One of the most popular posts ever on newelty has been our list of top iPhone apps, so it’s no surprise that I received a request for the best iPad apps from a friend. Having made it happily from Seattle to Nairobi to Copenhagen back to Seattle again–and having found this travel easier and more pleasant than ever before, thanks to my iPad–I can say authoritatively that it has changed my travel life for the better. Period.

Here are the apps I use to fight jet lag’s confusion, get work done even without a laptop, and stay entertained while the plane pops and rocks with turbulence. I also pan some apps that aren’t worth their salt.

Staying in Touch
No, you aren’t missing anything–Facebook has no iPad app to date, probably because their and Apple’s lawyers haven’t finished some to-the-death cage match yet. In the interim, I use myPad (free). It resolves to the full iPad screen and gets the job done crash-free.

If you’re planning from blogging from the road, I like the simple, almost-email like app for WordPress (also free). A little while ago, I considered starting fresh with Tumblr for newelty, but their iPad app isn’t ready for prime time. WordPress could have more iPad support in terms of templates for how your blog displayed–Onswipe was also buggy for me–but in terms of the ability to quickly publish a post, WordPress is still the winner.

Your Little Travel Helper
My iPad feels like the awesome dashboard/assistant any traveler should have for a trip. I feel affection for it as it keeps me company throughout the journey, letting me know what time it is back home.

To that end, every traveler should have World Clock Pro on their iPad ($1.99). Have you ever done that thing of being jet lagged and trying to subtract hours to figure out the time back home–and realizing you calculated wrong, and it’s AM not PM, or vice versa? Never again. World Clock lets you enter a ton of cities and has a slider that you can move to double check that when you wake up in your morning, it’s still a reasonable time for a call back home. Check out the video above for a demo.

Looking through the scores of weather apps, I settled on Weather+ ($.99). Like World Clock, you can load up a series of cities to see the daily highs and get the general gist. I also love that it stores the info for when you are not online anymore (say, when you’re on a wifi-free plane). It may be a slightly expired data, but better that than the Weather Channel app’s “failed connection” response.

Moleskines are a overplayed, but the Moleskine app is more than a marketing ploy (free). It’s a great Notepad equivalent that displays like a digital version of one of their notebooks.

For more practical note taking, try Evernote (free). To repeat the theme from this whole section, you’ll want to have apps that work when you are both off and on wifi. When you are on, Evernote saves your files–no more emailing notes to yourself for later.

Feeding Your Brain on a 14-Hour Flight

I hate being stuck in the metal tube. Hate. I am a terrible flier who morphs into an insane armrest defender. My iPad has chilled me out, largely because with my high-quality headphones, I can simply pretend all the other people in the tube don’t exist.

My number one tip isn’t an app, but this:

Download tons of movies and TV shows via iTunes. TONS. All those shows you’ve read about but never actually had time to watch? Now you do. Download a couple of each of four or five shows, and you can stock up on additional episodes next time you hit wifi. I did that with “An Idiot Abroad” and was so happy I did. It might be the best travel show ever on television, and it made me laugh out loud while experiencing turbulence flying over the Sahara Desert. (Did I mention I am a crazy-nervous flier?)

Since you may be wifi-free for many hours, the important thing is to pack your iPad as you do your suitcase.

Kindle is the best book app, just because Amazon simply has more, and more obscure, titles than Apple (free, but–duh–you have to buy the books). Apple forced Amazon to remove the ability to one-click a book (cue additional lawyer cage fights), but that’s OK. Load up from Safari before you leave home and you’re fine. Amazon also offers first chapters of books as samples, so employ the same snack bar theory as with iTunes, above.

For magazines, props to Vanity Fair for an inventive app that deconstructs the magazine (free, but you have to buy individual magazines or subscribe). Plus, I just like their content for flights, and enjoy not having to haul the extra paper.

For a whole host of obscure mags, I like Zinio (free, but, again, buy stuff through the app). A long time ago–about two years’ time–I tried to get “Time Out Amsterdam” delivered to my home. It would have cost $100 for an annual subscription. Hello! Instead, I can get them delivered via Zinio, because it has every magazine in the world, as far as I can tell.

Instapaper is a little tricky to use, but is a hidden gem ($4.99). It lets you save web pages to read later, say, on a plane. You enter the URL and save it to your repository. I love this app when I have 20 page PDFs to read and no time to look at them at work.

Using the Hotel WiFi

In general, I use Feedly with my Google RSS Reader to follow blogs (free). The display is minimalist and clean, which I appreciate. It also has some popular blogs like Kottke and swissmiss pre-loaded, if you want to try it without bothering with a Google Reader setup.

Hitpad keeps track of what’s trending on Twitter, and provides all the background you could need as to why, in video, article, and tweet form (free).

If you do have wifi in your hotel, and it’s strong enough to support a stream, Netflix has a very good app that lets you watch most of their huge video library (free app, monthly fee for streaming). I generally do a combo of this and iTunes downloads, depending on the length of the trip and the amount of time I’ll be spending in various airports.

GoodReader is the most work-focused app here ($4.99). It opens Word docs. Sometimes I need that to happen, and am grateful that I downloaded this app.

