We love our iPhones (and yes, we did just both upgrade to the new iPhone 4), and we are growing increasingly addicted to our iPads (yup, we have two).

We consider both of these fine pieces of technology to be [...]]]> As Technomads, it should be no surprise that we are mobile technology lovers.

We love our iPhones (and yes, we did just both upgrade to the new iPhone 4), and we are growing increasingly addicted to our iPads (yup, we have two).

We consider both of these fine pieces of technology to be essential components of our technomadic arsenal. There is something magical about having the Internet in your pocket, a world’s worth of maps on your lap, email and messaging always with you, music and video on demand, and an abundance of incredible apps that every day make our iGadgets ever more useful tools for facilitating our full time domestic travels.

Oh, and apparently the iPhone actually makes phone calls too. (We really aren’t phone people…)

Today we’d like to share some of favorite apps that we use specifically in our travels. Please note that aside from the apps we were involved with creating, we paid for all of the apps and these are unsolicited reviews.  Just our honest opinions.   But, if you do opt to buy any of these apps off our recommendations, the links below are iTunes affiliate links and we will get a tiny cut.

Apps for Finding RV Parking & Camping

When we first starting looking for apps to create on our own – a campground locater was tops on our list. At the time, we could find no decent options.  More recently however, there seem to be a bunch of them – and we’ve been trying several of them out.  There still does not seem to be one single app that does everything – but there are some promising potentials.  We find ourselves using a combination of apps depending on the situation and type of camping or overnight parking we’re looking for.

	RVParking.com – Free This app claims to have more than 18,000 listings in their database, which is also accessible online at RVParking.com.  Both the website and app are brand new, and the database is still being fleshed out.  We’ve found many duplicates, bad addresses, missing parks, and listings for mobile home parks that don’t allow RVs. The maps in the app don’t seem to auto-update as you scroll through them, making browsing by map a bit of a challenge by having to start with a location search. They do have a unique angle tho that we’re really excited about – integrating in full park info, user reviews, photos and profiles. We’ve been enjoying leaving reviews, and would love to see this website adopted by others.  If it can get a lot of following, it stands to be an excellent central source for finding RV Parking information on the go. And as a free app – it’s definitely worth checking out (just be prepared to do a bit of fact checking until the database gets cleaned up.)
	Camp & RV by Allstays – $2.99 This app uses the same technology as the rest of the Allstays product line to help you find things near highway intersections and freeway exits.  It features a wide variety of RV camping and overnight options – including some public campgrounds, private campgrounds, KOAs, truck stops, Walmarts (including those that don’t allow overnighting), rest areas (including wifi & RV dump availability) and RV repair & parts stores.  Each category shows up on maps with nicely labeled pins so you can quickly scan for what you need. You can also adjust how far from the highways exit you want to search. The interface is fairly intuitive, and we like that the maps auto update with camping options as you scroll around.  Their nifty exit view auto updates as you approach exits to show you what is coming up. We’ve found a fair amount of discrepancies in the database, and a lot of missing campgrounds, so it is not entirely comprehensive.  The app has built in feedback to the developer to submit corrections.  As this is the only app that tracks free overnight parking options, we mainly use this app when we’re in transit and just in need of a place to sleep for the night.
	Campwhere – $5.99 This app only covers public campgrounds – including city, county, national, state, forest service, BLM and Army Corp of Engineer campgrounds.  Since this is our preferred camping style, this app has been a great tool for us to quickly find our public camping options. The database seems pretty comprehensive and accurate, and smartly leaves off campgrounds that are not accessible by vehicle. In the map view, each type of campground is displayed in a different color. The user interface is so incredibly well done, that we wish they had a version that was completely comprehensive of all camping & overnight options so we could only use one app.  There is not much information to be found for each campground listing aside from the number of sites they have, coordinates, weather forcast and web link.  The app would be more useful if it listed amenities provided, prices and more.  Overall, for finding public camping options, this is our top choice app – especially since the app now also works full-screen on the iPad.

If the three apps above could be merged into one comprehensive, user friendly app – we’d be very happy campers!

