Everyone with an iPhone knows how annoying it is to go to a site and have to finger zoom, rotate and wipe across the screen looking for links to more sections. Even more annoying is when the site just doesn’t work well enough to tolerate. The Nerds on the Road website worked fine on my iPhone but was as annoying as any other site to get around.

Solution: the wptouch plugin for WordPress by www.bravenewcode.com.

As you can see, the is a plugin for wordpress only and any blog not using wordpress is lacking anyways. WordPress has so many options for SEO, networking, pinging, caching, and updating. There is even a great app for wordpress on the iPhone (download) that I use pretty regularly. It’s especially useful for uploading photos directly to wordpress from your phone (rather than emailing them to yourself) and of course you can write blogs when you’re not around a computer – but as you can imagine, writing an entire blog on a touch screen keyboard is a nightmare.

As soon as I found wptouch I had some problems installing, so I thought, really I had just checked the box for “show regular site for 1st time visits” and my iPhone would never show the mobile site, second visit or 10th – so beware of that.

First thing to do is come up with a color scheme, which is really limited but I cant complain giving what the plugin does. Then go and create your icons for your home page and all the pages you decide to have on the mobile site. A link next to the icon section sends you to a great site for making icons for iPhones, sites, apps or profiles, www.flavorstudios.com. Then install WordTwit though your plugins>add new, configure your settings there and you’re live!

Anyone with wordpress can have a mobile site and now that I know that I have about 10 more mobile sites to make for myself, clients and friends. And I thought I wouldnt have any work Christmas week!

For internet we have an AT&T USB internet device and a Verizon wifi hotspot (our second after Sprint’s service didn’t work out). If anyone cares to know, for traveling, Verizon has the BEST coverage for phone and internet – like the commercials say – 5 times better than AT&T. We learned the hard way, having not had TV in years and not listening to radio ads closely enough, we probably would have got Verizon for cell service as well. At the time, you couldn’t get an iPhone without AT&T unless it was used and jailbroken – which at the time I didn’t know enough about to trust.

I am always in the passenger seat since I don’t have a drivers license which by default makes me the navigator. While we are driving, if I’m not working, I am looking up information and weather at our next destination. Making an attempt to become somewhat informed about the place and maybe even have the place mapped out in my head. By the time we get to a town, I know where we can eat, what there is to do, where we can buy groceries, what the weather will be like all week, what our cell/internet reception will be like and maybe even why the town is called Bubsville for example.

I decided after two friends this year bought or got the iTouch for Christmas, that I would make a list of travel apps while it was fresh in my mind. They are not in a particular order except ones I use most often. I dont see a point in rating them – if they have issues – I will not hold back telling you.

First, Google Maps of course. This app comes with the iPhone and iTouch and although we have GPS (TomTom) in the RV, it has proven instrumental in finding places that either the GPS cannot find by name or provides a map view of a search, unlike GPS, letting you see things in relativity to you and each other – rather than a list that only tells you how far away from you things are.  GPS is also only updated every so often and is nowhere near as thorough of a search though sometimes it will surprise you. When you cant find a place on GPS by name you can search Google Maps for the location which will give you an address. If you can’t find a place on Google Maps but know generally where it is,  you can drop a pin by clicking the peeling paper in the bottom right and drag it where you want it. If its on a road, Google will tell you the location of your dropped pin, which you can then type into GPS. Do NOT by AT&T GPS if you plan to leave a major city, unfortunately iPhone GPS just isn’t dependable enough and often lags (when you need to know what your next turn is this is a no), even Google Maps gets stuck sometimes and thinks you’re in a field or the center of town – so paying for GPS that is hardly better than the free map service isn’t worth it.

Other advantages of Google Maps is Satellite and Hybrid view which will show you the topography of the region and in cases where you are really lost, you can find buildings, RV parks and even the street view of the place you are going (in a town or city – not state parks or country roads). We have many times found RV parks by looking at the satellite view and seeing a row of RV’s from space. We find most of our State Parks and RV parks though Google Maps as well as anything like vets, propane and parks for Chena to play in.

