Silverware Software

Summer has officially begun here in the States. Schools are closing and families are planning vacations across our great land. It can be a hassle, but don't fret! Here are five apps to make your adventure more enjoyable. (Free) When my sisters and I were young, my dad routinely stuffed us into the "wayback" of our Matador station wagon where we sat, sweaty and gobbling Chicken McNuggets, en route to nowhere in particular. Ah, I can still smell the BBQ dipping sauce and leaded gas fumes. Few contemporary families enjoy a Sunday drive, and that's what the aptly-named Sunday Drive for iPhone aims to change. The attractive, location-based app represents a growing database of user-supplied travel routes, attractions and single-day getaways. To get started, let the iPhone find your location via GPS. A map will load with the familiar blue dot as well as Sunday Drive icons representing logged drives. Tap any one to see its title, distance from your location and length (9.1 miles, for example). Tap again to review details, like an overall description, standout points of interest, photos and the ideal starting point. Finally, you can mark certain trips as favorites (Facebook login required) and even submit your own. If your submission is featured on the Sunday Drive website, you'll earn ten bucks! If only we had this app back in the day. I mentioned the fumes, right? ($4.99 or $9.99 for Pro; universal) You'll be flying to visit Grandma's retirement village in Florida? Grab the SPF 100, Dramamine and inevitable acknowledgment of your own mortality while you install Fight Update Pro. I've used this app for years, and it consistently beats the airport itself at dispensing timely info and completely eliminates paper. Here's how it works. First, enter a name ("Trip to Florida"), the start and end date plus any relevant notes. Next, tap Add a Flight. A new window appears. This is where it gets good. Scroll through an exhaustive list of airlines to find yours and then enter your flight number (via the conveniently-supplied number pad) and the date. Hit Save, and the app does the rest. A tidy window appears that lists the airline, flight number, type of plane and status (on time, late, departed, etc.). You'll also find the originating and destination airport, actual departure and arrival times (updated in real time), gate and terminal information as well as the airport's home country Read More

For those of us who use the TripIt service and app to keep track of our upcoming travel plans, the lack of an iPad version of the app was somewhat annoying. You could always load the iPhone app onto your iPad and use the 2X button to expand the size, but it just didn't look or feel right. Third-party apps that accessed TripIt's API, like TravelTracker Pro, filled the gap, but they didn't have that TripIt 'made here' feel. All of our requests for the iPad app were answered today, as the travel organizer has come out with a new universal version of the app. The app is available in two flavors -- a free, ad-supported version and a US$3.99 version without advertising. The TripIt iPad edition is nicely designed to take advantage of the extra space afforded by the tablet's screen, and large maps that display your trip plans to accentuate the information in your itineraries. If you already use TripIt and have been wanting a bit of additional "legroom" in the app, download the update right now. A few screenshots of the iPad version can be seen in the gallery below. Read More

(image source: Apple, Inc) With the release of the iPad 2, there has been a lot of commentary on the overall usefulness of the iPad. Even amongst the iSource staff, there is some debate as to whether or not the iPad is a truly useful device, or merely an expensive toy. Here’s my take. When the iPad was announced a year ago, I had no plans at all to buy it. Like many others, I concluded that it was little more than a large iPod Touch; and I simply didn’t see a need for one, especially considering that I had a perfectly usable iPhone. When my friend Mike got one, I played around with it a bit; but ultimately, I came to the same conclusion – a big iPod. Much later, when I started traveling for work again, I finally realized how useful the iPad could be and decided to take the plunge. Several months later, I am a happy iPad user who is thinking of upgrading to an iPad 2. So why is the iPad a tool and not a toy for me? In truth, it’s both. Here’s what the iPad means to me. GoodReader. It all starts here. This uber-reader application holds all of my professional and volunteer work documents for instant recall and review. This includes product manuals, customer notes, even expense reports. GoodReader can sync with Dropbox and several other cloud services, meaning that as soon as I drop a file into Dropbox on my laptop, it can be accessible on my iPad. With Office2 HD, I can edit spreadsheets or documents – and since it also integrates with DropBox, anything I create on the iPad can be instantly available on the laptop as well. Everything can be emailed or made available locally via a built-in Wifi server. If the accounting folks lose the receipts that I send with my expense report, I can pull up a scanned PDF of them and email it immediately. Same for the customer who needs product documentation or the design documentation I wrote last week. The WebEx app allows me to attend or host meetings without having to fire up my laptop. This allows me to participate in an online meeting from pretty much anywhere, even in places I ordinarily wouldn’t relish dragging my laptop to, like a restaurant. Simplenote allows me to take quick notes (that sync to the cloud Read More

