My favorite travelin' apps

The past few posts have highlighted some of my home-office solutions that keep me productive while on the road. Equally important, though, are the solutions that help me "in transit" to find where to go when and how.

My two "don't leave home without them" devices for RV travel are my Garmin 265 GPS and my iPhone 3Gs.

My Garmin unit features Bluetooth connectivity and customizable points of interest. So, not only can I do the typical GPS stuff like navigate from point A to point B or find the nearest gas station, if my RV ever breaks down, I can easily find the nearest Winnebago or Sprinter dealer and have the GPS dial the phone number for me.

Garmin provides a free POI Loader tool that you can download from their website onto your PC. Once you have that, you can find a lot of free POI (points of interest) files on the web. One very nice source for RVers is the Discovery Owners page of downloadable GPS files that identify everything from low clearance bridges, to the nearest campground or free overnight parking spot at a Wal-Mart, etc.

While some of the free POI files are great, some others can be out of date and in need of further editing. I use a shareware product called GeePeeEx to edit these files. It's not the prettiest product out there, but it does the job well. Once I've edited a POI file the way I want it, I use the Garmin POI Loader tool to upload the file onto my Garmin GPS.

Like millions of others, I've found my iPhone 3Gs simply indispensable. Not so much for it's hardware or phone features, but for it's applications. There's not only "an app for that", there are usually a half-dozen very good apps for that!

Here are a few of my favorite iPhone apps right now:

While Bing is a worthy competitor for voice-controlled web searches, I still like Google Mobile App and the iPhone's default Google Map app a bit better on the 3Gs. If I need to find the nearest laundrymat or post office, I just speak what I'm searching for and Google quickly provides a list of the nearest search results around me (based on the iPhone's built-in GPS and Compass) which I can then click to see them located on a map, click to call them, or click for driving directions. No typing required!

Keeping track of the weather is always important for an RVer. I've not found 1 perfect weather app, so I use a combination of 4 of them to gather all my weather info:

TheWeatherChannel app has the best animated maps that you can zoom and scroll easily on the iPhone to see where storms are and how they're tracking. It also gives good forecast info, but I find the small numbers on blue background makes their 10-day forecast a bit hard to read, so for that, I like WeatherBug with it's bigger fonts and white background a bit better. AccuWeather also gives a nice "at a glance" forecast view when I just want large numbers and graphics rather than detailed text.



Finally, if severe weather looms, and I'm aware from my dedicated weather radio in the RV, I use a neat app called WunderRadio that streams the nearest NOAA Weather radio station broadcasts (that app streams many other radio stations as well and is great for listening to your hometown radio stations while traveling!

There are a couple of very useful multi-purpose proximity-based apps that I use:

Where has a GasBuddy widget that allows you to find the cheapest nearby fuel by grade (great for RV'ing when I must locate diesel!). Where also can search the entire YellowPages.com site, but you must type in search terms as it doesn't support voice search.



AroundMe is similar to Garmin's default POI where the categories are pre-defined so you don't need to type anything to find the nearest grocery store, gas station, restaurant, hospital, etc.

Now for some miscellaneous cool apps that are useful while traveling:

• Clinometer is the best 99 cents I've ever spent! It provides a great 4-way bubble level that allows me to use my iPhone to level the RV when I arrive at a campground. It also measures slope/tilt/elevation, which can be helpful when pointing a satellite dish or for determining where the sun/moon will be at a certain time of day (see below for the companion app I use for that).



• MyAltitude is a free app that simply displays what altitude you're at. Nice for climbing up mountain passes.



• Flashlight is a silly, but useful app that fills the screen with a single color (which you can choose). Gives you enough light to find your glasses, unlock a door, or walk up a staircase in the dark.



• Dragon Dictation is amazingly accurate way to generate text without typing. You can then copy/paste this text into any other iPhone app or can email or text message it.



• EveryTrail is a neat little app for tracking a hike, bike ride, or paddling route you take and incorporating some iPhone photos of any cool things you see along the way. Another cool feature is that you can share your trip with other users and also search/view their trips (a great way to find interesting "trails" at a destination you'll be visiting soon).



• Wikihood is a fun little app that provides you with Wikipedia entries for locations that are currently around you. An interesting way to learn more random and unusual facts about a place you're visiting (things that might not be in the typical travel guide books).



