It's the holiday season which also means it's travel season. It doesn't matter if you're going over the hills and through the woods to Grandma's, just getting out of town for Christmas or taking an exotic get away during the vacation off season, you can always use technology to make your travel experience less stressful. Before you hit the road or take to the skies, here are, here are 6 tech tips that will make your holiday travel the most wonderful time of the year!
1. TripSavvy. Before you head out on holiday travel, download the app or visit the Tripsavvy website. This great utility shows you all of those hidden secrets about your destination. It shows you, things to do, where to stay, and where to eat for cities all over the world. Not sure where to go, the app and website have tons of preplanned destinations for you to pick from.
2. Incognito Mode for Your Web Browser. It's a fact. Airline and travel sites track your browsing history by monitoring your cookies. To avoid price hikes when you're shopping sites to find the best deals, you need to turn on Incognito or Private Browsing. Every web browser has this feature. In Google Chrome, look at the menu bar and choose "New Incognito Tab" In Safari:Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+N on your keyboard.Tap New Tab, then Private on your iPhone or iPad.To open an incognito window in Firefox:Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P on your keyboard.Tap the Mask icon.
3. FlightAware. Let's face it, the accuracy of an Airline apps' departure and arrival time isn't the greatest when you are trying to keep track of your departure and arrival times. Use FlightAware instead. The app which is available for Apple and Android devices is so accurate, you can see what flight is passing over you if you happen to see a commercial flight in the air.
4. Google Photos and Live Albums. Rather than taking that bulky camera with you on your trip, download Google Photos and use your smartphone as your vacation camera (I mean you already will have it on you, right?). Google Photos will automatically backup any photos and videos you take on your smartphone and it offers unlimited storage for the photos it backs up. With Live Albums, will create new digital photo albums using facial recognition to group together vacation and holiday photos.
5. Streaming Stick. Tired of the same tired local channels that are offered at the hotel you're staying at, bring along your Ruku stick, Google Chromecast, or Amazon Firestick and you can keep up your favorite streaming show. Yes, you can stream from your laptop or smartphone, but why not watch streaming TV on a larger screen? Remember, these devices can beplugged into the back of any television with an HDMI port.
6. Get power for your smart devices. You took time to get all of your travel chargers ready to go with you, but somehow you forget them. Fear not. Most hotel TVs have at least one USB port on them. If you need to charge your phone, tablet or other electronic device, find the usb port, turn on the TV and charge your devices.
Do you have any tech tips that you use when you hit the road for Holiday travel? Drop me a line and let me know. If you enjoyed this story, please recommend and share to help others find it.
If you have any questions about your technology and your devices, please feel free to contact us. Our friendly tech experts at Integral are always standing by to answer your questions and help make your technology useful and fun.
I'm the Chief Technology Expert at Integral. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn , and Twitter and watch great tech tip videos on my YouTube channel. I can be reached by email at burton@integralcomputerconsultants.com