Top 5 Offline Map Apps for iPhone 5

Asking a stranger about a route, points of interest (POI), a popular restaurant, or a public place is not considered a safe practice these days. Owing to the growing crime and insecurity while at an unknown place is a matter of worry, because you are not aware of the way out to reach a safer place. Google Maps and other prominent maps applications will assist your Apple’s device in finding directions, but only when your device is supported by a working internet connection. But what will you do when there’s no connectivity on your iPhone 5? Map apps are one of the most important accessible factors when you are away from your city and want to find out POIs or routes. Offline Maps apps are specially developed for no internet connectivity situations hence, you can download the map image, a place of interest, or a part of the map on your iPhone.

In this blog, you’ll read about the top 5 offline map apps for iPhone 5:

1. Pocket Earth Lite

Pocket Earth Lite is an excellent offline map app that works with GPS and is meant to keep handy while you’re travelling to abroad. Possessing a detailed and interactive database of worldwide maps, the app lets you access information about more than 100,000 places. Coming with customization features, the app lets you personalize the maps and view only the info you want. Capable of displaying information about various POIs such as hotels, restaurants, bars, and tourist sites, the app is a constant travel companion as it fetches metro and public transit info. One of the most amazing features is that the app provides access to more than 50,000 detailed Wikivoyage Travel Guides in 7 languages.

2. Galileo Offline Maps

Galileo Offline Maps is an app that provides you an access to the offline vector maps and also lets you do an offline search to look for routes to your desired locations. Pro version users can access and download unlimited number of countries/regions maps, without any interference or annoying ads. Supporting multiple languages, this map app offers monthly updates to keep the database refreshed and up-to-date. You can easily record your trips, mark your favorite places, set points of interest for later use, and can share your itineraries from the app via Mail, Facebook, and Twitter. It also monitors your real time speed, distance and time traveled, in order to keep you posted about the past activities.

3. City Maps 2Go Pro

City Maps 2Go Pro is another offline app that provides unlimited access to maps and travel content to worldwide destinations while the free version limits the access to five destinations of your choice. Featuring a complete package of offline maps, popular places, in-depth travel content and insider tips, the app also assists you in searching the best restaurants, attractions, shops, hotels, and bars. Possessing a powerful search function, the app can easily find map by name, category, or your device’s GPS. You can easily share your favorite places, post reviews, rate your favorite places, and share tips and recommendations for other travelers with this amazing app.

4. OpenMaps Pro

OpenMaps Pro is an amazing offline maps application that allows downloading of maps, editing them, searching for addresses, getting directions, and scanning the map for iPhone users. Advanced users have an access to the custom map and your friends’ tweets that have been mentioned for you on the map. The app can efficiently find the car, bike or pedestrian routes with directions between any two locations and an estimated travel time provided along with it.

5. MAPS.ME

Maps.ME is an offline iPhone app that can efficiently display information about various POIs like restaurants, gas stations, and tourist destinations. The database is always up-to-date as details are added on a daily basis by map users located worldwide. The app provides maps that are small in size, and can present route to various destinations and POIs for free, irrespective of their country or location. Offering you the offline search feature to find everything that you want, the app lets you bookmark locations and POI for later use.

The above mentioned apps are some of the efficient offline maps apps for your iPhone 5 and may or may not be used on other Apple devices. Apart from these, you can also install CoPilot GPS, Tripadvisor Offline City guides, Scout GPS, Wi-Fi Finder, Map With Me Lite, A&T Navigator, MotionX GPS, and Geocaching for added offline map support. For more options you should also explore the iTunes store and look for the local offline map apps as they are efficient in offering details about local POIs.

Great Technology That We Inherited From Science Fiction Movies

Sci-Fi movies are favorites among viewers of all age group. Science Fiction movies play with the element of technology and depict a future world that has more improved technology to facilitate the day-to-day life. When we watch such movies, we get awestruck with the incredible imagination of the director and also with his way of execution. The depiction of a world facilitated with much advanced gadgets is mesmerizing to one and all. It is quite interesting to note that there are many great minds that have used these ideas of Sci-Fi movies as inspiration to come up with real life innovation

Do you know that many gadgets or technology that you are happily using today are inspired from some Sci-Fi movies? You will be amazed to learn that the Rocket, Geostationary Satellite, Submarine, Telephone and many other technological innovations are the by-product of some Sci-Fi movies, and director’s imagination, that later inspired the engineer to come up with real life gadgets. 

