organized in categories such as Food, Shops, Nightlife, Architecture etc. But what I find the most useful is that you can add your own pins to the map to which you can add ratings and reviews that you can later share with other users . Particularly in the summer months I receive a lot of visitors. Unfortunately, I can’t always spend as much time as I would like with them. While they’re on holidays, I usually am still in my full-on routine and they go off exploring the city without me. To me one of the great things of living here is being able to share “insider information” that...
App of the month: Everplaces
At Only-apartments we´re keen to make travelling better – easier, more rewarding, better value, and fun – and with a world of apps out there, our mobile phones can be our best friend. So, every month on our blog we´ll be reviewing a new app that we think helps you get more out of your trips. Let us know what you think! Our first app of the month is Everplaces – an app for the iPhone and Android that helps you to store and share your favourite places, reviewed by our Comms manager Rosie. My view: I think I might get addicted to Everplaces. In a nutshell, it’s an easy way for anyone with a smartphone to get hold of some great local tips, and share their own, in a gorgeous looking interface. Everplaces has 11 categories of “place”, including Architecture, Design and Culture. I’ve spent most of my time in perusing Food and Drink, which is a goldmine for people like me, who like eating well but don’t have a Michelin-star budget. I´m also slightly obssessive about sharing my own restaurant tips – as a Brit in Barcelona, I see every day how easy it is to eat badly due to shyness or lack of knowledge, and because this upsets me so much I frequently find myself emailing a huge list of tapas bars out to visiting friends of friends to save them from a similar fate. (The problem with Barcelona is that the best bars and restaurants often have the most unassuming exteriors, but of course, the worst ones do too!) So it was great to have...