Apps to Aid General Travel

	HearPlanet: Audio Guide to the World – $4.99 We must admit, we’re partial to this app as were hired to orchestrate its launch at MacWorld 2009 (a very fun project!). Even without a connection to the app, we’d use it often in our travels to get an overview of things around us. It’s an awesome concept – an audio tour guide for the world around you, which are perfect for while you’re driving. The bulk of the database is basically text-to-speech computer voiced Wikepedia entries – however HearPlanet has been hard at work acquiring premium human voiced content. We even have some entries we have created in the app, just search for ‘TFT’ to find them.
	Google Earth – Free Chris is addicted to Google Earth, particularly on the iPad. Google Earth lets you zoom in and browse the entire world, using your fingers to zoom, pan, and tilt in a way that is so much more intuitive than any desktop application. We use Google Earth to scope out the road ahead, and the places we have been – getting a great overview of the towns and terrain we have passed through. And – Google Earth integrates Wikipedia as well – so whenever you see an interesting place, the Wikipedia page for more details is just a click away. Just the other day Chris used Google Earth to “fly” through West Virginia’s New River Gorge, reading about the regions rich mining history as he went. Amazing stuff!
	Roadside America – $2.99 This is an app version of the popular website that tracks all the various roadside attractions across the US – so now you’ll know where all those large balls of twine are!  We enjoy using this app to find cool off-the-beaten path things around as we travel.  We enjoy that users can leave tips and that you can mark the things you’ve seen.  They also have an interesting pricing model – the $2.99 purchase prices gets you 1 of 6 regions of the US.  If you want other regions or the entire US, you can make an in app purchase to activate them.
	CoPilot Live USA - $4.99 The iPhone and iPad are perfect navigation devices with the built in GPS and gorgeous high-resolution screens. For the most part, the built in Google Maps application works well, but only when you have cellular coverage. Because the maps are loaded over the Internet, if you are out in the boonies you can easily end up lost. The Google Maps app also doesn’t do turn-by-turn directions to let you know when a turn is coming up, or automatic re-routing when you veer off course. We’ve been in search of a better navigation solution, and for now we’re trying out CoPilot Live USA. At $4.99 for the entire countries worth of maps, it is an incredible bargain. The app so far has impressed us, though the UI is cumbersome at times, and the GPS seems to occasionally get confused – telling us to “turn right, then turn left” on long straightaways where no turn is necessary. But for the price, you can’t beat it.
	CoPilot Live HD North America –  $29.99 The only iPad-optimized full screen navigation app out so far is CoPilot Live HD North America, but it has gotten some rather poor initial reviews. For now we are waiting for an update to be released, or for TomTom or Magellan to come out with an iPad optimized mapping app.
	State Lines – $2.99 And of course, we have to mention our own app – State Lines. We developed State Lines to fulfill our own desire for a single resource for all those laws and regulations that change as you cross state lines.  The app itself is selling fairly well, despite us lacking the time to really do much of a marketing push on it. We also just released a alcohol specific version for just $.99 that tracks just state alcohol laws, including DUI information.  We must say, we are loving our own app, and we use it frequently as we cross state lines to find out if gas taxes will be cheaper in the next state, if we can overnight at rest areas, if we can buy beer in grocery stores on a Sunday and other such information. We’ve been busy collecting even more data (child safety seat laws, U-turns, more motorcycle information, etc.) that we will be releasing in an expanded version soon.  If you were so kind as to purchase the app and are finding it useful, would you mind leaving us a review in the App Store?

Apps for General Use in Travel

	GasBag Pro – $1.99 When you’re on the road as often as we are, being able to locate the cheapest gas can make a huge difference in our bottom line travel budget. There are several apps available for tracking gas prices, and we’re partial to this one because it also has a built in mileage log.
	Yelp – Free We love Yelp – both the iPhone app and their website. It helps us quickly locate good places to eat – as well as dentists, veterinarians, mechanics, hair salons and more. End users can leave reviews, so it’s a great way to get unbiased opinions about places when we pull into a new town.
	USPS Mobile – Free While we try to minimize the amount of mail we need to handle, we do utilize shipping from time to time. This app from the US Post Office lets us quickly location post offices and mail drop boxes.  Our favorite features is that it also lets us find the automated postal centers, which allow us to do full package shipping after postal office hours.

That’s our current list of our favorite RV travel essentials.

Do you have any other favorites? Please share them here – we are always looking for great new apps to try!

Traveling around the USA, you likely have had some of the same experiences we have…

It used to be my job to literally dissect every [...]]]> For those who haven’t known me for a while, you may not know that before going nomadic I used to be the Director of Competitive Analysis for Palm (the maker of the Pilot, Tungsten, and Treo) and PalmSource (the Palm OS operating system spinoff).