Weather is an obvious necessary app. We ran from snow storms and 18 degree nights for weeks thanks to this built in feature. It’s pretty self explanatory.

The apps I use second most often is probably a toss up between Around Me (download), Yelp (download) and Urban Spoon (download). They all do similar things in different ways.

Yelp (download) is just like the website, generally. You can find places and see their ratings – unlike Urban Spoon, it has more than just food and unlike Around Me, it has the reviews. Yelp has however gotten us lost a couple times and it’s best to confirm with Google Maps and maybe even call a place before betting money. Yelp does have a live feed though where local reviews for places pop up as a list and you can bookmark favorite places to check them out later. They also have a Talk feature where you can post or answer local questions about places to find things or just use the Nearby option to find anything near you in set categories. Retailers can also post coupons and sales on the Yelp website which show up as a category in the Nearby page giving you an edge in shopping or eating cheap.

Around me (download) will let you search many categories or use an open search for places in your area. You can search a list that tells you the address and how many miles it is or view it as a map with pins on it. They are pretty up to date on what business are actually still around, a problem you run into allot while traveling the US we’ve found. There is a category called Nearby that will tell you a short history of towns around you.

Urban Spoon (download) is strictly food as you can guess. You can search by type of food, places near you and unlike Google Maps or Around Me, you can see the price range, reviews, ratings and sometimes menus. The restaurant page has the phone number, address and a link to the map or website if they have one. Once on the map, you can send it to Google Maps which will show were you are relative to the restaurant and plan your trip there.

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Wi-fi Finder (download) is another great app for people like me and Ross who have a limited amount of bandwidth with our services (5 gigs each). We like to download Podcasts, Torrents and ebooks and NEED to regularly update software or hefty Windows updates. Libraries are the best places to sit outside for long periods of time and steal internet (its free so its not really stealing). Some RV parks already have internet but we don’t normally stay in them – so far RV park internet has been a little undependable to work on and depends on location in park, quality of connection, how many people are using it and how attentive the hosts are if the modem crashes. You will find that most places on Wi-fi Finder are paid internet sadly but Libraries are almost always a gaurante, from Glasgow Montana to downtown L.A.

If you love movies and don’t want to be kept out of the movie loop just because you are traveling, IMDB (download) is an excellent app for up and coming films, trailers and of course actor/director info but it is not the best app for traveling because their theater search has a very limited search range. I use Flixter (download) most often and for more reasons than just their theater search. Flixter is connected directly with Rotten Tomatoes reviews, Netflix and their Facebook app. You can see and edit your Netflix queue, add movies to a “want to see” list, rate movies and see friends ratings (the last 3 are through your Facebook account). Unfortunately it does not connect your Netflix ratings with your Facebook ratings, which would make my number about 800 rather tan 47 – but we cant win everything. It’s main features has “in theaters” to search movie and then theater, or” theaters” then movies as well as “upcoming” and “whats on DVD”.

Wikipedia (download) is another great app for people who like to know everything about a place or person on their journey. There are lots of Wiki apps but this one is free and official. It’s basic like the site, just search.

Stanza (download) is probably the best E-book app I have found. There are tons of books for free or cheap and a variety of ways to format reading from text size, color, background color and of course vertical or horizontal reading. Flip the pages with your finger or tap to go back to the menu. I don’t mind reading on a small screen and the size of the iPhone or iTouch allow you to read in bed without crumpling pages (I paid for only one of the 10 books I have on Stanza).

Pandora (download) is my favorite internet radio but NPR Addict (download), Stitcher (download) and iFM (download) are great audio sources as well. NPR Addict lets you download shows and Stitcher is radio shows from all over the world. iFM is useful for people who enjoy the radio locally though – not because it plays radio locally, but because it looks up all the radio stations around you and tells you what kind of music they play and even what song they are playing at that moment. Unfortunately this is not dependable everywhere you go as their database seems pretty limited. So far small towns have had terrible radio and we just listen to Pandora or our own music. Pandora is great because you can fine tune your listening preferences by adding stations while a fancy project called the “genome project” uses psychic powers to use your thumbs up and down on songs to find songs you are guaranteed to like.

