Heading overseas anytime soon? Curious about the local customs, weather, entry requirements, and currency conversions? The Windows Phone 7 application Weather Advisor hopes to help you with all your international travel questions.
The travel application for your Windows Phone has a healthy list of international destinations. Pulling data from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Travel Advisor offers users update travel information ranging from Embassy Contacts to health issues common to your destination.
More on Travel Advisor after the break.
The application is laid out in a straight forward manner. Choose your Country of destination from the listing on the app's main page and you are then taken to the advisory hub which contains these pages.
Advice: This page contains information concerning your destination and covers Embassy contacts (British Consulate), entry requirements, general information on the Country, health issues, laws and customs, natural disasters common to the area, safety concerns, and an overall summary for traveling to that particular Country.
Currency: A simple currency converter that converts the most common local currency to USD. If I'm not mistaken, Travel Advisor bases your home currency on your Service Provider's location.
Forum: Travel Advisor taps into gapyear.com's discussion forums to share conversations concerning travel to the various destinations.
Translate: A simple translation app that will translate English to the dominant language of your destination. The translation only tackles the written word. No audible translation is available. It also contains a list of common travel phrases.
Twitter: Travel Advisor has a built in Twitter feed that you can authorize to tap into your Twitter account. From here you can tweet about your travels abroad.
Weather: Provided by Weather Central, Travel Advisor will display a general forecast for your destination Country. The forecast appears to be based on the weather forecast for that particular country's capital. This can be a little tricky if your traveling to a large country that can be snowing in one area and be sunny in another.
Travel Advisor ran smoothly but did crash a few times when accessing the settings menu. Settings were minimal (turning on/off your location and authorizing Twitter access). Because you're not likely to access the settings frequently, the instability isn't as frustrating but worth noting.
Overall, I found Travel Advisor to be an informative application. The Embassy information is for the British Consulate, which makes sense seeing that the app pulls most of it's information from the British government agency. While the Embassy information might not be helpful, the rest might.
Regardless, if your looking for a free application that will provide you with updated, international travel information Travel Advisor is worth the download. You can find your free copy of Travel Advisor here (opens Zune) at the Marketplace.