• TapForms is a customizable database app that can take full advantage of iPhone features to capture/store information. Databases can contain the usual kinds of fields (text, dates, numbers, look-ups), but also can contain a photo, audio clip, or GPS location captured from your iPhone, a 5-star rating, a file attachment option for attaching any file the iPhone can view, a website URL, or even a phone number you can click to make a phone call. It's a great app to create inventories of all items in your RV or Household (for insurance purposes), and is also a great log book for remembering past campgrounds or great photo locations you've visited.

Speaking of photo locations, since that's one of my main reasons for traveling, there are a couple great photo apps on my iPhone as well:

• Focalware is a "must-have" for any outdoor photographer. It uses the iPhone's GPS and compass to show you where and when the sun or moon will rise and set, and the position of where the sun/moon will be at any particular time of day. It provides this info for your current location, or a location you're wishing to travel to for today or in the future.



• PhotoBuddy is a useful collection of photo tools for calculating depth of field, exposure, flash coverage, bracketing, and also provides a handy little bulb timer when taking long exposures.
  

Well, there you have it! My list of favorite traveling apps. If you've got some favorites not listed here, please post a comment and let me know about them!

Talk is cheap....and portable!

When I first began traveling alot for business, I had a cell phone for my business calls and a "Ma Bell" landline phone for home/personal calls. The home phone had an answering machine that I had to call periodically to see if I had any messages. It was a hassle, and I often wasn't aware of important messages until hours/days later.

So my next solution was to change my home phone to Vonage VOIP. It had a great feature that would email me any voice mails and allow me to listen to the message right from the email message. When I first got Vonage, it was about the same price as my basic AT&T home phone service (less than $20/mo). But over the years, it's fees continued to grow. Finally, a few months ago when the cost was now $27/mo, I decided to find a less expensive replacement.

I have a mobile phone with unlimited minutes, so that certainly could have been an easy solution-- but I didn't want to give my cell number out to all the places I do business with (as I'm sure telemarketing calls would inevitably result). I also didn't want to give up my multi-handset wireless phone system at home-- much nicer than carrying your cell phone up and down stairs.

Well, I've now found my solution(s)-- great features, super cheap, but rather techie to initially set up. Now, instead of paying nearly $30 a month, I'm paying around $3/mo and getting even more features!

Here's what I use:



Google Voice - This is an AMAZING free service that can be used with your existing number or they'll give you a new free phone number for your local area code. It shares the same contact list as Google Gmail and can import/export with various other address books. Google Voice is a call-routing service with a few cool twists. I gave my Google phone number out to all my friends and places I do business with. When they call the number, Google routes the call to whatever phones I wish to ring (such as my mobile and my home phones). Voice mail comes to me as email and includes not only the audio file but a text transcription of the call too.

But here's 3 really cool features--
- Advanced Call Routing: I can set it up so that some or all of my contacts ring my phones, but other contacts go right to voicemail (great way to avoid those telemarketing calls!), and if I ever get some weird stalker or rouge fax machine calling my number repeatedly, I can set Google Voice to give them a "We're sorry, the number you have reached is not in service" message. Wow!

- Free U.S. calls: Now this is really cool! My new home phone plan allows for unlimited free incoming calls, and low-cost outgoing calls. I thought that was a pretty good deal, but Google Voice makes it even better-- when I want to make a free call, I just select my desired contact (or type the number manually) in Google Voice and tell it to use my Home phone. Google Voice then calls my Home phone (a free incoming call) and connects me to the number I wish to talk to. Pretty mind-bending!

- Free SMS Text messages: I can send/receive free SMS text messages on my Google Voice phone number. I've got these set up to go to my email account (as that email gives me an auto-notification on my iPhone whenever new messages arrive). I can send SMS replies to these via email too, so it's essentially getting free unlimited text messages on my iPhone without having to pay AT&T for them.

Now if I didn't want to continue using my multi-handset cordless home phone system, I could have stopped right there and just have used Google Voice with my cell phone. But since I still wanted these phones, here's what I did to make them work:


D-Link DPH-50U USB Phone Adapter: I got this on close-out for about $20. It only works with Windows XP, so I use it with an old laptop that I leave running all the time at home. I then can plug any regular phone into this adapter (in my case, the cordless phone).



Skype provides a phone number for Google Voice with unlimited free incoming calls (SkypeIn). When I first signed-up for Skype, I bought a 1 month subscription which then allowed me to buy the SkypeIn phone number at 50% off ($30/yr rather than $60). Now that the subscription has ended, I'm now just buying SkypeOut credit as needed to make any outbound calls I wish to landlines and cell phones. Since I use the Google Voice trick above, I rarely need to use my SkypeOut credits, but they're nice to have around if I ever need them.

