mobile phones

Interactive city guides are not new, but Dublin Tourism is claiming a first with a mobile-phone application that allows users to get information on 1,400 places of interest. The organization is expecting 100,000 downloads of the app this year.

From language lessons to city maps, smartphones put everything you need at your fingertips. Save travel itineraries, check your flight's status, organize your packing lists, keep track of all your travel expenses, compare currency rates, and more.

"The mobile phone revolution continues," says a UN report about the phenomenon that's changing life across the planet. Mobile subscriptions in Africa rose from 54 million to almost 350 million between 2003 and 2008 — the biggest growth in the world.

Afghanistan, with 29 million people, has 12 million mobile-phone users. Afghans have formed text-message groups for everything from road conditions to food prices, while doctors in Bamian Province send X-rays and reports to Kabul using their phones.

All too often today, travellers find themselves in some city or country complaining, "If only I were in front of my computer! I could find this in a second." But with the latest smartphone, we're now in front of a computer wherever we are.

Nick Cave's new novel is also an iPhone application. It includes not just the text, but also videos, music composed by Cave himself, and audio of the author reading The Death of Bunny Munro. Companies that create books in the form of apps are hot.

To some, India is an emerging superpower with a growing middle class — but it's also a poor, rural state with huge problems. These worlds are in much closer proximity to each other than in other countries, says Birgit Roberts; her photos capture the paradoxes.