Gadling Review: Traveldodo mobile city guides

by Jeremy Kressmann on

We like to play around with mobile phones here at Gadling. They’re becoming one of the more invaluable tools for the on-the-go traveler, both domestically and abroad. Recently we were introduced to a website called Traveldodo, an online travel review site that offers an extensive selection of free mobile travel guides for cities across Europe.

Free mobile guides you say? We decided to take Traveldodo’s suggestion, download a free mobile guide to Barcelona and see for ourselves how it worked. Here’s a quick overview:

  • Extensive selection – Traveldodo offers city guides for more than 100 cities across Europe, including everything from Barcelona to Reykjavik to Istanbul
  • Free Download – the guides are free to download and don’t require a wireless connection to read. You will however pay a charge from your wireless carrier (typically around $1-2 depending on your carrier) if you don’t have a data plan. Take note.
  • City Info – the info within Traveldodo’s guides covers Things to do, Food and drinks, Places to sleep, City info, and Country info, as well as a special section where users can submit their own tips for inclusion in future versions.
  • Compatibility – the guides are designed to work with lots of different phones, meaning you don’t need an iPhone in order for it to work. Traveldodo claims most phones after 2006 to be compatible.

Overall, we like Traveldodo’s concept and their utility, though the guides themselves still have some rough spots. Downloading was easy enough – users simply point their browser at the address of their desired city listed here. Despite two tries we could not get the app to work on a Blackberry, which was a troubling sign, but did get the Barcelona guide downloaded on a Sony Ericsson device.

Having visited Barcelona a few times, we took a look through the guide’s listing of Things to do, Food and drinks and City info. The information was certainly useful, though frequent travelers might find it to be a bit basic. One feature that was particularly interesting was the Submit Do/Don’t, which allows users to add their own tips to Traveldodo’s database by email or SMS. This collaborative feature, along with the app’s free download price and extensive range of cities make Traveldodo mobile city guides worth a second look. Check one out if you’re heading to Europe anytime soon.

British Airways to allow cell phone use on London to New York flights

by Aaron Hotfelder on

British Airways has just announced that, beginning this fall, they will allow cell phone use in-flight, but only on business class flights between London and JFK. While talking on cell phones will still be prohibited, the airline will allow passengers to send and receive text messages and have access to the internet.

A BA spokesperson says that the airline will listen to feedback from customers in deciding whether to eventually permit actual cell phone calls. [Desperate plea: Don’t do it!]

This move follows a decision made last year by Emirates, which became the first airline to allow in-flight cell phone use, as well as similar experiments by Qantas and bmi.

What do you think, Gadling faithful? Smart idea by an airline trying to please its business-class passengers, or dangerous step on an insidious path leading to constant cell phone chatter on every flight?

More here.

What strange things have been found on planes?


Cell phone down toilet. It happens. A lot

by Jamie Rhein on

This was a stay-in-the-car-until-the-last-line-was-finished type story. I was listening to “All Things Considered” on the radio on my way home. The theme was cell phones dropping down toilets and what people will do to get them back.

Several phones that made the big splash were dropped in a toilet while the owner was in transit. Airplane toilets, train toilets, bathroom stalls, port-a-pots. . .name a toilet-type and it’s a guarantee that a cell phone has landed in one.

One story involved a train in France. The owner went after the phone when it dropped down the train’s toilet. Instead of retrieving the phone, his arm became stuck. To get him out, the whole toilet had to be removed from the train at a later stop.

Another guy dropped his phone in an airplane toilet and was able to get it back. Unfortunately, even though he cleaned it, dried it off and then washed, and washed and washed his hands, there was a slight problem when he showed up at his business meeting. You see, after the plane landed, he made a phone call and unwittingly deposited a blue streak across his face. He found out about the streak when someone at the meeting asked about it.

One story that brings to mind Mike’s post about the Babykeeper Basic that hangs a baby from a wall of a door stall is the one about the woman who lost her phone while she was changing her baby in a port-o-pot. She could see the phone, but there wasn’t any way she was going to go after it.

Here’s the link to text of the NPR story. Along with being entertaining, it’s informative. Cell phones down toilets are considered to be acts of negligence by insurance companies. I call it bum luck. I’ve never had a cell phone land in a toilet, but I still have a vivid image of my car keys catapulting out of my hands on their own volition.

An alternative route to unlocking your phone

by Grant Martin on

If you’ve ever traveled overseas for an extended period of time, you probably looked into getting a mobile phone while you were away.

As you now probably know, using your personal phone can get wildly expensive when you leave the United States, and plugging an alternative carrier’s SIM card into your phone won’t work because domestic phones are “locked” to their carriers.

If you dug a little deeper, you may also know that you can “unlock” your phone in a few different ways, freeing it, so to speak, to communicate with any network that you like. So you could pick up a Vodafone chip in Spain, drop it into the mobile you use in the States and have a new Spanish phone number.

The barrier that many people run into is that unlocking your phone can be tricky. Depending on your model, some require reprogramming from the keypad while others require a professional to do it for you — but it’s almost never anything you can do in a few seconds — so most people give up.

Flopping around the internet today though I discovered a device that will actually do this for you — or virtually do it for that matter. It’s a tiny little chip called an I-Smart Sim that slips under your regular SIM and circumvents the locking mechanism. Seems like a slick way to get around renting your own phone in another country or paying crazy fees.

I’d try it myself, but my phone is already unlocked so I don’t need any augmentation. Perhaps someone else could test it out and let us know how it goes. It’s only seven bucks.

For more information on using using your cell when traveling, check out: How to use your mobile phone abroad.

New legislation proposed to block inflight phone use

by Grant Martin on

It seems that people are sorely divided on whether airlines should or should not allow mobile phones to operate while in-flight. The technology and means to implement it are now available, and many carriers in the EU are starting to offer the service from the skies. Many US airlines are following suit given legislation that was passed a few weeks back permitting it.

And in all likelihood, we will be using mobile phones in the skies within a few years. Too many business people need the technology while in-flight and I’m sure are willing to pay dearly for it. That money that they bring is what will motivate the market’s development.

Don’t think that America is going to go quietly though. Several lawmakers including Jerry Costello, the chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee have recently proposed a bill to block mobile calls while in flight, calling it the HANG UP act, “Halting Airplane Noise to Give Us Peace”. The law would essentially block carriers from allowing passengers to make calls while in flight.

It’s a quaint idea and one that I personally wouldn’t mind seeing passed (admittedly, loud talkers drive me buggers), but in the end I think Costello’s efforts will be in vain. At some point, I suppose that we old codgers have to buck up and accept change.