Skype is nice to use as a backup to my AT&T iPhone (which is notorious for dropped calls depending on where I happen to be). There's also a nice Skype iPhone app that lets me make calls from my iPhone via Wifi, so when paired up with my Verizon MiFi cellular modem, I can make an iPhone call via Verizon's network using Skype! Pretty cool and a very essential feature when RV traveling to not have to rely on a single cell carrier for all your phone calls.

Up in the Clouds

Both my favorite hobby (photography) and work (software project management) rely heavily on digital mobile technology -- storing data on the go, and accessing it from multiple devices.

In the old days, when you just had 1 PC, if you cared about keeping your data backed up, you also had a second storage device of some kind to do that -- floppy discs, a tape drive, or maybe even an external hard drive.

That kind of system was great as long as your house wasn't robbed or destroyed, or you were diligent enough to keep your backup tapes/discs offsite. But honestly, who ever was really that careful! And what if you were off traveling in your RV thousands of miles from home? You wouldn't really want to mail all those floppies or tape drives home every day to keep them stored "offsite", would you?

Fortunately today, the online storage "cloud" has rolled in, giving us some great options to keep our backup data stored online and accessible to multiple laptops, PCs, and even cell phones. So regardless of whether we're home or on the road, we can always keep our data with us.

When traveling in my RV, I still bring along a few external hard drives to keep local copies of data with me (great when you don't have internet connectivity or are limited by cellular data bandwidth caps), but when I've got good unlimited wifi access, I make sure to get copies of these files online for the added protection and access.

About a year ago, I looked long and hard for a "one-stop" online backup service like Mozy, Carbonite, Elephant Drive, and the like. While each had their pros and cons, none of these general backup solutions stood out as particularly easy or cheap to use. I was also concerned about the "all eggs in one basket" risk should the site get hacked or go out of business (which many since have in this recession).

So, I've now turned to multiple online "best of breed" solutions. The benefit here is that each solution offers more features/functionality for the particular data they specialize in, most of the providers are very well-established companies, and I'm reducing my security risks by keeping my data spread out across multiple sites/providers rather than all in one place.

Here are my favorite online data "cloud" solutions at the moment:



Google Docs - This has been my favorite FREE solution the past few years for keeping and editing MSOffice documents online (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint). Google has nicely enhanced their online editing capabilities this year making it one of the most robust "Web 2.0" solutions out there. This month, they've also just released "game changer" functionality-- you can now store ANY file type (up to a whopping 250mb per file). Google gives you the first 1GB for free, and gives a pretty good deal on additional storage space too (20GB is only $5/yr, 80GB is $20/yr, and if you go for 200GB at $50/yr, they'll give you a free Eye-fi SD card).


Previous to this Google Docs upgrade, my "Any File Type" storage solution was Windows Live SkyDrive which provides a generous 25GB of free storage and allows files up to 50 mb each.

While Google Docs and SkyDrive are great "any file type" online storage solutions, if used directly, they are not as fast and easy copying files back and forth to an external USB hard drive. Fortunately, "there's an app for that!"--- the free Gladinet Cloud Desktop (sorry, PC only, no Mac version), creates a pseudo networked drive in Windows Explorer that provides directory/file access to all your Google Docs, Picasa, and SkyDrive files. So now you can drag and drop files to these online providers as easily as to a USB hard drive....all for free!


I keep copies of all my full-res photo images on Flickr. A pro account ($25/yr) lets me upload unlimited JPG files as long as they're under 20 mb each. Would be great to be able to store DNG files too, but alas, they are not currently supported. While I can't stand Flickr's online image management UI, their integration with my primary image management tool (Adobe Lightroom) works great, and I love the ability to view/display my Flickr photo albums (and my Flickr contacts' albums) from my iPhone, my Apple TV, and any internet-connected computer I happen to be at. Browsing through Flickr is also a great way to get your creativity recharged! For those of you who aren't Flickr fans, Google Picasa is also a nice alternative.

I keep copies of my edited HD and iPhone videos on YouTube. While the service is free, it limits your video clips to 10 minutes each. But so far, this hasn't been a problem for me (I don't shoot that much video). Like Flickr, I enjoy being able to access my YouTube videos from my iPhone, AppleTV, and other connected devices. If you don't like YouTube, another option to explore is Vimeo.