TravelTracker Pro keeps tabs on your entire trip, including real-time flight status. I'm winging my way to San Francisco in a couple weeks, so I've been rounding up apps that'll make my trip easier and more enjoyable. Obviously I'll stock up on e-books and movies for the flight (Wondershare's DVD Ripper Platinum is proving a great choice for copying my DVDs to my iPhone), and I've already got old standbys like Urbanspoon and Yelp for finding local grub and businesses. But there's more to a trip than just food and in-flight movies. Here's a list of the iPhone apps I've decided to pack: HearPlanet puts a tour guide in your pocket, letting you listen while you sightsee. I also recommend browsing the iTunes podcast library for anything pertaining to the city you're visiting. In short order I found all kinds of cool stuff on San Francisco, including half a dozen free Stroll San Francisco Audio Tours. OK, your turn: What apps do you take when you take a trip? Hit the comments and nominate your must-haves. Read More

Recently I spent a few days in Paris, France. I travel light: One bag (pro tip: Roll your clothes), one jacket and one hat. I love getting my necessities down to a single carry-on bag. What I hate is all the paper. Airline confirmation receipts, bus schedules, relevant correspondence from family and friends, etc. Not to mention lists of restaurants to try, sights to see, etc. This time I went nearly paper-free (I'm sticking with paper boarding passes for international flights, although iPhone scanning has been done and is now officially supported by some carriers), thanks to my iPhone and 2 applications. Here's how I did it.Tracking flights Of course, the first thing I've got to do is line up all of my flights. I typically go from Boston to Newark when I'm traveling internationally, which means there are several connecting flights to manage with Flight Update and Evernote. Flight Update [App Store link] is among my top 5 iPhone apps. Here's how it works and why I love it. First, add a trip and then add your flights. You can designate a preferred airline if there's one you use often. Enter your flight number and date (or search by route if you prefer) and Flight Update fills in an incredible amount of data as if by magic. You'll get airtime, departing and arriving airport, terminal, distance, scheduled meals and so much more. It even identifies the type of plane and offers a color-coded seating chart (the colors rate the seats by desirability). You can even search for alternate flights should a problem arise. What I really love about Flight Update is that it consistently beats the airport at dispensing timely information. For example, the flight I took from Newark, New Jersey to Boston, MA this past Monday was listed as delayed on my iPhone before the announcement was made at the gate. When the delay was later lifted (thank goodness), my iPhone let me know before the airport did. That's awesome. At $4.99US, you simply can't beat Flight Update. Every iPhone-toting traveler ought to own it. Eliminating paper With Flight Tracker handling the airplanes, I turned to Evernote [App Store link] to handle the paper. This is straightforward: I made a notebook called "Paris" and filled it with: When I checked in at the airport kiosk, I simply grabbed my confirmation number from Evernote. Same with the hotel. When I Read More

Do you travel a lot for business or pleasure? If you do, then you'll find the new free iPhone app (click opens iTunes) from Tripit.com to be a great way to organize your trip plans. Tripit.com imports and interprets your itineraries from airlines, hotel chains, ticket outlets, and other travel companies. When you receive an itinerary from one of these providers, you forward it to a special Tripit email address to have it translated into a trip plan automatically (the site supports hundreds of travel providers, and the translation from email into structured itinerary is really quite amazing). You can share your travel plans with friends or colleagues via LinkedIn, and see when your fellow travelers are heading to a city near you or when their plans align with yours. That collection of trip plans is what you view with the Tripit.com app. The app is linked to your Tripit.com account, and displays a day by day list of flights, car rentals, and other events that make up your trips. Each event can be opened in further detail to show information such as arrival and departure times, confirmation numbers, and more. Links for airport codes bring up Google Maps of the airport vicinity, and other links can check your flight status with a touch. Since you can always access the mobile version of the Tripit site from a connected iPhone or iPod touch, the big advantage of the native application is that the travel data is cached locally on the phone for offline review (mid-flight, for example). More full-featured apps like the $9.99US TravelTracker or FlightTrack Pro can also store and display your Tripit itineraries via the service's API, and Tripit's developers tell us that they intend to continue supporting third-party application access. To use the app on your iPhone or iPod touch, all you need to do is sign up for a free Tripit.com account or forward your first itinerary to plans@tripit.com. Take a look at the gallery below for details of the Tripit app at work. Read More