When I’m traveling, I seem to be perpetually looking up information, including background on the new places I’ve been. The Wikipedia app is quick and easy (free).

Save Your Time and Money

I love the Daily Show, and miss it while I’m on the road. But the Daily Show app is terrible. Because the shows are for sale on iTunes, it only gives you one clip per episode. Since the segments are generally interlaced with what comes before or after, it’s a glaring omission to only include half of a joke. Save your money or buy the iTunes full episodes instead. Or wait until you get home and watch them for free on their website.

The Weather Channel app is a resource hog because of the satellite maps, and won’t load unless you’re on wifi. Stick with the other weather app recommended above instead.

Flipboard seems cool in theory, but in actuality, I never use it. It pulls in the links that your friends post on Facebook and Twitter, but it winds up feeling redundant, as I’ve mostly already seen those in their Facebook feeds. It’s basically just taking up space at this point, because I can’t bring myself to delete it, but I don’t use it either.

Any good ones I missed? Drop a line in the comments–I love to compare apps!

As regular newelty readers know, I am obsessed with Dutch bikes, a result of being obsessed with the Dutch in general.

Which is why I was immediately drawn to Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac, which I picked up at one of my favorite bookstores today. It includes such novelties as a review of Swedish army bicycles, but, really, it was the poems and comics that drew me in.

All in all, without sounding too much like this “Portlandia” video, Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac–not be confused with British Boneshaker–is a complete treat for those of us who are fond of our bikes to the point of absurdity.

Also, I like their fonts. And feel as though they would probably enjoy this video, and forgive its shaky quality for the heartfelt statement of love for Euro-biking that it is.

Via Design Observer

One of my favorite things is to look beyond the travel-blog circuit for interesting posts on the future of travel. On Design Observer, John Thackara has a thought-provoking piece on the whole high-speed train push of the eco-conscious western world. It’s a contrarian thought, but an interesting one.

In short and at its core, he questions whether the modern push of convenience and mobility is actually a good idea.

Personally, I think infrastructure is a necessity, and am willing to put my tax dollars where my money is. Here in my home town of Seattle, there’s a big kerfuffle about a similar issue–a big dig to replace an ailing highway that will collapse if we have a significant earthquake. I’m pro.

That said, I think it’s interesting when someone points out the ecological costs–if not the financial cost–of what Norway is attempting to do with their own high-speed rail:

“UC Berkeley has measured the vast amounts of environmentally intensive materials that are needed to build an HST [high-speed train] infrastructure. The Berkeley team analyzed hundreds of life-cycle processes — from construction equipment (for example, emissions from bulldozers, dump trucks, excavators and frontloaders) to the supply-chain effects of producing the concrete and steel needed to construct hundreds of miles of track and stations.

Prices really soar when an HST requires bridges, tunnels and winding mountain routes to cover difficult terrain. On the flat run from Madrid to Seville, the bridge-and-tunnel share is only 3.8 percent — but on the line between Wurzburg and Hanover, the share is 37 percent. In Norway, with its mountainous topography, the resource costs and carbon footprint of its tracks would surely be astronomical.”

Another point I found interesting:

“Although time-savings provide the principal economic justification for HST schemes, the expansion of these networks does not, in the long run, give people more free time. On the contrary: We spend the same amount of time traveling today as we did 50 years ago — but we use that time to travel longer distances.

…Are there new ways to think about the space-time geography of Norway? To re-imagine its wide spaces and long distances as assets rather than as obstacles to be overcome?

Space, like oil is a finite resource. Worldwide, space is at a premium. Norway has lots of space; this makes her rich. So why try to compress this valuable national resource? Why try to make it smaller?”

Needless to say, in the India-Norway competition, India comes out on top. It’s a wonky but thought-provoking piece on what’s really “better” when it comes to train travel. That said, I’ll still always prefer the more convenient as a traveler, but thinking ahead on unintended consequences is an interesting mental exercise.

Read the full blog post over at Design Observer.

I know this fantastic blog comparing Paris to New York has been flying around for a while now, but I will post again because it’s beyond accurate and the illustrations are completely awesome.

Called the Avenue Verte, it already includes views like this in the finished sections:

Here’s how the writer described the French side:

Towards Paris, you travel for a number of miles along the wooded banks of the Seine, long stretches of which look as though they have changed little since Monet and Renoir captured the green-tinged reflections of the water more than a century ago. Then, after a stretch of industrial hinterland, the route follows canal towpaths to within a stone’s throw of its end-point – Notre Dame cathedral.

More on the British side after the jump.

He also calls out his fellow Brits for not rising to the challenge of converting their side:

The French have converted the railways into broad, hard-surfaced tracks, suitable for rollerbladers and wheelchairs as well as cyclists. They have also kept control of vegetation around the path, so that for the most part the surrounding countryside can be seen and enjoyed.

On the British side the paths are so overgrown that they resemble tunnels, providing barely a glimpse of the world outside. Mile after mile, this becomes monotonous.

