Road Trip Technology

As much as we protest that we want to switch the world off when we travel, many of us do want some technology with us when we hit the road.

With Christmas and New Year travels just a few weeks away, radio 6PR’s Jason Jordan and I chatted our way through some of the best road warrior technologies, toys, apps and advice.

Every trip should start with making sure your mobile roaming is switched off and don’t be tempted to turn it on, or you’ll spend more on calls and data whilst you’re away than you will on the whole trip.

If you’re looking for mobile and internet juice on the road try an international SIM card like travelSIM or OneSim Cards which you can use in over 100 countries, at not quite local rates, but still cheap enough. If who’re in one place for a while consider buying a local SIM card when you land, or preorder one on line before you leave.

If you can find some cheap or free WIFI (and you usually can in hotel lobby’s and chain fast food restaurants) then consider some free talk,text and video calling apps like Skype, What’s App, Viber, RebTel, HeyTell, Messenger, all great for keeping in touch on a budget of $0.

To help you keep track of your travel itineraries with travel apps like trip tracker, trip advisor, and on the ground figure out where to go and what to see by downloading a travel guides from DK eyewitness, Lonely Planet, Go Explore or one of the many others – some are free, some are paid, some require local WiFi to work, some are preloaded and can be used without WiFi.

Need a local language translator, not a problem try an on-line app like iTranslate, trip cards or Google translate, which will also attempt to translate signs for you.

And make sure you always travel with a virtual copy of all your important documents by using a free account on Dropbox, it’s also a great way to send home your photos whilst you’re still on the road.

These are just some of the things we talked through, but for the full list and explanations listen to our chat now:

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