My Favorite Travel Apps

It's that time of year again.

Well, I mean this is the time of year when most of us start preparing for that holiday trip the family waited for during the year. Whether near or far doesn't matter, as long as the family gets to do that getaway to spend the holidays together.

Through the years, I was able to build an arsenal of apps that help me plan that perfect holiday trip for the family. These apps do not only make my preparation quick and easy, they also make the planning process more accessible and comfortable no matter where I am, whether at home or mobile. Further, they make tracking the trip itinerary easier, as I can have immediate access to them through my phone or my iPad. Here are some of them:

While I normally scour different airline websites to get that best deal when it comes to purchasing air tickets, I normally use booking.com to have my hotel reservation. Sometimes, I try to compare the rates I get from the ones in hotels.com, but I almost always eventually get the deals I find in booking.com (both have iPhone and iPad apps). Of course, before I finally make the reservations, I check TripAdvisor first to get real traveler information on the hotel I prefer.

After getting the air tickets, travel insurance (usually from the same airlines), and the hotel reservations, I let my TripIt app do my trip itinerary for me. TripIt is a nice little app that I have for my iPhone and iPad, and it checks my mails for all reservations and bookings I make and organize them for me so that I have a ready access of my flight and hotel bookings (and schedule). TripIt also manages all other holiday activities that I plan (and book) for my trip (such as tours and the like); the ones I normally book using my Viator app. I also connected my TripIt app with another iPhone travel app I prefer - TripDeck - which is further connected to another app, FlightTrack (both are available from the Apps Store). The combination of all these make my holiday easier as I get notifications for flight schedules, alarms for my itinerary, and ready access to my sked during the whole vacation. 

In preparing for the trip, I use Packing Pro. It has ready checklist templates for different kinds of trips, and allows you to customize your checklist depending on your preference. Packing Pro has different templates to choose from and has checklists starting from pre-trip, to essentials, to medicines and everything. It's really a handy app that's very useful in preparing what you need for your holidays, especially if you have kids to tag along with you, just like us.

During the holiday, AroundMe, CityMaps ToGo and Wiki Offline become essential apps. During our recent trip to Europe, I also had an extensive use of the Metro app (all available in the Apps Store). These apps become handy when you need a map to know where you want to go, obviously to check metro stations, and to just plain know what essential establishments are near you at any point in time. Of course, I make sure I have at least one travel app of the city I prefer to visit (the likes of GuidePal, Triposo and City Walk variety). Believe me, they come in handy when you're resting your weary feet at the hotel at night and prepare for the next walking tour you'll do on the next day.

Although I don't always use them, I also have the Trip Journal and Trip Viewer apps to document my trips from time to time.

Well then, happy trip everyone... enjoy the holidays!

'cleaning' my mac

Spent most of the afternoon and evening 'weeding' out unnecessary files in my MacBook. Just found out I only have about 10GB of storage left due to more than 15,000 pics in my Aperture library, and a few .dmgs I left in the harddrive after installing new applications. I recovered about 90GB of space afterwards, then uploaded a few CFs of pics from our last two travels, which again occupied 10GB of precious storage space... if this goes on, I really need to put serious thought in buying another terabyte of external harddrive. (Or better yet, get me an iMac, of course, with a bigger storage.)

From Paris to Florence: An Awesome Summer!

15 days. 6 cities. 1 family.

It was an awesome summer indeed. Exhilarating, yet each moment brought memories for keeps, especially for the kids, I believe. It was a tightly scheduled two weeks, starting from Paris, then Versailles, and then flying to Rome and the Vatican City, and finally riding the Alta Velocita to Florence and Pisa.

Alice and I felt we need not take guided tours (primarily to save budget), and so, we planned the family's summer holiday on our own: doing and re-doing the itinerary, reserving flights and booking hotels. We even bought tickets to sightseeing areas and museums online prior to our travel and downloaded iPhone travel apps to assist us when we arrive. Such is the beauty of technology.

To top it all, everything went according to plan... not a single hiccup along the way. And thus, we learned a very good lesson on our first venture to Europe as a family: everything is to be done online.

We stayed in France for 6 days, in Italy for another 7 days. The remaining 2 days we spent in flights to and from Europe. 'Twas a good time really, for all of us.

We're already planning to go back...

Connectivity

In this new world we currently live in, everything is connected. Thus, you can communicate with your loved ones easily and efficiently using the telephone or the Internet, your office sends your salary to your bank which is in turn connected to your favorite supermarket, and to your electric and water companies, and even to your credit card/s. You even do your studies on the web, connected with other learners - your classmates - who are located in other parts of the world.

