Travel Apps: On the road again

Have you booked your holiday yet? Well if you haven’t, you should, because whether you’re travelling for work or pleasure, there’s an iPhone app just for you – and some of them are simply awesome!

TripIt

This could be the coolest app ever invented for the traveller.

When your airline emails you your itinerary, you just forward it to the TripIt email address. It then automatically builds you a full list of your travel dates, destinations and other handy info like maps of your destination airport through Google Maps.

Each trip can be given a different name, so your trip to China to negotiate a new manufacturing deal with the factory in Shenzhen can be kept well and truly separate from your trip to Dublin for Aunt Muriel’s third wedding.

If you’re a serious traveller, as opposed to the kind that cracks bad jokes during take-off and landing, you might want to consider shelling out for either of the parent apps, TravelTracker ($9.99) or TravelTracker Pro ($15.99). These versions give you the option to add a whole host of other details into your trip planning, such as car hire, currencies, hotel bookings, expenses and weather conditions. The pro version gives you live flight information and changes to scheduling.

SitOrSquat

Don’t flush away your holiday looking for the local amenities! As long as we have SitOrSquat, a free application for iPhone, iPod Touch and, for US subscribers, the BlackBerry, you won’t have too.

This gorgeous little app will use your location and produce a map showing all toilets available to the public in the area. It will even give them ratings, tell you whether they’re sit or squat, sometimes offer a photo and even detail other features such as whether or not there’s a room attendant.

Free Translator

There are lots of language tools for iPhone – this is a good one. We tried it out with everything – brand names, instructions, directions and, of course, insults and profanities, not only so you can tell the locals what you think of their snooty attitude (particularly important when travelling in France) but also so you know what they’re saying about you – it may not be ‘welcome to our beautiful country, please enjoy your stay!'

This tool is a free interface to Google Translate API. It has a bajillion languages (OK, that’s not a quote from the technical specs or anything) including: Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish and Vietnamese.

In the Chinese version it gives you characters, so while you can’t pronounce them you can show it to a willing taxi driver at 2am, when you’re trying to find your hotel. Or 4am, if you’re travelling on business.

Good luck and happy trails!