Life-Changing Apps: Transportation

July 21st, 2011 | Posted by Quixey in Life-Changing Apps - (1 Comments)

Last week, we discussed how apps are transforming healthcare and medicine. Due to your positive feedback, we’ve decided to begin a series on life-changing apps. We will discuss apps that disrupt industries, improve your life, and change how the world works.

This week, we’ll focus on apps that change how you travel.

iBart

iBart was one of the first iPhone transportation apps, one that started a trend. Immediately after the iPhone was released, the developers at Pandav saw the importance of mobile transportation apps and got to work on iBart.

iBart manages your travel on the BART transportation system from anywhere in the San Francisco Bay area. It comes with a trip planner that doesn’t require internet access (so it works in tunnels), station information, scheduled arrivals, a beautifully designed BART map, and service advisories. Pandav has also released apps for Chicago, DC, and more, so be sure to see what they have available for public transportation in your area.

Getaround

Getaround was the winner of TechCrunch Disrupt NYC. It’s a peer-to-peer car rental marketplace – kind of like Airbnb for cars. As a car owner, you rent your car to Getaround users for an hourly fee. If you are borrowing a car, all you need to do is use the Getaround app to unlock the car you are borrowing. You can see all the cars available for rent on a map, or you can search for cars by address.

INRIX Traffic

INRIX Traffic

INRIX Traffic helps you find the fastest route to the places you want to go by helping you avoid traffic. It will show you the best times to leave for your destination, and you can save a set of favorite destinations or preferred routes. If commuting is a big part of your life, installing this app once might show you a route that saves you hours per year.

Taxi Magic

Our office loves Taxi Magic. Enter your location and a pick-up time, and the app will ping a cab in the area to get you. Even better, you can use the app to pay and add a tip at the end of your ride. You’ll also get an email receipt. You need to enter your credit card info and address before you can get started, but once you do, grabbing a cab is easy.

Apps have become an integral part of travel. It’s rare these days to travel for more than a few miles without loading some kind of app. Taking advantage of the best tools available makes travel far easier, whether by helping you worry less, finding you a taxi, or by showing you routes you never knew existed.

We’re always on the lookout for great apps. What transportation apps do you use?

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Quixey’s Favorite Apps: Rapportive

June 30th, 2011 | Posted by Quixey in Favorite Apps - (1 Comments)

We stumble across new apps all the time at Quixey. Understanding apps is our job, so we constantly find apps that change how we operate.

One app that has spread through our office like wildfire is called Rapportive. Rapportive is a really cool tweak to the Gmail interface that allows you to connect with your contacts in other social networks.

If you’re in sales or business development it can be a pain to remember to friend or follow everyone you meet. Unfortunately, complete dedication seems to be the way to make the most of sites like LinkedIn or Facebook.

That’s where Rapportive comes in. In a business context, the best thing about Rapportive is being able to immediately connect with your contacts on LinkedIn. Rapportive turns the “infrequent frenzied adding” LinkedIn technique into a more dependable strategy that doesn’t require special attention. Just click the right button, and you’re done.

It can also be a good idea to install Rapportive if you want to restrict what others can see. When you install Rapportive, you choose which of your social networks you want to sync with the program, limiting how much access you allow.

Rapportive is essentially stitching together multiple planes of the internet to make your life easier. Instant access to the major social networks from your Gmail terminal has proven to be indispensable.

Most of us use Rapportive in the office. At Quixey, we’re huge fans of innovative apps, and so Rapportive comes highly recommended.

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