One of the things that keeps us moving out on the road is music. We typically stream the latest music directly to our iPhone through the Pandora application. That is until we travel internationally. The problem with Pandora is they don’t have licensing agreements in place to provide service in certain countries. So if you travel internationally and want to catch your favorite tunes, there is a high likelihood that Pandora will give you a message it isn’t supported in the country you are visiting.
Instead going silent for the week, we can listen to music with Grooveshark from our desktop. Their big benefit is you can save music a playlist and listen to your music over and over.
But they have their problems as well. They don’t have an agreement with the Apple to place their application in the app store. So unfortunately Grooveshark is limiting from a mobile perspective, unless you do one of the following:
- Option 1: Download Grooveshark from Cydia on your jailbroken iOS device for the full Grooveshark experience!
- Option 2: Point your touch device to html5.grooveshark.com
Free International Dialing To The U.S. Comes Through Again
This may sound like an infomercial, since we’ve already shared how you can dial internationally for free with the iPhone application Magic Jack, but it still amazes me how good this application works. We use this application in conjunction with TextPlus for free international texting to meet our communication needs while traveling outside of the country.
I recently used a wifi connection in an international airport and at a hotel to call back home. The service was crystal clear, didn’t drop any calls, and best of all the calls were completely free.
The Magic Jack application is free to download. Following a few simple steps will have you dialing internationally for free in no time.
- Open the Magic Jack application
- Dial a number or select one of your contacts from your iPhone
- Enjoy free international calling
Bottom Line
Communications can get expensive when traveling internationally. Using mobile applications can make your traveling experience better with free music and save you money with free phone calls and free texting.
Are there any other cool applications that are great for international travel?
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The Weekly Flyer writes about travel from a business traveler perspective. He travels the world every week accumulating points and miles along the way.
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Not as useful as magic jack but I’ve been playing with tourwrist for iPad or iPhone lately and it’s a very cool app that allows for 360 degree views of places all over the world and you can post your own places as well.
Magic Jack and all free mobile apps compress calls over the public internet and the quality is terrible with a high percentage of dropped calls. I guess you get what you pay for, nothing is really free , there are mobile apps with a small monthly fee for unlimited or pennies per minute per call that are much more reliable and of better quality since they do not use compressed minutes over the public internet
Great I like this jack magic calls idea. We should include this in budget travel tips. All time I have to pay a huge amount for my mobile bill.