Right Tools for a Cool Gig

Oh, I am a lucky, lucky lady!  I have not only been selected as one of the lucky 50 who get to attend NASA’s next Tweetup at Goddard Space Flight Center (over 300 people applied!) but am covering the event for a really good podcast and may have some others interested in whatever I can capture.  So now I begin a whole different adventure, finding just the right apps to make it easy to cover everything that happens throughout my whole journey.

I have the gear I need, a spare battery and external charger for the Droid with a promise of accessible juice at the event just in case.  I may need to get a new micro-SD card, if I can swing it, or I may just wipe everything unnecessary from the one I have (a 32gb card would be great, though, right? That’s more than my computer’s hard drive!).

For travel details I am really liking TripIt. It’s a great app and a great website – always a winning combo. For those unfamiliar, you sign up and then forward your confirmation emails to them and they automatically turn it into an electronic itinerary that is very clean and easy to read. It was one of the first apps I downloaded and I used it on a trip to Florida. It not only stores every number you’ll need, from confirmations to frequent traveler programs, but has links to updated flight status, seating charts, even airport maps! On the ground, it links right into Google maps for directions, a thing I am fond of in any app.  The “itinerator” (their program that converts emails into an itinerary) can only read emails from sites they support but if you send in a different one it will store it for you and you can add events and details manually as well on the web site (which works fine in the Android browser).  To top the whole thing off, you can add an iCal feed of your trip to your Google Calendar, post plans to Facebook, share itineraries with your travel companions, and more, if you choose.  I think it’s kind of perfect!

For organizing I’m trying out the aptly-named Travel Organizer. I spotted it a few weeks ago but it looked bad, just a list of what the developer usually needs to pack with no way to add or delete items. Luckily, I took another look and found that feature had been added so I gave the free app a shot. It’s rather nice. It could use a few improvements, like being able to make custom categories instead of just using the set ones or including a field for what bag you plan to pack something in, but it’s handy as is and a far better solution than generic list programs as it has a task list and a packing list that you can easily switch between.  Most of the included items are pretty accurate, too, which saves a lot of typing.

Travel details accommodated, my next task is figuring out the multimedia angle.  I will be live-tweeting, so I can’t record or broadcast from the Droid all day, but I would like to find the best audio and video programs around to help me capture the extra-special moments and share them right from GSFC.  Join me in future posts as I look for the right tools for the job and feel free to share any suggestions you have in the comments.

If you would like to follow the NASA Tweetup please follow me at @CraftLass or search for the hashtags #SDOisGo or #NASAtweetup.