We really are living in a connected society these days, and for us to function well and efficiently, we have to be connected with the rest of them. Thus, our companies try very hard to be connected, both inside and outside. But getting connected is only half the story... getting connected fast - at least for companies - really makes the difference. That's why being the manager of the network infrastructure of a company serving a network of more than 600 computers really becomes very very difficult if your connection bandwidth is only a normal DSL-grade technology. And that's why, after weeks of tensed anticipation, I got ecstatic yesterday when we finally got the E1 connectivity we've been waiting for, and the assurance of getting a lower grade T2 after sometime.

What can we do with an E1? Well, that's a no-brainer actually. Having languished in our external data transmission for quite a while now, an E1 connectivity is like a breath of fresh air. That means the data transmission speed for our external connectivity will at least be several times faster than it was before. Well, it is really nowhere beside our internal speed of 1 Gigabit per second, but it will be good for our staff and also our clients' works. Moreover, having a good external speed allows the staff to get connected to the Internet faster which is essential when you're maintaining e-learning courses and is dependent on the Web for much of the information you use in your work.

Anyways, getting an E1 line is definitely good news, both for the company's staff and me (especially). At least in my case, complaints from staff about the Internet connection speed will be diminished for quite a while (I hope). More so, I can focus now on other infrastructure matters like consolidating our servers and getting blade servers for that purpose, and upgrading our storage capacities by implementing SAN instead.

Well then, I think I can relax even for a little while now...

e-Learning

Working as an administrator for the learning content management system of an organization is both challenging and entertaining. For one, you get to meet lots of people, especially learners, and with it, you get to analyze how different people build thought processes and acquire knowledge. I find this very motivating as it is amusing since I learn to understand many kinds of people and their inherent qualities. On the other hand, working as a content administrator, especially for materials concerning training and education, could be frustrating at times. You have to always check whether modules are updated, whether new concerns are raised by both learners and mentors alike, and whether the whole package - the system - is working effectively and efficiently on both fronts - the technical and the social.

One thing that really annoys me in the current scheme of things is the fact that I need to manually enter all the participants whenever a new course, or module, is opened. Well, as there is not much security present currently in the network, I guess I have to bear with this task for sometime... anyways, each training course usually caters to an average of 20 - 25 participants, and so, it is not really a burden if you would really look at it...

As of now, I am proud of the fact that there are currently more than 15 courses being offered by the system - these are really diverse courses ranging from professional workshops to business-related to engineering-based and IT modules - and most of these courses are either created or put up with my help. There are more than 50 mentors and close to 500 learners already. I am equally proud that I am really progressing fast in this new area, which happens to be one of the hottest IT areas nowadays. Technically, I would say that I still need many things to learn and to develop, which I currently am giving priority in terms of time and effort. But then, when you're in a field that you love and doing something that you're just so passionate about, everything will be as simple as they can be, and everything will just come out naturally.

Of course, even though I am currently venturing into this new skill, I'm not forgetting that I am still, and will always be, a teacher. I guess it will always stay in my blood and in my system... I came from a family of mentors anyway, and I guess it really develops in the genes as an end-result of the never-ending human evolution. And thus, I keep a course or two as a mentor/teacher in the LCM system. It allowed me to hone further another important skill - being a specialist in learning development. But more than that, it enables me to continuously interact with different kinds of learners, be they new ones in the field, or old peers that like me, are not easily quenched in their thirst for learning new things. That's where my further development is anchored, I believe. Much more, it fuels my continuous evolution as a human being.

Graduation, mobile phones and Internet

Rain, the second of our children and our only daughter, graduated in Senior Casa (Kinder 2) two days ago. Even though both I and Alice are far away, we monitored the ceremonies from my mother through mobile phones (communication really is very fast and important these days). My mother continuously updated us with what activities are being done and what they have been doing throughout the ceremonies. After the ceremonies were finished, my brother-in-law uploaded all the pictures to the web through email and we were able to see all the pictures of our child in her graduation dress just minutes after the activities are over. It was as if the two of us had been there too...

Of course, there is no substitute for witnessing first hand activities such as this. But if circumstances do not permit, such as when you're working in a faraway land and cannot just go back immediately, the power of the Internet and the mobile phone just become very very indispensable... I would say technology nowadays is really an ample substitute for the real thing in some very important circumstances... it's really satisfying to have these technologies... and at least know what's happening with your child at some very important scenarios (such as graduation), I can assure you.

Anyways, when we talk to Rain (again, using a mobile phone) that night, she was very happy and she went on telling her mom many stories just as any little girl would after a very happy day... we were equally elated. To top it off, both of our sons added more good news - they are both second honours in their respective levels, just like Rain...

What more can we ask for? The kids are happy, the technology is there, everything's fine... life is good, really.