Travel like Bourdain: the ‘No Reservations’ host gets his own travel app

by McLean Robbins on

Fans of Anthony Bourdain‘s no-holds-barred style of travel can rejoice because the next best thing to taking a trip with the famed Travel Channel host is finally here. Today, the Travel Channel launched a “Layover Guide with Anthony Bourdain,” which offers tools to help travelers create their own Bourdain-inspired experiences.


Geared towards armchair travelers, or those with more of a “get up and go” mentality, the app ($1.99) repurposes content from “The Layover” and “No Reservations” to allow travelers to customize trips in ten featured cities, including: Amsterdam, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, New York, Rome, San Francisco and Singapore.

The app allows travelers to plan an afternoon excursion or a weeklong journey, all focused on Bourdain’s signature love of food.

What do we like about the app? It offers curated content from a certified travel professional – if you like watching Bourdain’s show, chances are you’ll love his suggestions in app form, adding the ability to “mix and match” as well as customize a trip to fit within a dedicated time frame.

The integrated “timeline” feature allows users to plan their own itinerary using Bourdain’s POIs, automatically estimating the amount of time needed to do each activity to build a custom itinerary. The app uses Google Maps to estimate the time between distances, to make sure that you won’t cross from one side of town to the other and back.

We also like the app’s customized video intros and notes about each city from Bourdain himself as well as the personal list of travel “Do’s and Don’ts” anchored by the host.

Of course, half the fun of travel is getting excited about the trip. The app offers “inspiration lists” created by Bourdain to help set the mood. His recommendations vary from watching the Steve McQueen classic, “Bullitt,” before heading to San Francisco to studying the “Au Pied de Cochon” cookbook by Martin Picard while planning a trip to Montreal.

As would be expected, there’s social integration as well, including checking-in at locations, earning badges and sharing to Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.

Have you downloaded the app? What do you think?

10 best photography apps for travelers

by Jessica Festa on

Sometimes, your basic camera just doesn’t cut it. With all of the advancing technology we now have, the possibilities for travel photography are endless. Before your next trip, make sure to download these ten photography apps that will help you capture, edit, and share the perfect picture.

Pro HDR

Pro HDR is perfect for people who want to take high dynamic range shots without investing in an expensive DSLR camera. It’s also extremely helpful when the scene you’re trying to snap contains a lot of contrast. What’s really useful about the app is that it has a manual mode for you to choose where you want to adjust brightness and darkness in your shot, as well as an automatic mode. Final images are shown almost instantly, and you can save, edit further by adjusting the brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth, or tint, or discard your finished product. There is also an option to e-mail your photo to others.

Pro HDR is available for Android, iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. $1.99. A free version is also available that takes smaller shots. Instagram

This free photo sharing application is extremely popular among travel photographers and those who just enjoy taking pictures. Instagram allows you take a photo with your device, choose a filter to manipulate the look and feel, and then instantly send to Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr. There are tons of mood-altering filters, like 1977, Earlybird, Kelvin, Rise, and Nashville, to name a few.

Available on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Free.

TiltShift

TiltShift is a photography app that mimics a tilt-shift lens, transforming photos into miniature worlds. Basically, your photos will appear like small-scale models by manipulating different effects and contrasts, like creating a focus and blurring the surrounding area (as shown right). You can also adjust brightness, color saturation, and contrast and even choose a shaped aperture, such as a dollar sign, heart, or hexagon.

Available on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. $1.99.

iSynth

iSynth brings Photosynth to the iPhone and allows users to not only take great photos but also allows viewers to immerse themselves in the photos as if they were actually there. The app transforms photographs into 3-dimensional worlds that people can virtually explore. There are also different “modes” you can use, such as the Orbit Mode, which allows users to circle around the synth as well as move in all different directions on the screen in order to get the desired shot.

Available on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Free.

CameraBag

CameraBag is a filter app that uses many different camera and video simulations. The app gives you the chance to choose from a range of different camera styles all in one application, some of which include:

  • Helga- “Square-format toy camera with washed out highlights and old-school vignetting”
  • Cinema- “Dramatic, moody coloring with a widescreen aspect ratio”
  • 1962- “Dynamic, high-contrast black and white from the photojournalism of a bygone era”

Available on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. $1.99.

Luminance

Luminance allows for powerful and professional photo-editing for those on the move. With this app, you can easily add special effects to your pictures as well as edit numerous photos at one time. Filters include white balance, exposure, brightness/contrast, hue/saturation, tone curve, split toning, vignette, colors, and sepia. The app also makes it easy to crop and rotate photos, as well as share them via social media, Camera Roll, e-mail, copy, or print.

