SmugShot/SmugWallet

Chris and I use SmugMug for our photo hosting on Little Travel Notebook.  We love their simple, feature filled interface and ability to integrate seamlessly with our website.  SmugMug has brought their simple, but functional approach to an iPhone camera and photo syncing app.  SmugShot allows you to take pictures from your iPhone and upload them directly into image galleries you set up on your SmugMug website.  SmugWallet allows you to sync your photos from your SmugMug website onto your iPhone – not just iPhone images, but all images that you select from your SmugMug galleries.  Together these apps are great for taking, uploading, and sharing photos off of your iPhone.  SmugShot is integrated with the GPS on the iPhone and will geotag photos taken on your iPhone to be displayed on a map.  We especially like the feature that allows you to take photos, but delay the upload until you are on a 3G or wifi network.  SmugShot is free, SmugWallet is $2.99, and the SmugMug website requires a paid account which starts at $39.95 per year.

Flickr

Flickr is the Yahoo’s photo sharing site.  For basic and free photo sharing Flickr is one site that lots of folks love.  Flickr now has an iPhone app that allows you to take photos and upload them directly into your Flick albums.  Like SmugShot, the Flickr app will geotag your photos allowing you to display them on a map.  The Flickr iPhone app syncs the images you’ve uploaded into your account over the web so you can share them with friends from your phone.  We like the simplicity of Flickr and that you do not need to have a paid account to use the app.  Two limitations to be aware of – first, you cannot delay the image upload using the Flickr app, like you can in SmugShot.  This means if you are on the Edge network, you will have a long delay while your photo uploads.  Second, free accounts on Flickr are limited to 100MB of uploads per month.  If you’re a heavy user, be prepared to pay $25 for a Flickr Pro account.

Pano

For those who want to capture a panoramic view that goes beyond the field of vision in a single photo, Pano is for you.  This iPhone app allows you to combine multiple individual photos into a panoramic photo.  Now, using just your iPhone, you can capture the big sky of Montana or any other panoramic view while you’re out camping using Pano.  The app is easy to use and the results can be truly stunning.  Pano cost $3.99 but is definitely worth the price.

If you are really interested in making the most of the camera in your iPhone, check out iPhonography which features lots of great reviews on other iPhone photography apps.

First up, and the app we’ve had the longest is the Eukanuba Off-Leash Dog Park Locator. It’s a simple database that pulls your current location and then tells you the closest dog parks to where you are. It’s great when you need to find someplace for your dog to play while you’re traveling. We have found some definite holes where there is no information – that could be because there are no dog parks in the area or because they just haven’t been entered yet. If you do find a dog park not in the system, it’s easy to hit the “suggest a park” button and email off the information to get it listed.This is a free app.

Via Twitter we recently learned of the Fido Factor iPhone app (thanks @FidoFactor!). It’s full of dog-friendly places in San Francisco and users are adding new dog-friendly locations every day. It’s pretty easy to go to the website and set up an account that you can then use on the iPhone to suggest places you find or check for dog-friendly stuff where you are. Overall, the service features all kinds of dog-friendly stuff, not just dog parks. That is always great if we are on the road and need a place to eat lunch where we can bring our dog on the patio or something. The part we really like is that in the lodging section, there is a category for campgrounds.

Most campgrounds are technically dog-friendly but some have restrictions on sizes and/or breeds or advertise having a “dog park” that is really just a tiny fenced in area (and I do mean tiny). A heads up on those with really nice dog areas or that really are welcoming to dogs is a nice thing to have. Fido Factor doesn’t have a ton of stuff entered yet, but we’ll certainly be entering anything we find in our travels and we hope you will too. This is a free app.

Finally, I’m going to suggest you use the notes feature of your iPhone or another notetaking app that you like, and keep important dog information handy. There are apps you can buy for a few dollars to do this but, you don’t really need to. You want to have the name and address of your vet (keep the phone number in your contacts), the dates of shots your dog has received, names and dosage information for any medications they take, the microchip ID number if you have one and anything else you might need to know in an emergency. Also, make sure you have a photo of your dog in your camera roll.

It may seem silly, but if your dog is hurt and you can’t remember what types of meds he takes or the last time she had shots, you may have trouble at a new vet. And if your dog wanders away from your campsite, that photo is going to help you find him much sooner. For an extended trip you should consider having actual photocopies of vaccination records in the car with you, especially rabies shot information. If something happens it is better to be safe than sorry when it comes to your dog.

Have you found a dog-friendly iPhone app that works for you? Please share it in the comments. We’re always looking for more options.

Navigation – Getting there and finding stuff along the way…

For a number of years we have used a portable GPS in the car on road trips to map our travels and provide directions.  The small portable unit helps us find the way through unfamiliar cities and keep us from making wrong turns – which is especially important when towing a camper (here’s a recent experience where making a wrong turn made for a bad experience). With a GPS unit built into the iPhone, applications can be location aware and provide very useful information based on the context of your location.  This functionality is what makes the iPhone perfect for use on camping trips!

Where

One of the first iPhone applications that we fell in love with is Where.  Where is a geolocation sensitive application that delivers content to your mobile device about the world around you.  In other words, as you drive down the highway Where figures out your location and tells you where to find the cheapest gas, near by highway traffic problems, and can help you find a good cup of coffee.  I like Where because it can help me plan ahead for an exit off of the highway and it indexes gas prices for stations not always obvious from the highway.  Sometimes pulling two or three blocks off the highway can save 20 cents per gallon and that’s what makes Where a great tool.  Want to find the nearest KOA Kampground?  Input into the search line at the top of Where and you will get a list of the KOA’s nearest to you.  Where is not a camping specific application, but it does work well for when you’re on the road.

Truck Stops

One of the things I have learned to appreciate towing a travel trailer, is the great American truck stop.  Truck stops offer one thing that many gas stations do not have – wide lanes and open lots – that make maneuvering a travel trailer or RV a lot easier.  Although there are many truck stops along Interstate highways in the US, they are less frequent on other highways and when you need one for a late night fuel up they can sometimes be difficult to find.  This is where the Truck Stops application come in handy.  In this clever app Leigh Gagnon has compiled a list of all truck stops, the amenities at each destination, and even the price of fuel at each stop.  As an added feature, Truck Stops also can tell you the location of the next rest area and even near by Wal Marts.  On our last trip to Indiana and New Jersey, we used this app all the time to plan our stops.  The app costs $4.99, but frankly, we found it to be worth the price – especially considering a printed directory of truck stops would cost twice the price and would not deliver the same amount of functionality.

Traffic.com

There are a couple of traffic apps available on the iPhone and the one that I find most useful is Traffic.com.  Traffic.com does what other traffic apps on the iPhone do – they identify trouble spots like traffic accidents and construction.  The advantage with Traffic.com is that the app integrates data from the Department of Transportation showing average highway speeds.  Sure, a traffic app can show the location of highway construction, but what’s most important is how much is traffic slowing down and for how long.  When driving across Arkansas on our most recent trip we ran into a long string of cars backed up on the highway, Traffic.com allowed us to quickly identify that lanes were closed ahead due to construction and showed us that we had about a 2 mile back up ahead of us.  That kind of detail makes the process of deciding whether to stay on the highway or take a detour much easier.  In our case, there were no available detours but we at least had the knowledge of what we had gotten into and about how long we would be delayed.  Traffic.com is not specific to camping, but it is a great tool for all drivers.

What iPhone apps do you take camping with you?  Leave a comment and tell us about your favorite!

– Posting on the road