Download language lessons, maps, tours
Brad Frenette
Province
The iPod is fast becoming a popular accessory among leisure travellers. No wonder. It can store itineraries and reminders, and act as a storage system for digital photos.
But it can do much more than that. From displaying subway maps to acting as a potential power supply, the iPod has become an essential carry-on item. Here are some of its uses on the road:
– For the wide-eyed tourist arriving in new surroundings, early mastery of the transit system is crucial. At ipodsubwaymaps.com, you can download iPod-ready transit information, from the easily navigated (Salt Lake City) to the baffling (Tokyo). And between station stops, you can brush up on a few local phrases by downloading language podcasts such as japanesepod101.com and frenchpodclass.com.
– In addition to changing the way many people listen to radio, podcasts have emerged as a way of obtaining travel information. Travel podcasts provide destination overviews, often narrated by locals or expert travellers.
Lonely Planet offers a number of free travelcasts, with more being added all the time (lonelyplanet. com/podcasts). At about 20 minutes each, they won’t give you a full education on areas as diverse as Krakow and the Yucatan, but they do pack in the kind of off-trail tips the company has made it’s name on.
Virgin Atlantic airline has also got into the business of podcasting (virginatlantic.loudish.com), offering information on destinations it services, including Cape Town, Shanghai, New York and London.
– Then there’s touring. Many tourists looking for a more intimate look at a new place join a walking tour, hop on a sightseeing bus or rent an audioguide at a museum. But you can sidestep the crowds and save some hard-exchanged currency by visiting one of the many free websites that offer MP3 tours.
The Dublin tourism board, for example, provides self-guided audio walking tours, dubbed iWalks. At podguides.net, free photo-enhanced podcasts describe a small but interesting range of locales. The site also offers detailed tutorials.
For a wider assortment, turn to paid downloads from sites like antennaaudio.com, which specializes in audio tours of world museums, and ijourneys.com, which focuses on Old World Europe.
Perhaps the most impressively produced of the paid download sites is soundwalk.com, which provides “audiotours for people who normally don’t take audio tours.” As far as audio tours go, these are the big-budget blockbusters. Set to an atmospheric soundtrack, actors, writers and other experts take you through cities and neighbourhoods. Their selection is eclectic, varying from a Hasidic walk of Brooklyn to a PhD-guided stroll through Varanasi, India’s City of Lights. And for the active traveller, Soundwalk has paired with Puma to offer guided running tours of famous green spaces, including Central Park in New York, London’s Hyde Park and the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, among others.
– Now that your iPod has guided you through the sights and splendours on your trek, what more could you expect from it? How about a cure for those knapsack-wrinkled clothes? With the iRon, U.S. company Gear4 has created a portable iron that attaches to your iPod, using its battery as a power source. It comes equipped with a bonus feature: The iRon lets off steam blasts to the beat of the MP3s being played on the iPod.
Look for content to expand and become more interactive as iPod use continues to boom among travellers. According to MacWorld.co.uk, Apple has been in talks with in-flight entertainment providers to make their iTunes service available at 35,000 feet.
The sky, it would seem, is not the limit.
© The Vancouver Province 2006