Available on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. $0.99.

360 Panorama

360 Panorama is a must-have for anyone looking to take panoramic photos. While many cameras and apps with a panorama feature have users stitch multiple photos together, 360 Panorama allows you to simply pan the camera around the scene that you want included in the picture. Sharing your photos is simple, as well, and no app is necessary for viewing.

Available on Android, iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. $0.99.

ShakeIt

ShakeIt combines modern day technology with old-school photo developing methods as users can watch as their instant pictures are developed slowly. To speed up the process, simply shake the photo. It’ll take you back to the days of dark rooms and photo labs.

Available on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. $0.99.

Camera+

Camera+ is one of the best apps there is for taking high quality photos as the shots appear to come from a SLR lens. With an array of features and editting capabilites, you can literally take the perfect photo. Another useful feature is the ability to set the focus and exposure separately by tapping the screen, allowing you to have the photo come out exactly how you want it. A photo flashlight to brighten photos, a stabalizer to fix blurry pictures, a grid to line up shots, a zoom feature, scene modes, and special effects make the possibilities limitless for your photos.

Available on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. On sale now for $0.99.

Camera Zoom 3

Camera Zoom 3 is perfect for those times when you see the perfect picture you’d love to take but are just too far to get a good shot. This app allows you to zoom in and out up to eight times by simply moving a slider. For clarity and focus, just tap the screen. There is also a useful anti-shake feature as well as an auto-adjust that sets the photo to its best quality.

Available on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. $0.99. If you’ve got an Android, a similar app you can use is the Camera ZOOM FX, which is on sale right now for $2.99.

New smartphone app helps food enthusiasts with all of their olive oil needs

by Jessica Festa on

A new smartphone app for iPhone and iPad has just been released that will help food enthusiasts answer all of their questions and solve all of their problems concerning olive oil. The app, Olive Oil IQ, was created by luxury travel writer and olive oil aficionado Sharri Whiting. Every November, Whiting spends time in Umbria, Italy, growing, harvesting, and pressing olives to make fresh olive oil. Now, she shares her knowledge on this app.

On her blog, Whiting writes, “Like grapes, the taste of olives develops according to geography, soil, air, altitude, time of harvest, type of tree, and climate. [Also,] there’s a lot of talk about fraud and certainly some of it is true. It’s really important to read the labels, but it’s even more essential to try the oils.”

Tips on how to choose, buy, taste, and use olive oil are given to users, as are recipes and cooking tips. And, for those who want to make an olive oil inspired trip, there is information on Italy’s Olive Oil routes, farmstays, museums, and cooking classes.

History is also offered through the app, as users will learn about the past and present of the olive oil trade in the Mediterranean. And for those who love fun facts, the app includes interesting conversation starters like superstitions regarding olive oil and how the product is related to sex.

Olive Oil IQ is $2.99 in the App Store. Click here to learn more and download the app for yourself.

New smartphone app shows users how to have an authentic Australian experience

by Jessica Festa on

AUSTRALIA: Where To Go is a new smartphone app that gives insider advice on how to navigate through Australia and see the major sites as well as get off the beaten path. The app is opinionated and does not include all there is to see in Australia, but only what is worth seeing. If a destination makes it into the app, then you will get all there is to know on that particular place.

While users will get bullet-pointed guides on what to do and where to dine and stay, they will also get in-depth profiles of specific venues. To give you a better idea of what you should expect before you go to a destination, the app features photo slideshows. Not only that, but entries are filtered by categories such as water, outback, wildlife, family, etc.., so travelers can plan their trip according to their lifestyle and tastes.

And don’t worry if you don’t have Wi-Fi where you travel to, as this app works offline, too.

Available on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. $4.99. Click here to download.

First global private car service app launched on Monday

by Jessica Festa on

The first global private car service smartphone app was launched in New York on October 17, 2011. Groundlink, as it is called, allows users to book a private driver from their smartphones from wherever they are in the world. The difference with New York, however, is that they have the option to “Ride Now” and “Ride Later” while other cities only have the option right now to “Ride Later”.

The best part about this app is that the private cars do not cost much more than a taxi. Schedule your private car for the time you would like to be picked up and you will pay a flat rate based on distance, not travel time. For example, New Yorkers can travel from Central Park to the Lower East Side for $27 including tax and tip. And, Groundlink guarantees on-time arrival or your next ride is free. Ratings for this application in iTunes gave Groundlink a 4+, while the Android Marketplace has rated this app 4.8 stars out of 5.

Bonus: Throughout New York, Groundlink is rewarding users by hiding more than $15,000 in cash and prizes in cars around the city.

Available on Android, iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. This application is free to download.