So by now I’m sure everyone on earth has a Facebook profile set-up, right? Well, someone sent me an application that I thought I would share with you all. It uses your profile information and from it plans a vacation for you. Is that neat or what? Since you already have personal data on your profile based on likes and dislikes, the Halifax holiday matchmaker (that’s what the application is called) will create a custom tailored travel guide by using your Facebook content. I went ahead and gave it a try and the results were fairly accurate when it came down to would I actually take the vacation they designed. Truthfully I would have to say that I would. The holiday matchmaker (somewhat eerily) came up with something that resembled what I would plan for myself. It has details about eateries, events and weather just to name a few. There are more areas where details are given such as Halifax Travel Money. Couples on Facebook seem to enjoy this application because it gives them the chance to compare their compatibility based on the holiday matchmaker results. My excitement in it stems from my own personal travel experiences. It’s impressive that an application could make realistic travel related assumptions that fit my lifestyle. The list of bars they suggested are right up my alley when it comes to style and price range. Anyway, Halifax Holiday Matchmaker is fun regardless if you are trying to plan a getaway or not.
Category Archives: Travel
Halifax Holiday Matchmaker
GPSed – Track Your Trips
I really liked this app. It allows you to plot a trip using the iPhone’s built in GPS and save the information for use later. When you are actually taking the trip, whether driving, walking or flying, it shows you your average speed, top speed and distance traveled as well as how long it takes you to complete each step of the journey. This is helpful for keeping track of mileage if you need reimbursement for work and for finding out how long a trip actually takes instead of relying on estimates from mapping programs.
The only flaw I found isn’t really with the app but with how the iPhone handles background processes. If your phone times out and goes to sleep, the app pauses until you power it back on. This causes your speeds to become skewed and report wrong, since the app won’t know the program stopped and will instead catch up by immediately adding the new miles traveled when it kicks back in.
Since the phone timed out while I was driving and then kicked back on a couple minutes later, the app assumed I jumped 10 miles in two seconds and gave me an insanely high travel speed of over 120 miles per hour (which is not even possible in my little car). Aside from this little hiccup, the app works as promised and was very helpful.
The app doesn’t have much in the way of graphics or sound. It’s just an allover simple design. It also doesn’t provide maps, just odometer, time and speed statistics.
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Urban Spoon
Part dining site and part slot machine, Urban Spoon is a great app for those times when you just can’t decide where to go for dinner. All you have to do is start the program and it will immediately search for your location using the iPhone’s GPS. Once that’s done you get a screen where you can choose a nearby city, the type of food you’d like, the price range or all three by touching the lock icon underneath the option. Or, if you truly want to fly by the seat of your pants, leave everything unlocked.
Then, simply shake your phone, or if you don’t want to shake your phone, push the button that says “shake.” The dials will spin and you’ll end up with a restaurant name. Click on the name to get the address, phone number and an option to read reviews. Don’t like what you see? Select “shake” on the top left to go back and try again.
If you don’t want to be quite so random, you can instead choose browse, search or near me from the bottom of the screen. Browse allows you to see a comprehensive listing of restaurants in your area, search lets you find a restaurant by key word and near me will bring up a list ordered by distance from your current location.
My favorite feature of the app was, of course, the slot machine aspect. I’m one of those people that never knows where to go, and it can help to have the iPhone do the deciding for me. However, one thing I didn’t like was that it didn’t pick up any restaurants in my local city. In fact, I was sitting in a restaurant when I tried the app and it wasn’t even listed as an option. Hopefully this will improve as Urban Spoon expands the application.
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Google Earth
Google Earth for the iPhone is a good complement to its desktop counterpart, but with a few neat additions. Like on the desktop version, you can search for an address and view it from far away or as close as almost street level, seeing an overhead shot of the location as if you were a few feet above the building. Once you’ve zoomed in as far as you can zoom in, you can tilt your phone to change the perspective from front to back to side.
Because of iPhone’s built-in GPS, the app can find your current location. Just click on the icon in the bottom left of the screen. Once you’ve found yourself you can search for local businesses and get their locations marked by icons. Just click on the magnifying glass in the top left corner and type in what you’re looking for. Though you can’t get a map or directions, the app will display the address and phone number and a link to the company’s website.
If nothing else, this is just a cool way to look at your surroundings, and it does have some practical use as well. However, it seems the functionality is a bit too overwhelming for the iPhone. It takes several seconds to load most pages, and the app crashed several times while I was using it. Hopefully this will be fixed in a later update. Currently, this sluggishness would prevent me from using it too often.
But for the price – free – Google Earth is a great app. It’s fun to get a view of your house or numerous destinations around the globe in a view few other programs can offer.
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Flight Status
Flight Status is a native application for iPhone and iPod Touch that lets you check the status of thousands of flights from all countries around the world. It offers the flight status from thousands of flights from 1143 Airline carriers around the world from 4246 Airports. This includes all passenger carriers from all countries.
You can check the Status of the flights in three ways. 1) By Flight
Number 2) By Route and 3) By Airport. With these three approaches, you
can track pretty much any flight using the application. Flight Status
needs internet connectivity to gather this information. If you are
traveling, roaming charges may apply.
I recently tested Fight Status for my trip to Punta Cana on USA3000 airlines which I was surprised to find such a small airline was still included in the app. I entered my flight # and it pulled up all my flight info with seconds.
I highly recommend this App for everyone especially frequent travelers. This App will help speed up your travel, there will be no need to find arrival or departure monitors in the airports to see if your flight is on time, delayed or even canceled see total flying time from origin to destination. Perfect if your picking up family or friends from the airport.
The latest update includes a ‘Trips’ module that lets you group all flights you track for a trip in a single screen. This way, you can quickly get to the flights of your interest.
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