Using apps to enjoy the NYC summer

Between the record-setting sum­mer heat, noisy traf­fic jams, and sweaty side­walk crowds, spend­ing time out­side in NYC can be a chal­lenge. We’ve got some rec­om­men­da­tions for apps that make it eas­ier and even fun.

Trans­porta­tion and Nav­i­ga­tion

  • Hop­stop (free) – Type in your desired des­ti­na­tion and it will give you step-by-step direc­tions for reach­ing your des­ti­na­tion by way of train, bus and walking.
  • 24-hour Kick Map – Sup­plies 2 maps of NYC sub­way sys­tem (one for day and one for night) that work under­ground. It also alerts you when there are ser­vice changes.
  • Get There By Bike (free) – Allows you to record your route as you bike and later share it with friends. Also, con­tains city maps that show marked bike lanes.
  • The Next Train (free) – This app will locate the sub­way near­est you and counts down the time until the next train arrives at the station.
  • Exit Strat­egy – Con­tains street maps that show where the entrances of each sub­way sta­tion are and tells you which train car door to exit in order to be the first out of the sub­way and thus reach the height of efficiency.
  • NYC Bike Share – Shows your cur­rent loca­tion on a map and where the clos­est bike share docks and bike racks are. (For when the bikes actu­ally appear — which, we hope, is soon.)
  • PlugShare (free) – Locates elec­tric car charg­ing sta­tions and uses real-time tech­nol­ogy to deter­mine sta­tions’ availability.
  • 596 Acres (free) – Maps vacant lots in Brook­lyn so com­mu­ni­ties can orga­nize around local space needs.
  • Zab­Cab (free) – This one is brand new, and allows you use your smart­phone to hail a taxi. More taxi apps are soon to be released.

 Eat­ing and Shopping

  • New York Green (Apple Store) – Pro­vides a guide to NYC’s green­mar­kets and com­mu­nity sup­ported agri­cul­ture options.
  • Yelp (free) – enables you to search for places to eat and other busi­nesses by price and loca­tion. Also sup­plies tons of reviews writ­ten by New Yorkers.
  • NYTimes The Scoop NYC (free) – Writ­ten by the staff of the New York Times. Pro­vides ideas for things to do and places to eat around the city and sup­ple­ments each idea with a New York Times arti­cle about it.
  • OpenTable (free) – Allows you to find restau­rants near you, check their table avail­abil­ity with real-time tech­nol­ogy and make reser­va­tions. You can also earn points that are redeemable for din­ing checks.
  • Tweat​.it (free) – A real time food-truck map that enables you to see the loca­tion of all of the major gourmet NYC food trucks and view each truck’s tweets.
  • NYC Tip (free) – A tip cal­cu­la­tor that helps you to eas­ily deter­mine how much to tip at a restau­rant. Pro­vides fast options for cal­cu­lat­ing a 15%, 18% and 20% tip.
  • WiFi Finder – Locates the WiFi hotspots clos­est to you using GPS technology.

Arts & Culture

  • Cul­tureNow – Guide­book for the Museum With­out Walls -  Con­tains maps, tour routes, and pub­lic art and his­tor­i­cal site analy­sis. It also pro­vides more than 400 pod­casts enabling you to take a walk­ing tour of NYC on your own.
  • Leaf­s­nap (free) – The first in a series of elec­tronic field guides that uses visual recog­ni­tion tech­nol­ogy to help iden­tify plant species.
  • Domus Guide to New York – Cre­ated by Domus mag­a­zine, this app con­tains maps, pho­tos and infor­ma­tion about NYC’s most inter­est­ing architecture.
  • NYC Arts (free) – Will help you locate per­for­mances, walks, lec­tures and many other cul­tural activ­i­ties going on around the city.
  • Museum of the Phan­tom City (free) – An inter­ac­tive map that is tagged with sites of intended art and archi­tec­tural projects that never came into fruition. When you near a site, the app will give infor­ma­tion and pro­vide images of what could have been there.

There are many more apps out there and we’ll con­tinue to keep you posted!

Image: www​.Brook​lyn365​.com