In-depth conversations with today’s most interesting world travelers, remote entrepreneurs, and digital nomads.
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Here are your Top 10 Essential Apps for Digital Nomads:
1) Overlap
Overlap is an app designed for digital nomads, by digital nomads. It enables me to keep track of my travel community, get alerts when my travel plans intersect with friends, get recommendations from people that I trust, and make plans to visit my bucket list destinations together with friends. Overlap also enables me to check off each country I’ve been to and watch my travel profile fill in with colors and pins. I can keep trip dates and past travel organized, which not only helps me remember my journey but is also be useful for tax, visa and legal purposes. I interviewed the co-founder of Overlap, Sharon Rosenberg, on The Maverick Show (Check out Episode 217 if you haven’t listened to it yet!)
2) Tripit
TripIt is a super easy way to keep my entire travel itinerary organized, in one place, automatically. Whenever I book a flight, a train trip, accommodations, or anything else related to my travel, I just forward the email confirmation to TripIt and it instantly auto-populates into my app. So, I can have many months of travel planned out in advance, and all the dates and details of my transportation and accommodations are all there, chronologically, in one place, with confirmation numbers, links to check in for flights, and everything else.
3) Rome2Rio
Rome2Rio allows me to enter my departure city and my desired arrival destination (anywhere in the world) and it will show me all of the ways to get there (flights, trains, busses, ferries, taxis, rental cars, and various combinations thereof), how long each route will take, and how much each route will cost. I can then pick either the cheapest route, the quickest route, the most comfortable route, or whatever my priority is, AND…it then allows me to then click through and buy the tickets for the flight, train, bus, or whatever I’ve chosen.
4) Skyscanner
Sky Scanner enables me to search for flights by entering in my current departure airport and then it has an option to select the destination “Everywhere.” By selecting that, it will list out the cheapest flights to other countries, in order of price, based on the date I want to depart. And, if I my dates are flexible (which they usually are), I can select as my departure date “Whole Month” (and pick any month) and it will tell me exactly what day that month is the cheapest to fly. I can then click through and buy the ticket for the date and destination that I want. These features are uniquely valuable for me since I have the flexibility to fly anywhere at any time, so it enables me to always select the most affordable dates and destinations.
5) Google Translate
Google Translate enables me to type in what I want to say in English, and translate it into any other language. I can then show it to a local person so they can read it in their own language, or I can have the app say it out loud in the foreign language for the person to hear. I can also take a picture of a foreign language sign or some foreign language text, upload the picture to the app, and have it translate the text into English for me. It also has a real-time scanning feature where I can open the app and hold my phone’s camera over a menu at a restaurant that is in a foreign language and the app will translate the text for me in real time as I scan up and down the menu! This app has been absolutely essential in foreign countries where I do not speak the language.
6) Shazam
I love to listen and learn about the local music in the places I travel, and to make playlists from different countries and regions where I’ve been. Shazam enables me to press a button whenever I hear a song I like (whether I’m sitting in a restaurant, riding in a taxi, walking through a mall, or dancing at the club), and it pulls up the name of the song and the artist. AND…it allows me to instantly access the song on Spotify with one click and add it to a playlist. So, when I emerge from an extended trip in any country or region, I come away with a whole playlist of the best music I heard there!
7) Airalo
Airalo enables me to buy e-SIMs for my phone so I can get data and make local calls in any country, region, or entire continent. This gives me the highest quality local reception, at much cheaper rates than paying for roaming/international fees on my U.S. phone. Plus, I don’t have to deal with physical SIM cards—no more waiting in line to buy them in each country, and no more arriving in new countries without data.
8) Flight Radar 24
This is the best app I have found for tracking flights. You can search by flight number, airport or airline and get real time updates on departure time, delay status, arrival time, and weather conditions at airports. You can also do other cool stuff like pointing your phone at a plane to find out where it is going and what kind of aircraft it is, or seeing what the pilot sees in 3D.
9) My Currency Converter
This is a real time currency converter that works all over the world for 150 different currencies. It’s imperative when traveling to a new country to understand exactly what the value of the local currency is when you arrive in the country, prior to paying for anything. And, this converter even works offline in case I don’t have wifi or data at any given time.
10) Vivino
I love traveling to wine producing countries, touring vineyards, and sampling wines from all over the world, BUT…when I am buying a bottle at a store or restaurant, I often know very little about the specific wines. That is why I love the Vivino app—my ultimate wine travel hack! It allows me to take a picture of the label on any bottle of wine, and it immediately pulls up all the information on that wine. It tells me the grape varietals, the appellation and winery, the tasting notes and characteristics, the average store price for that bottle, the average customer rating out of 5 stars, the best food pairings for that wine, and much more. So, even if I know nothing at all about the wines, I can use Vivino to quickly and easily select the bottle that is the best value for money, and the one that I’m most likely to enjoy! Plus, it allows me to keep track and make my own notes about the wines I try around the world, so that I can buy my favorites again!