One of my favorite things about Europe is how their leaders are willing to invest in plans like these. They might seem far-fetched and expensive, but they will benefit generations, never mind tourists.

Check out the videos he took while on the trails, and see what you think. Oh, and you can watch video of my own bike-based daily commute while I was in the Netherlands this summer.

Infrastructure = heaven.

I want to stay in a real pod hotel soon, and Kyoto seems like the place to do it. Cabbage Rose had a write-up of 9h (a.k.a. “9 hours”) which looks well-designed, sharp, and hyper-clean. I love instruction pages (which come from the 9h website) like this:

Kyoto is on my top three list of places to see next. It might be fun to stay one night in a pod hotel and one night in a ryokan, just to see the difference.

Photos from inside 9h after the jump.

When I look at the pod from this angle, it seems like an iPad you can sleep in:

Then I look at the wall of these, and I do get a little freaked out by the coffin-like nature of them one on top of each other:

What do you think? Have you slept in a pod hotel? Liked it? Left screaming after you woke up in the middle of the night, disoriented, with the ceiling one foot above your head?

Check out the collage of photos from their site, where everything is super-pleasing. I can’t resist its Muji-like charms.

For the end of design week, I wanted to share this great homemade-design blog I recently came across, Vlijtig. As previously mentioned in this post, one of the reasons I wanted to learn Dutch this year is because I love their aesthetic and wanted to be able to read Dutch design magazines.

I’m not there yet, and so, thank heavens for blogs like Vlijtig that help me make sense of it all. According to her blog, this image above is from an art project that involves giving compliments to people. 

My compliment of the day is how much I love this blog.

P.S. I did have to cheat to translate the saying above, but I got surprisingly close (confusing “root” and “carrot,” though, which made it inexplicable). I think it basically translates to something like: where you would build, get to the roots.

P.P.S. I love the “ij” in Dutch. If you want to say it, pronounce it like a “y”: Vlytig, meaning “industrious,” another admirable Dutch quality.

1. It’s fantastic.

2. It fits in with design week here on newelty.
3. We were lucky enough to snag Genna’s time to do our own redesign of newelty after this was originally posted in February!

I spent today out in the bright sun on my Dutch bike. I was able to bike through downtown Seattle in weather so nice that it was warm enough to wear just my skinny jeans and my Little Edie tee–a revolutionary costume of the day in Februrary!

After ignoring the internets all day, I came home to see not only was one of my favorite sites Copenhagen Cycle Chic now also on Twitter, but that this artist, Genna Campton, had created the incredible illustration you see above as an homage to that site.

I now have a new goal for newelty, some day in the far, far future.

Mr. Lee’s makes me want to be a dude. Or, to be precise, not a dude, but the kind of anti-hipster that has never, ever worn a pair of skinny jeans. A guy that could be a beat poet in another life, or maybe grew up down the street from the Great Gatsby. Because if I was that guy, Mr. Lee’s would trick me out with great stuff.

The shop is super-tiny. Like, 10 feet long at most. But it’s got such great, well-designed stuff, including Moscot glasses. I own a pair that were sold to me by Sol Moscot himself. I went into the store, located on the Lower East Side, with the idea of picking up a pair of Gingers. Sol put me straight.

Evidently, I’m more of a Zelig. But I digress.

Mr. Lee’s has Moscots, among what feels like hundreds of other awesome boy treats. And, as was explained to me, the exact sunglasses Don Draper wears on Mad Men. How great is it that someone actually bothered to track those down?

A slight variation of my image of Venice: canals, quaintness, lightposts. Plus bikes. The postcard image of Holland.

And don’t get me wrong. That’s charming, and I love that the picture I took was just an average day in Haarlem, nothing special. There is a beauty to the Dutch way of life that’s undeniable.

But when I talk about loving the Dutch design aesthetic, what I mean is a spectrum that includes the crazy modern stuff like the kind Droog creates. I actually have a set of these bikes straps to use in your house. I have no idea what I’ll use them for, mind you, but I just love the idea of taking something so practical and making it a design element on the wall. Plus, hello novelty!

One of the things that I think makes Dutch design unique is that it has to be understandable by so many types of people from so many other lands. This started during the Golden Age of trading, but Amsterdam today reflects their multicultural past in so many tiny ways, like this crossing sign designed so that absolutely anyone can understand what the hell that button is for:

In the U.S., when I think about spaces that have to be used by every kind of person, the word beige comes to mind: Beige hotel rooms. Beige walls. I’m partly design obsessed right now because I’m looking for a new house, and the common denominator seems to be to take everything down to a nice taupe. Think of the redesign of the Oval Office–bland, beige, non-threatening. What’s the point?

I try to imagine Americans picking these orange striped blinds for their house, and I just can’t.

When I was in the Netherlands, I made a commitment to do what I saw so often there–put a little table and chairs, or better yet, a bench, in the front of my house. It’s so friendly and so cheerful. I think, like the way the Dutch embrace color, it signifies something larger–a willingness to engage with the street, with passers-by.

Not always of course, but the Dutch seem to be to be often brave in their design choices–with color, with functionality, and with the ability for people to interact with each other and with the daily life that hums along on the street.