I mentioned Evernote in last week's post. This is my main storage location for web clippings, PDFs, free text and handwritten/ink notes, as well as any pictures of text/items that I want to be able to search via OCR later. Evernote gives me unlimited storage for $40/yr, but limits monthly uploads to 500 mb/month (I've never come close to that). While Google Docs also lets you store PDFs and "any file type", I like Evernote's iPhone integration and OCR searching capabilities better, so prefer keeping my PDFs in Evernote.

My email, calendar, and contact address book info is spread out across multiple services (Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail/Live, and my company's Exchange server). Other than Exchange, that stuff is really a pain to keep stored on local drives, so I find the multiple online services give me the needed redundancy for backup purposes.

 

One final caution about storing data online-- take extra precautions when storing personal identity info, passwords, financial/tax, and health records. For instance, before scanning and storing a document with my full name and address on it, I'll take a sharpie pen and black out portions of that. The document will still show enough "proof" that it's mine if I need to, say, show a receipt for a warranty claim. But if a hacker (or rogue employee) ever breaks into my online account and gets a hold of these files, they won't be able to steal my identity. I also will sometimes protect a file by first encrypting it locally via TrueCrypt or BitLocker before uploading it online. Every layer of defense you can think of will help protect your personal identity. It's also wise to create "strong" passwords for ALL online accounts you use-- i.e. using some CAPS and numeric digits and making sure passowords are longer than 8 characters.

These online solutions don't eliminate the need to do routine hard drive backups of your primary laptops/PCs, but they do give you additional mobile accessibility and a second layer of backup protection-- both critical to the traveling digital nomad!

Paperless in Paradise

My home office has a large desk with a fairly hefty-sized "all-in-one" Printer/Scanner/Copier taking up the quite a bit of space. The rest of the space, seems to have increasingly been taken up by documents of every size, shape, and form-- expense receipts, bills, warranty documents, owner/user guides, magazine articles, etc.

The piles of paper grew because I absolutely hated the slow, tedious chore of scanning the paper to electronic documents. Submitting expense reports was also a royal pain in the backside because not only did I have to scan all the tiny little receipts, but I also had to then print and sign the final report summary and then scan it to combine with my other electronic scanned pages into a completed report for emailing. So, needless to say, it took hours to do this chore and required both a scanner and a printer. I needed a better and faster solution not only for my home office, but my mobile RV office as well.

Fortunately, I found it!

I've now replaced my big All-in-One Printer/Scanner/Copier with a small, portable, ultra-fast scanner, a pen tablet, and some software solutions that allow me to quickly scan incoming paper and then manage it completely electronically after that. So far, after using the new system 3 months, I've not needed to print anything!


My new paperless solution involves the following:

• Fujitsu Scansnap S300 Scanner - At $240, it's not cheap, but Fujitsu is the leader at making rock-solid scanners that can duplex scan (both sides at once) incredibly fast. In less than 30 seconds, I can scan a double-sided document and create a PDF document with searchable text. As an added bonus, this scanner folds up small, weighs less than 3 pounds, and can even run fully off of USB power if needed--- the perfect solution for mobile work!



• Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet - This little tablet ($54) requires no batteries and runs off of USB power. It allows me to annotate and sign documents that are already in electronic form without printing and re-scanning them. The tablet is also great for electronic artwork and photo editing and is small enough to easily fit inside a laptop bag.




• PDF-Xchange Viewer - This FREE software allows you to open any PDF file, annotate/draw/sign it, and then re-save it as a PDF. A perfect solution when you need to get your real signature onto an electronic document without having to physically print and hand-sign it. The software also supports custom bitmap "stamps" so I can take one image file of my handwritten signature and stamp/resize it onto PDF files without having to get my pen tablet out. I opted for the Pro version of this software that allows you to also add/delete/move pages of a PDF file among other features. This software, combined with my free PrimoPDF "Print-to-PDF" software, allows me to replicate just about all Adobe Acrobat functionality for less than $35 bucks. WOW!