It used to be my job to literally dissect every worthwhile mobile gadget in existence, and I typically carried multiple smartphones in my pockets with cell phone plans from every major carriers.

Imagine the looks I used to get going through airport X-Rays… (vintage 2004 tech)

I sometimes miss getting paid to play with so many cool toys, but I don’t miss the endless juggling and constant shifting from one device to the next.

Now I get to pick just one.

For the past two years, my choice has been the original iPhone.

The great leap forward in user interface that the iPhone represented left every other mobile device looking like a dinosaur, even my beloved Treo. Once the iPhone was opened up to third party developers, there was no looking back.

The iPhone 3G last year wasn’t enough to lure me into upgrading, though Cherie did happily leave behind Windows Mobile (another dinosaur platform) for one. Most of the new features in the iPhone 3G were added to the original iPhone via a free software upgrade, and the 3G speeds would have only been a compelling enough reason to upgrade if Apple and AT&T had allowed tethering.

Ever since the iPhone launched, everyone else in the mobile industry has been playing catch up – typically with extremely disappointing results. RIM continues to do one thing extremely well (mobile email), but Nokia, Samsung, and Motorola have all been left struggling desperately for a hit.

The only non-Apple phone that is in the same next-generation league as the iPhone is the newly released Palm Pre – a stunning achievement by the Palm team.

The Pre has real multitasking (sorely lacking from the iPhone), “Synergy” data syncing with multiple online services such as FaceBook and Google, and a fabulous UI that in some ways raises the bar even on the iPhone. With a bit more refinement and some third party developer momentum, the Pre will soon be even more compelling.

But not (yet) compelling enough.

Though I was sorely tempted by the Pre’s amazing multitasking abilities and super sweet Synergy, the brand new iPhone 3G S has won me over. We stopped at the downtown Chicago Apple store yesterday to get one:

I was surprised that there were still lines out into the street three days after the iPhone 3G S started shipping. Fortunately we only had to wait 30 minutes before I got mine.

So why did I choose the iPhone 3G S?

• Applications – There are over 50k iPhone applications out now, while the Pre is just getting started and the SDK isn’t even widely available yet. I am an application junky, and I have many daily-use iPhone apps that I can’t imagine being without.
• Compass + Accelerometer + GPS = Augmented Reality – Over the course of the coming year, I expect to see some amazing innovation in this area.
• Tethering – Though AT&T won’t say when they will support it, it is built into OS 3.0, and at least AT&T promises that it is coming. As technomads, the ability to use our phones to get our laptops online is crucial.
• 32 Gigabytes – I used to have a 60GB iPod, and I have felt hampered the past two years trying to cram my media collection into the 8GB capacity of my original iPhone. I am thrilled to once again be able to carry around a decent quantity of music and videos in my pocket. The Pre on the other hand can only hold 8GB.
• Pocket Video Capture – The iPhone 3G S has a very usable 3 megapixel camera, and it at last supports video! I am very much looking forward to having a reasonably decent still / video capture device that I can trust to be always with me.


Canon G9 (left) vs iPhone 3G S (right). Though the Canon is a much more powerful camera, for typical web snapshots the iPhone is at last reasonably good enough to allow leaving larger cameras behind…

• 3D Graphics – Before Palm, I used to work in the 3D graphics industry, and I have a fine appreciation for accelerated 3D graphics. Early benchmarks show that the iPhone 3G S is 4x faster than the iPhone 3G when it comes to 3D rendering. Assuming the next iPod Touch (due in Sept) has the same 3D hardware, it will be a killer gaming device indeed. Sony and Nintendo better watch out!
• Future Upgradability – Apple has provided the iPhone 3.0 OS as a free upgrade to iPhone 3G and even original iPhone owners, bringing even the oldest iPhones many of the new non-hardware-dependent features. I expect Apple will continue this trend, and even two years from now the iPhone 3G S will be getting major functionality upgrades. No other phone manufacturers has ever done such a good job continuing to support old hardware. Kudos to Apple!

In all of these areas, the iPhone 3G S is way ahead of the Pre, and light years ahead of anything else out there.

So far, I am loving the 3G S. It is a beautifully refined and polished product, with all sorts of little details and delights that show the intense attention to quality and detail that Apple is known for.

I have found my new ultimate mobile phone.

What is yours?