Listed below are five such technological innovations that have been inherited from some Sci-Fi movies.

The Mobile Phone

 A television series called Star Trek was first to show the use of a mobile communication device. The inventor of the mobile phone, Martin Cooper (in the picture) had even admitted that he was inspired by watching Captain Kirk of Star Trek speaking into his handheld mobile communicator. In 1973, Cooper was ready with his telephone from which he made a call to his competitors at AT&T's Bell Labs.

Virtual Realities

 These days, we have become very much accustomed to the virtual world of Internet. We all are part of some virtual community and it comes usual to us. Phillip Rosedale of Linden Labs was first to create the online virtual world in his movie “Second Life” in 1999. Rosedale said he was inspired by the novel ‘Snow Crash’ by Neal Stephenson. The novel speaks about a "Metaverse" which refers to the space where humans behave as avatars and interact with each other a three-dimensional space. This space mirrors the real world. 

Flat Touchscreen devices 

 

 Today, flat touch-screen devices are in abundance. Almost all of us today own, iPhone, iPad, Android phone or Windows tab. Isn’t these touch screen devices have made our life easy? We all owe a debt of gratitude once again to the TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” This series showed the use of PADD (Personal Access Display Device). This was a kind of flat touch screen device through which, with the touch of a finger, users can remotely access databases, play back audiovisual content, and enter logs. Surprisingly, it’s a reality today. 

The Computer Virus

  Although, we are not happy to have computer viruses around and so not happy about somebody invented it. But as the talk is about technologies inspired from Science Fiction, then computer viruses worth deserve a mention. In 1975, British author John Brunner came up with the idea of “The Shockwave Rider,” which is shown as a self-replicating program that was capable of spreading across a network. After seven years in 1982, two great computer scientists John F. Shoch and John A. Hupp created the first computer worm. Even today, hackers refer to “The Shockwave Rider” as a big influence.

Science Fiction movies with concepts like time travel, use of ‘Time’ as currency in the movie, installation of chip in brain that enables one to communicate with others without use of device are considered as some really interesting ideas. Who knows, what idea of the reel life will get transformed into the real life in future. But while technology is evolving, especially with phenomenon like the Internet of Things, soon we will have new technology and gadgets to deal with. Moreover, there is no denial that Sci-Fi movies serve as a great source of inspiration.

How to Prevent Leaking of Your Location History Over Wi-Fi on the Android Device

While the Internet has blessed us with the boom called ‘Connectivity’ but it is also true that somehow this connectivity is risking our privacy. The Internet service, apps and websites have made many things easy for us by making us connected to what earlier was impossible either because of geographical limitations or because of lack of upgraded technology. 

Keeping the old stories behind, the present day fact is through our smartphones, tablets and other computing devices we are exploring the unexplored strength of the Internet. Services offered through GPS, WI-Fi, and other applications are some wonders of science and technology that have transformed the earth into a global village. But by expanding our network of connections, aren’t we letting others to invade our privacy?

‘Location History’ Feature of your Android Device 

The apps we use, the Wi-Fi, websites, etc can be the channels through which our personal information like password, location information and other identity related information can be leaked out. If you are an Android user, then you must become aware of the fact that over Wi-Fi, location history of an Android phone can be tracked upon. Google has introduced this feature with the intention that it will allow your device to quickly connect to a Wi-Fi network. Whenever, you will try to connect to a Wi-Fi connection, this feature will quickly scan the location history and if you connected to that particular network earlier, then your current process of connection will fasten up. 

Although, Google has bonafide motives but the ability to track your ‘Location History’ over Wi-Fi can be dangerous sometimes. Because this history can be tracked even when the screen of your device is turned off but connected to a Wi-Fi network. Anybody interested in peaking, can easily learn about your whereabouts by checking out the Wi-Fi you are connected and can also learn the places you visit by checking the location history, because this history comprises of the names of wireless networks to which your device has previously got connected to.