Facebook (download) is probably an app I use really often but is not specifically an app useful in travel. It is however a great app for posting your location, activities and photos to torture friends and family who are not traveling.

Other apps for travel that we don’t get much use out of are Cheap Gas (download) which finds well.. cheap gas stations , Repair Pal (download) which gives you estimates on car repairs and find you mechanics with reviews and Trapster (download) that warns you of speed traps or police in your area.

For international travel start with a Lonely Planet guide and go from there. They aren’t free and they are large apps that require wi-fi to download but you wont regret knowing more about the local area than half the natives.

We got into town relatively early considering our usual arrival time in of 3am – rolling into a super cheap RV park at 8pm was some kind of miracle. We wanted a place near the center of town to get a chance to do something, anything, during the week. It would be the first time we were near anything at all really. A part of me just wanted to be able to walk to a store or ride my bike to a bar after spending the last couple months in the boondocks. Of the 2 closest to the center of town, Hill County RV Park was the cheapest at only $20 a night or $100 a week. It was almost as cheap as some of the non-hookup sites at state parks and featured free wifi, cable TV and the usual hookups. They even had a gray/black water hookup unlike all the parks so far. For everyone who doesn’t know what gray water is (and I barely know), its the water from your sink and shower, basically anything but your toilet. Black Water is toilet water + the rest – anything you should be embarrassed about. We still don’t use our toilet and don’t plan on it. There is a bathroom with a shower about 40 feet from the RV and as usual we are some of the only people using it so it’s not bad.

Since this is technically the first RV park we have stayed at (everything else having been state parks or parking lots) we were skeptical about sharing space so closely with so many people. Turns out people tend to leave you alone, especially if you leave them alone or look different. They have a rec room we haven’t used for anything yet. It has a TV, books and 2 computers with internet. They are planning a Christmas potluck – probably consisting of a few of the many full time residents at the park. There’s are 64 spots here and less than half of them every seem to get new people in them. Most of the people seem older, many working locally and all of them spending most of their time inside.

Fredericksburg has so far proven interesting enough to keep us here 2 weeks. After we were here a couple days we took a bike ride into town to find a place to get a drink. The highway is the only way into town from where we are and it’s definitely not meant for bikes. It was already dark, naturally (since it gets dark at 5:30) and we hadn’t made the attempt in daylight to get a feel for it. People travel down the highway at about 50 to 70mph, most any intention of giving us any space. I can ride my bike in the dirt if I have to but Ross’s bike has small road tires that pop if you look at them wrong. We had to share a headlight and tail light, me in the back with the flashing red – and probably the only thing that kept us form being smothered. The ride into town is about 2 miles up a slight hill, which wouldn’t have been a problem if I had ridden a bike more than once in the last 3 years. About half way there we found a place called Mamacitas and stopped for something to eat. I thought it was locally owned but we were immediately greeted by a Starbucks inside (the first in Texas) and a possible sighting of a Bush family member (this is a leaping guess, but he looked like Bush). After some soggy spinach on tortillas and cheese we headed off to find another place to grab a drink – someplace Texan this time.

We rode downtown with the expectations that a weeknight would not keep Texans out of the bars but found only a completely dead downtown. All the bars and restaurants on main street were closed and it was only 8pm. We quickly scoured the annals of our iPhones in search of nearby late night beverage sales and came up with Buck O’Brians – an “Irish bar” who was close and open. We walked in to a bar full of cowboys and hunters listening to country music I haven’t heard since I was 12 in Montana and my mom worked in bar. The ride home was cold but at least downhill and we didn’t go out again til this weekend.

Xmas obsessed Fredericksburg:

Santa-Garlic in Fredricksburg Texas

santa on crutches

Spunky Monkey and the Xmas dog

We will be here until Christmas and 2 days after. We don’t expect to do much on, around or after Christmas but I guess that all depends on our willingness to face the highway, pack up and drive somewhere or socialize. I’m sure something will drag us out before then.