When travelling outside of Sweden I don’t use the data connection on my mobile phone. The cost of doing so is prohibitive, even since the European Union forced operators to bring down their prices.

But traveling around Sweden I have got used using Google Maps to help me find where I am going. Enter MapDroyd, a free offline map application.

Last week took me to Keele University, near Manchester, in the UK. Knowing I wouldn’t have data on my mobile phone I downloaded an application called MapDroyd. Once downloaded, you can cache maps of different regions to your phone as you desire. For this trip I downloaded the map of the UK.

I was very impressed with MapDroyd. The maps were far more detailed that I expected (yet took less than 90 MB on my phone). It used AGPS to find my location, and oriented the maps to match reality using the compass.

MapDroyd sources its maps from OpenStreetMap, another project I have been wanting to support.

The second application I learnt to love last week was TripIt. This is a web-based application to manage your travels, but has phone-based app siblings. After creating an account on TripIt, you can forward it all of your travel confirmations (flights, hotels, etc …) and it will put together detailed itineraries (excellent when your travels consist of a myriad of web-based bookings). The phone apps allow you to cache this information for offline access while on the run.