8 Ways the iPad Saved My Vacation

hi I’m Evan Carmichael and welcome to
another video usually these videos i
talk about famous entrepreneurs and the
lessons that you learn from their
success today i’m going to take a
slightly different approach and i’m
going to talk about my ipad i just came
back from a vacation and I use my iPad
as my main computing device instead of
bringing my computer and it saved my
vacation I want to talk about all the
different ways that I used it and
hopefully tell you about a couple apps
that you haven’t heard of and how you
might be able to use it for your next
trip as well so here we go app number
one DJ or ipod driving from Toronto to
New York is about a nine hour trip
depending on delays at the border they
can get really born if you don’t have
music my wife and I have a tradition of
making a new CD full of songs every time
we travel unfortunately once we crossing
the Buffalo we stopped at a Plaza and I
left the car lights on I killed our
battery we got a new battery installed
but our stereo system has an anti-theft
mechanism that if you change the battery
the stereo gets disabled unless you have
the unlock code we didn’t have an honest
which meant no music for the rest of our
trip enter DJ or iPod luckily I had
loaded my songs onto my ipad as well
before we left we had music for the rest
of our trip the iPad batteries were
awesome and the speaker was pretty good
in the car we found the best spot to put
the ipad was in the sun visor with a
speaker pointing down i bought the DJ
app because i’m also a salsa DJ my part
time is the best app i know that i’ve
seen for mixing songs and hosting
parties but the native ipod app would
have done the trick just as well and
it’s free app number two Evernote
Evernote is a cool tool that lets you
store notes and pictures online and
access them from any device I’ve used it
in the past that go paperless and get
rid of all my paper receipts after watch
the video on youtube I never really use
it for anything beyond keeping track of
my receipts but this vacation provided a
perfect opportunity to test it out
before going away I loaded my desktop
version of Evernote with information on
each city that would be visiting i put
in places we should visit information
about where we would be docking and a
little bit of history about the city it
automatically synced with my evernote
app on my ipad and whenever we landed in
a new city i had all the information at
my fingertips the basic app is free but
if you want to be able to have the
information available offline then you
need to upgrade for 499 a month or 4499
in a year I know some entrepreneurs who
store every idea they have on Evernote
and use it as an integral part of their
business I’ll definitely be looking at
other ways to incorporate it into my
daily life after the great experience
from this trip app number 3 sleep pillow
my son is a little over two years old
and is used to sleeping with a sound
machine that helps drown out any
background noise unfortunately in our
haste to leave we forgot his sound
machine at home there must be an app for
that enter sleep pillow with this app
you can choose from a large selection of
sounds to help you fall asleep from
water falling the chimes to spa music
our favorite was the electric fan it
were like a charm and when you’re
traveling with the two-year-old nothing
beats a good night’s sleep
app number for male when you’re
traveling on a cruise ship connect them
to the Internet can cost upwards of a
dollar per minute in the past my wife
and I would connect using Microsoft
Outlook download our emails disconnect
respond to the emails reconnect and send
so we’re not spending hundreds of
dollars on slow cruise ship Wi-Fi this
time I took a different approach I
connected my email to my iPad and when
we landed in a new city would find a
local starbucks and connected download
my email after dinner back on board the
ship I would load up the emails respond
and the next day connect again in a new
city to send the emails and download new
ones it was unbelievably freeing to not
have to load my laptop to get my emails
and to be able to reply at my leisure up
number five Instapaper enzyte usually
when I go on vacation I packed a lot of
books and magazines as reading material
this time my goal was to pack everything
I needed for the entire two-week trip in
one backpack and carry it with me books
and magazines are heavy so they couldn’t
come with me enter into the paper
instapaper was after the first app I
bought when I got my iPad what it allows
you to do is clip articles that you read
online and save them to read offline
later you can install a little button on
your browser and whenever you see
something that you want to read but
don’t have the time yet click the button
it’ll save it and you can read it
offline on your iPad whenever you want I
get a lot of my reading material from
the RSS feeds that I subscribe to in
google reader and Instapaper has
built-in intelligence to work with
google reader so it’s a seamless process
I also get my news from zeit which is
free which has Instapaper integration as
part of my daily routine in Toronto I’ll
go through my google reader enzyte while
I eat breakfast and save anything that’s
interesting to instapaper then I’ll read
it on my iPad as I walk to and from work
before leaving on this trip I loaded up
my instant paper with lots of reading
material from blogs that I follow and
when I connected to send emails I often
load about my site to save any
interesting articles as well it gave me
lots of reading material to go through
offline while relaxing on a deck chair
on the cruise ship and be carrying
around heavy books and magazines with me
everywhere
app number six interactive ebooks for
kids for those of you who travel with
kids I would definitely recommend
checking out some of the interactive
ebooks you can install on your iPad we
don’t let our son watch TV yep and we
didn’t have space to bring all his books
so I downloaded a number of ebooks that
he thoroughly enjoyed what we were away
they were educational and also a great
way to calm him down when he was getting
too tired or worked up there are many
options out there but you have to sort
through them to find the good ones that
are age-appropriate my two-year-old sons
favorites were the monster at the end of
the book Thomas and Friends Mickey
spooky night puzzle book and the Lorax
for dr. Seuss they’re all teach reading
skills and interactive and allow your
kids to explore books in a whole new way
as well as give their parents some time
to relax op number seven maps when
traveling in the past I used to get a
map of each place we were visiting
research all the spots I wanted to visit
and mark them on a map the map would
usually start to wear down on me with
all the folding and unfolding throughout
the course of the day if we wanted to
find something that I didn’t mark on the
map we had to ask the locals and hope
they gave us the right directions enter
the native Maps app maps is
automatically installed on your iPad and
save me so many times on this trip it
can automatically you are in a city and
you can quickly see where you have to go
seen it on the big screen was so much
more helpful than on the iphone
especially when urine in that city as
big as New York and you want to cover a
lot of territory we used the planner
subway routes look up sushi restaurants
see how far away we were from our car
find our cruise ship and the list went
on my favorite use was when I was
shopping in a drugstore in New York City
and a grandmother with her baby
grandchild asked me if there was a
walgreens anywhere nearby my Toronto
Blue Jays hat didn’t tip her off that I
was in a local I pulled up my iPad
search Walgreens and maps and showed her
that there was one two blocks away and
how to get there she was floored and it
made her day app number eight GarageBand
I purposely removed any games I had on
my iPad I tried many of them out for a
month and found them to be overly
addictive and counterproductive better
to delete them completely and not be
tempted but I found myself
wanting to have some fun of my down time
instead of reading enter garage read I
started using garageband when YouTube
was giving me issues with having
background music in my videos even
though I had the rights to use the music
I’m currently uploading about five
videos per week on my youtube channel
and each one of them was a battle with
YouTube of the music rights so I decided
to create my own music and I used
garageband into it the music you hear in
the background of this video was created
by me in garage band so when I found
myself wanting to have a little more fun
I cranked open garage man and started
composing with earphones on so it’s not
the disturbed rest of my family it’s a
great way to kill boredom but do
something that somewhat practical
instead of playing games at least that’s
what i told myself in conclusion the
trip was made so much easier and more
enjoyable because of the ipad we had
music we could travel lightly we could
sleep we knew where we were going and we
had a lot more fun being able to travel
without having use my computer was so
liberating I can’t imagine ever going
back and can’t wait for my next trip
thank you for joining me for another
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hear your thoughts and feedback if you
want to leave a comment under the video
and stay tuned for the next episode
you