If you’ve traveled across time zones, most likely you’re aware of the effects of jet lag. Timeshifter has created an app that manages light exposure several days before your trip, to naturally adjust your body to sudden change in time. Travelers will input their trip information (dates & times of flights, location of airports, whether they’re day or night people), and Timeshifter creates an algorithm for you. The WSJ describes this algorithm as being able to set “an hourly schedule starting a couple of days before the trip, indicating when to seek or avoid light, when to nap, and optionally when to incorporate caffeine or melatonin. Does it work? You can try it for free the first time, and if it does the trick, pay $10 for each additional trip.”
Binaural uses beats, or sound, to help you with relaxing, sleeping, meditating, or concentrating. This app also uses virtual stimulation through color, or rain simulation, to bring you into a calm mindset. Binaural aims to take the place of a white noise machine and introduces soundwaves to drown out outside noise. “Swipe across the app’s softly colored stripes to dial up, for example, ‘gamma’ frequencies that activate the problem-solving part of the brain or ‘delta’ frequencies that target the deep slumber part. The science behind these ‘binaural beats’ is a bit inconclusive, but the droning tones, which can be layered with the patter of rainfall, are certainly less disruptive than noisy neighbors or the rumbling of the elevator down the hall.”
If you’ve ever been confused about tipping etiquette overseas, then GlobeTips may be a helpful tool for you. This app aims to help travelers understand gratuity practices in more than 200 countries and regions. “For those who are sweating over an unintelligible bill just dropped at the table, a built-in receipt scanner checks the phone’s GPS before pulling the local gratuity guidelines into its calculator. The calculator then clearly spells out what, if anything, should be left behind.”
This app should be called “Avoiding Crime and Place,” since its purpose is to direct travelers away from areas of crime. The app utilizes the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting database to create a map showcasing areas of crime nationwide. This can be incredibly useful when you’re visiting an area that you know nothing about, and it may be hard for you to talk with locals to understand the troubling parts of the city. “When you walk or drive into an unfamiliar neighborhood, a half-mile radius around a pin of your current location gets segmented into green, yellow, and red rings depending on the recorded number of murders, robberies, car thefts, and so on. Navigating the app feels like running through a videogame: A warning pops up when you’re ‘entering a high crime area!’ The compass then directs you back to safer environs.”
Of course, traveling isn’t traveling unless you’re tasting the best restaurants the city has to offer. If you’ve ever taken a peek at Yelp, you know that you’ll find too many reviews that are petty or lackluster in detailing the experience. The Infatuation has acquired enough information to rate restaurants in over 31 major U.S. and international cities, from credible editorial perspectives. “The ‘Nearby’ map view is handy, as is the ability to save favorites to a ‘Hit List.’ Amusingly specific themed roundups – ‘Where to Eat With Someone Who’s Cooler than You,’ ‘Where to Go on a Date When You Haven’t Met this Person Yet,’ ‘Where to Eat after a Bad Week’ – are more consistent and actionable than all that wayward Yelping.”