• Evernote - My online virtual file cabinet! Not only can I upload all my PDF files for easy access from any internet-connected computer later, but I can also upload and view web page clips, images, audio files, and any other file type as well. Best of all, I can upload and view these from my iPhone as well! While they offer a Free service, I upgraded to the $40/year Premium account to get more online storage and features. I use Evernote every day-- if I'm out shopping and see a product that looks interesting, I can take a photo of it with my iPhone and save it to Evernote for later reference. Alternatively, if I'm grocery shopping and want to buy ingredients for a favorite recipe, I just have to pull up the recipe in Evernote from my iPhone to remember what to buy.

Scansnap is fully integrated with Evernote, so I can quickly and easily scan any new paper I receive into PDF documents that are accessible and searchable from any internet computer or mobile phone I happen to be at. Here's a little example of how fast this system works:

My paper file cabinets have now been completely eliminated, and I can now take my entire home office with me anywhere I go!

Change of plans -- staying home this winter

Well, it's been a while since I posted...sorry about that.

As I was getting the View packed up for it's big snowbirding adventure, life had other ideas this winter. My mom's health encountered a pretty significant setback in October, so I'm now staying home to help her out for the foreseeable future.

While certainly not the carefree "fun in the sun" winter I had been hoping for, this winter has not been all doom and gloom. Millie, for one, has been very happy to jump through her snowy backyard and rub noses between the fence posts with the neighbor's new black lab. She's also enjoyed being able to see my mom on just about a daily basis-- she is most definitely a "grandma's dog" and squeals with delight whenever she first sees her.

I learned how to winterize a motorhome (well, let's hope I learned how to do it right and don't have busted leaky water pipes in the RV this spring!). I also found a great RV storage place just a couple miles from the house. Unlike my T@B that requires no further attention once it's stored for the winter, motor homes need to be "checked in on" about once a month to charge up the batteries, and run gas and fluids through the engine and generator.

The local storage lot is perfect-- relatively inexpensive, some dumpy-looking RVs in the front of the lot that my nice View can hide behind to deter theft, and it's run by a nice old guy, Roger, who has years of RV'ing experience.

The only challenge with the storage lot has been learning it's rather unique hours. Roger is old-school-- no website, rusty old sign out front, handwrites his receipts, and doesn't have much of a voice mail system. The first time I went to do my monthly "engine running/battery charging", I arrived just as he was leaving for lunch. He said "no worries, just park your car outside the gate and I'll park my truck at the entrance" (so I could walk around the truck and leave, but the lot would still be secure). That worked out well.

But the second month's visit went a little differently-- I was doing my Saturday errands and realized in the mid afternoon that I needed to get over to the lot before they closed for the weekend. I arrived a little before 4:00pm and figured I had over 30 minutes to run the engines, etc. It was cold that day, so rather than stop and say hi to Roger first, I just drove right back to my motorhome. As the sun started setting, I saw that it was getting to be 4:30 and likely around closing time, so I locked up the View, got in my car and began to leave the lot.

Suddenly, I realized I had a big problem--- the front gate was now locked shut, Roger's car was gone, and his office was locked tighter than a drum. I was now locked inside the storage lot for the weekend!!!! Thankfully, I had my iPhone and a nice warm car to sit in. I looked up the non-emergency phone number on my iPhone, and they transferred me to a couple different municipalities until I finally was given to the 911 dispatcher for the county sheriff's office. Within 10 minutes, a squad car arrived and a friendly laughing deputy got out of the car to assess my situation.

The deputy first tried calling Roger's emergency number, but remember? Roger's old-school--- no cell phone, no pager, no nothing!!! So, next, the deputy called a few more of his buddies (some detectives in unmarked police cars) to come guard me while he went over to Roger's house to try getting him there. 30 minutes later, he returned with a sheriff's Paddy Wagon van but still had not been able to locate Roger. Finally, the deputies decided to call the fire department to see if they could bring their bolt-cutters to cut the padlock and chain around the front gate.

About 10 minutes later, the biggest hook and ladder firetruck I've ever seen came roaring up to the front of the storage yard and 3 burly firemen jumped out. I now had these guys and their big truck, the Paddy Wagon, a squad car, and a detective's car in front of me--- must have looked like a huge emergency to the people driving past us! But, fortunately, the firemen were great and laughed the whole time. Within a minute they were able to cut the chain and open the gate for me. I thanked everyone profusely and they sent me on my way.

A couple days later when Roger got back and called me he said I was the first person in his 40+ years of operating the storage lot that had ever managed to get herself locked in! Fortunately, all ended well and we got a good laugh out of it.

So, even though I'm home this winter, I'm still managing to have a few fun adventures with the RV!