clockwork s'Mart

Yeah, before you tell me I know the holiday season is almost over – but hey, there’s always next year!

But I digress; regular viewers will no doubt have seen by expliots in Paris in early September this year. So whats the post about? Well its an overview of some of the applications I used during the break.

The holiday was in two parts; first in Disneyland Paris and the second part exploring the City itself, for a bit of culture. Before hand I bought some travel guides, which I hope would aid the adventure – but they were bulky and although they had a useful map in the back, they were hardly 21st centry.

So I dipped into the iTunes store to see what was avaliable for both the iPod Touch and the iPhone; all the applications mentioned will work on either, but the running on the iPhone will utilise the built in GPS functionality. If you are using an iPhone, make sure you look out for off-line applications – these require no data connection to operate. Remember if you’re outside your country or data area covered by your service provider data costs are heavy. To give you an example O2 in the UK charge £3 (about 5 USD) per MB of data while roaming.

Sadly the iTunes store threw up a blank for the Disneyland Paris Resort, although there are many applications for the other parks within the US.

So lets have a brief review of the applications I checked out;

Paris2Go

Out of the guides I tried (all off-line) this was the most useful. Using GPS it would show your location on the map and the currently selected attraction; zooming into the map gave you the oppertunity to find a route yourself to your selected destination. This was also helpful for finding the nearest Metro station – nice clear intelligent map!

Other feature as well as finding attractions nearby with the option to show POI’s as well. Each of the attractions shows a brief overview, and after selecting the item gives you wiki type detail – from here you can check it on the map or add a bookmark which gives you a certain amount of pre-planning prior to your holiday.

Searchable categories using the options mentioned above include;

• Nearby
• Top Places (tourist favorites)
• Places (subdivided into Museums, CHurches, Monuments, Palaces etc..)
• Geography (Neighborhoods, Major Streets, Major Squares etc…)
• Transportation
• Entertainment
• Eat & Drink
• History & People

Overall I would recommend this application to anyone visiting the city a worthwhile investment for only £0.59 – bargain!

Paris2Go iTunes Link

RATP Premier

This is a cracking little tool, autoroute for the entire Metro and RER rail network. The application is able to use GPS to locate stations nearby and provide routes to a preferred location of another station of your choice. The application does what it says on the box, althought there are number of enhancements I would like to see; better optermised routing, from a starting location the application will offer two, maybe three stations but not recommend the the best station to use for a rapid trip to your destination. This is the Premium version, and can be purchased for £0.59.

RATP Premier iTunes Link

Rick Steve’s Historic Paris Walk

There are many paper based guide books avaliable off the shelf, but they all lack one thing – the spoken word. We mentioned Paris2Go earlier which is more like an intellegent paper guide book, but the Paris Walk is a full guided tour which will take you about 4 hours to complete.

This was the 2nd Ray Steve’s guided tour I had tried, the Orsay Museum Guide which sadly was a disapointment, mainly because the museum has re-organised the gallery making he guided tour unuable. But I am glad to say that the Paris Walk was a huge success. With video, text and audio embedded in the application if was a wireless application and suitable for the Touch also.

I won’t say any more about the tour as it will spoil it; but check out the interface and content below; well worth the £2.99

Rick Steve’s Historic Paris Walk iTunes Link

These are just a handful of the many amazing guides that you can find on the iTunes store for both the iPod Touch and the iPhone, if you’ve discovered other useful guides drop them in a comment below and share with the rest of us please.