This might sound like a trivial matter at surface but can be potentially dangerous also. You can understand the possible risk by contemplating over the thought that do you disclose your whereabouts every time to everyone, especially the strangers. The answer is NO for one and all. No one prefers disclosing their location information to strangers and not even to the known ones all the time for security reasons. But with this location history feature in your Android phone, your phone will be able to trace the Wi-Fi networks your device was connected to and thereby it will broadcast your location. Someone with strong intentions can easily track your exact location using some easy techniques.

How to prevent others from tracing your Wi-Fi Location History?

Till Google fixes out this issue soon, you have to do something if you don’t want your location information to get leaked out through the medium of your Android device over the Wi-Fi connection.

Following are the steps to keep this risk under control.

·         Open the ‘Settings’ app from your Android App.

·         Go to the ‘Network Connection’ settings

·         Scroll down to “Wi-Fi” settings and tap on it

·         Navigate ‘to Advanced Wi-Fi’ Settings

·         Look for the “Keep Wi-Fi on during sleep” option

·         It is usually marked with the “Always’ option. Change it to ‘Never’

This might slow down your device a little bit as your device will not be able to connect to the Wi-Fi in its sleep mode and hence won’t be able to update any apps. But it is worth bearing this much of discomfort because only by changing the behavior from ‘Always’ to ‘Never’ you can save your Wi-Fi location history from falling into the wrong hands.

Is iPhone Jailbreaking Good or Bad?

The usability of iPhone or any smartphone for that matter enhances significantly because of the apps installed in it. This means that without apps these devices will be good only for a few things. If you are very much apps freak and wish make your device more efficient, then you must be aware of jailbreaking. Jail-breaking is the practice through which you can get accesses of the apps that are not available in the official app store of Apple. Apple is very strict in selecting the apps for its app store and has restricted the approval of  an app that doesn’t comply with the rules of Apple.

Because of this stringent app policy, Apple app store lacks many innovative and cool apps. But you can still have those in your iPhone through the technique of jail-breaking. However, legal implications and safety concerns are always there. Is iPhone jail-breaking good or bad is like a million dollar question for every iPhone user, who gets tempted to download better apps through jail breaking but then safety concerns hold them back. 

The good thing about jail breaking iOS is that you get access to better apps. However, Apple never supports this practice yet it has received some legal support from the United States Copyright Office. So, legality is not a big concern here. However, there are some possible risks of getting your iOS jail broken.

Before you actually decide to go with this practice, you must be aware of the drawbacks also that are listed below for your information:

Slower Performance:

The apps downloaded after jail breaking are most likely developed in violation of the Apple’s standardized CPU and memory usage guidelines. Using these apps may slow down the CPU performance of your iPhone or can reduce its battery life as well. But there are various apps available for performance management of jail broken iPhones. Hence, this issue is not a very big issue indeed. 

Loss of Warranty: 

Loss of warranty is one of the confirmed cons of this practice. Once your iOS is jail broken, it gets devoid of all Apple’s warranty. So, if your phone gets some hardware problem, Apple won’t attend your phone for servicing. Here again, there are ways through which you can get it serviced. However, there are ways through which your device can be brought back to the original pre-jail broken state. But you never know, Apple might have better technology for detecting such devices.

Your phone may get "locked out": 

Do you know that once Sony had locked jail broken PS3 users out of the PlayStation Network. As of now, Apple is not that strict against the jail breakers that is why millions of people are adopting this practice. But, you never know like Sony, if Apple also decides to actively condemn the jail breakers, then your iPhone might get locked out from having access to Apple content services like app store.

Risk from Malware:

 

Malware attack is another big risk because Apple's security folks don’t take up the responsibility of safety for a jail broken iPhone. Thus, your device gets more vulnerable to iPhone-specific viruses, malware, and spyware. One way to acquire certain safety here is to change the root password after completing the jail breaking process.

Now, you know about many of the possible risks. If you are ready to tackle with these, then this practice can get you some really nice apps. Moreover, the practice has received some legal support as well. Most importantly developers of Cydia and Rock app store (the two popular app stores from where apps can be downloaded after jailbreaking) have their own code for checking the potential security vulnerabilities. Considering the fact that many users are taking advantage of this practice, it can be concluded that jailbreaking is a safe endeavor.