Zapped by Apps

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Zapped by Apps

Airports, cafés and even top-notch hotels often charge for wireless access, and with international data roaming at rip-off prices, the best solution is something like Boingo.

By Rohit Nair(senior Features Writer)

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Published: Fri 7 Nov 2014, 6:43 PM

Last updated: Tue 7 Apr 2015, 10:53 PM

Globalisation means businessmen are constantly on the move, whether it be expanding their reach or enticing new clients to their home turf. All that travelling, racking up the frequent flyer miles and living out of a suitcase like George Clooney in Up in the Air can be rather tedious. Here are some apps for the business travellers, to make their lives a little better.

Boingo

Airports, cafés and even top-notch hotels often charge for wireless access, and with international data roaming at rip-off prices, the best solution is something like Boingo. With a global network of more than a million Wi-Fi hotspots spanning airports and metropolitan areas of most major cities, this app lets you find those hotspots and connect to them quickly.

Hipmunk

Hipmunk is a neat little app that serves up travel options based on an ‘agony’ index — basically other fliers’ opinions on flight durations, layovers, connections, and budget. It’s also great for last-minute hotel bookings when you have to make those impromptu business meetings. You can choose from a handful of sites for prices and it also includes options like AirBnb and HomeAway listings.

CardMunch

This one is rather neat. Quite similar to Office Lens on WP8, this iOS exclusive comes from LinkedIn, and lets you snap a picture of a business card — like the many that are exchanged on business trips. The app then creates a mobile contact for that person and thanks to the LinkedIn backend, you get all the contact’s info from the networking site as well.

Talk to me

This Android-exclusive real-time speech translator is an invaluable tool for people travelling overseas and can be a real lifesaver. It recognises 15 spoken languages and outputs voices in more than 30 languages. All you need to do is talk into your phone’s microphone, and it will repeat what you said in German, French, Spanish or any one of the other supported languages.

MSN Money

Formerly Bing Finance, MSN Money is a built-in app that Cortana can plug into. You can track all your business stocks and shares portfolios, read up on the latest financial news, check on currency rates, commodities, bonds and interest rates and use the currency convertors to ensure you get the best rates while you travel.

Compiled by Rohit Nair


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