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TRAVEL Hints and Tips Post your TIPS to travellers - all the interesting little tidbits you learned on the road about packing, where to get stuff, and how to cope with problems. Please make sure the subject describes the tip clearly!
Photo by Marc Gibaud, Clouds on Tres Cerros and Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia

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Photo by Marc Gibaud,
Clouds on Tres Cerros and
Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia



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  #1  
Old 25 Feb 2014
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The top 10 Apps for travelling overland and abroad

Here are my favorite top 10 list of apps for travelling overland abroad.

Some of these apps are very useful because they offer access also while offline, others are helpful because they give you more out of a bad internet connection, or to stay in contact with your family and friends.

Like a Wifi-Scanner who shows you where you can get internet access, or an app who compress any internet traffic.

I`m pretty shure that there are apps on this list you didnt know or functions of known apps who are new to you.



Since I currently mostly use iOS devices (iPad, iPhone), this top list is done for these iOS based devides. But you should be able to find similar functionality too on Android or Windows based phones or tablets.

Here is the article:

4x4tripping: The 10 most important apps for Overlanders

Since it is expensive to try out many apps arround travelling, i think these lists are helpful for other travellers. So if you think that you know an App who should be named there too- please write a comment or post here your suggestions.

Surfy
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  #2  
Old 27 Feb 2014
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This is very usefull, thanks!
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  #3  
Old 27 Feb 2014
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And if u are riding a motorcycle in Australia you definitely need the free apps to find Motorcycle Parking and Motorcycle Dealers and Workshops
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  #4  
Old 3 Mar 2014
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Since our navigation netbook broke down two weeks ago we are using Mapfactor on our Android phone as replacement. It works out pretty much the same as a normal navigation system, navigates offline with downloaded OSM maps and saves favorites as well as tracks in gpx format. Best of all it's for free. Also cleared up the dashboard a bit.

Cheers
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  #5  
Old 17 Mar 2014
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my favorites

World Explorer - Travel Guide (free)
Give you the skinny on all the places to check out for almost any town of size. Results can be viewed by popularity and pushpins on a map. Requires an internet connection. Drill down on any item for read the Wikipedia article...

Currency (free)
Easy to use currency converter. Load up on all the countries before you arrive at the border and need to change money.

Blogger (free)
Update your blog posts offline, then upload at the end of the day...

Hostelworld.com (free)
Book a room for the next stop. I don't usually make reservations in advance unless it a holiday weekend coming up...

Vonage Mobile (free)
Free calls to landlines and cell phones in the U.S. from international locations. The offer may be over by the time you read this post.

MagicJack (free)
Was offering the same as Vonage, but the connection wasn't as good.
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2008/09 - NJ to Costa Rica and back to NJ
2012/13 - NJ to Northern Argentina, Jamaica, Cuba and back to NJ
2023 - Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia...back to Peru.

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  #6  
Old 11 Apr 2014
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Wootan View Post
Since our navigation netbook broke down two weeks ago we are using Mapfactor on our Android phone as replacement. It works out pretty much the same as a normal navigation system, navigates offline with downloaded OSM maps and saves favorites as well as tracks in gpx format. Best of all it's for free. Also cleared up the dashboard a bit.
Good that you had a spare device!

As you see in Nigeria (i did read your blog), you dont will be very happy with OSM. It will dont get better till Angola.

No show stopper - there are not too many roads. But specially when you dont want to travel on the well known paths a device with some more informations would be handy (just downloaded satellite view of bing helps there really)

I suggests to buy/download the Android App for Tracks4Africa:

Tracks4Africa Smartphone Apps

Also T4A has not that many informations about Cameroon and the Congos, but it is better than nothing. For the satellite stuff it is too late now, i guess.

Starting from Angola you will love that Information you can get out of T4A. But also Hippocamp in Congo Brazzaville, the Tracks to Dr Congo, POIs generally, are helpful.

@ Peter: good Point, the Blogger-App is handy!

Surfy

Last edited by Surfy; 12 Apr 2014 at 10:54.
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  #7  
Old 13 Jun 2014
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Thanks for the advice, Surfy. We are looking into the Tracks4Africa app for the second leg of our trip. OSM worked well in Angola apart from our trip along the Cunene River through the Namibe desert. It's obviously very accurate here in Namibia.

We did not have a spare device btw. Bought a Samsung smartphone with large screen (Note 3) in Ghana for a smiliar price to Europe. We are using OSMAnd by now as it turned out to be a better choice for transfering POIs to a laptop. They are saved as .gpx and not some text file using a gps format that I have never seen in use anywhere else as Mapfactor does.

Cheers
Fabian
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  #8  
Old 17 Feb 2015
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For me:

Blitzer.de (free) speed camera warning for Europa
MapFactor (free) GPS Navigation OSM Maps
Email (free) stay in contact with your family
BlaBlaCar (free) give people a ride and makes travel cheaper
Couchsurfing (free) visit other people
Blog/FTP programm (free) keep your blog updated
Browser (free) read news and plan your trip
Editor (free) update your webpage
MP3 plaer (free) relax
Wifi teathering (free) connect your laptop to your Android
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