Electronically Obsessed A tech addict's guide to using the Internet to streamline your life

Streamlining your vacation with the Internet – Smartphones with GPS

Fog rolling in over San Francisco (Photo taken by the Author)

The Wife (that's going to take some getting used to!) and I just got back from our honeymoon in San Francisco.  We both fell in love with the city during our trip as we walked through the streets to admire all the sights and sounds.

In the past, we traveled with our MacBooks and iPhones.  This time, we decided to leave the laptops at home and see if we could actually depend on our iPhones as our sole source of information.

The iPhone Google Maps Application

For almost 99% of our navigation, we depended on the iPhone GPS and the built-in Google Maps application.  In a recent trip to Los Angeles, we found that the iPhone gave adequate driving directions, but would sometimes get confused as to where you actually were located on the map.  In San Francisco, we depended on walking and public transit.

The Google Maps application also gives walking and public transit directions.  I was particularly impressed when the application would not only tell you which routes to take, but the bus numbers and fare as well.

Yelp

For the majority of our meals, we relied on the iPhone Yelp application.  The iPhone (and many other smartphones offered by major manufacturers) include a GPS device that can target the user's location.  The Yelp application enables the user to locate businesses in the user's area and read reviews of those businesses.

When we got hungry, we would pull out our iPhones, fire up the Yelp application, and start reading reviews.  The Wife has Yelp analysis down to an art (which we will cover in a later post or newsletter) and has been very successful at finding some excellent meals.  Here's a couple of places the Wife found via Yelp during our trip to San Francisco:

1. Sotto Mare - This small seafood restaurant in North Beach specializes in San Francisco's cioppino, a wonderful stew of seafood (crab, prawns, shrimp, mussels, clams, and calamari) served over penne pasta.  Their Boston clam chowder was excellent as well.
2. Crepe O Chocolat - Near Union Square, this small, three table restaurant served up some amazing organic omelletes.  This was the perfect meal for us after we got off the plane.
3. Golden Gate Bakery - Wow.  Golden Gate Bakery makes some of the most perfect renditions of Chinese egg custard tarts and sesame balls (filled with red bean paste) I've ever had.  The Wife and I were nearly shaking with excitement when we sampled these on the street outside the bakery.

Action Items

1. If you have an iPhone, download the Yelp application here.
2. If you have a Windows mobile or Android-based phone, surf to mobile.yelp.com with your mobile browser.  I will look into mobile Yelp applications for Windows Mobile and Android in a future post.
3. Have fun on your next trip!
4. Share your wired travel experiences in the comments section below or shoot me an e-mail!

Note: Yelp is most effective in larger cities where there is a lot of reader participation.  San Francisco and New York City are probably two of the most popular Yelp cities.  Some smaller cities like Austin, Texas also have a decent Yelp audience.

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