SpotWorld Review for iPhone & iPod Touch – The Global Social Travel Guide

Travelling around the world to various destinations is a pursuit that fires the imagination. Reliving history or enjoying the modern attractions, one thing we all endeavour is to maximise our experience by cramming in as much as we can and avoiding the chaff. This requires a fair amount of planning.

This has been made far easier with an app for iPhone and iPod Touch users called SpotWorld and even better it’s free.

SpotWorld requests that you first register to increase the functionality of the app, but again it’s free and you can also use your Facebook login for quickness.

The main menu of SpotWorld includes an all important ‘Spots Near Me’ option, which as the name suggests informs you of local places of interest that have been deemed popular spots by the community of other SpotWorld users. The shocking thing is even though I have been living in Nottingham all of my life, using this app I have realised that there are close by attractions and buildings that until SpotWorld I hadn’t realised existed.

Digging into each location reveals more information including community articles (taken from Wikipedia), addresses, maps, other attractions nearby and a ‘Check-In’ option to show your current visit. You can also inform the app that you have ‘Been There’ on any of the locations and not only that but you can also add your own photos, tips and finally rate your experience there. Of course, you can also share locations via email and indeed Facebook.

Planning is aided by the Itinerary, where you browse the available places of interest adding the ones that appeal to you one by one, until you have your own database of locations easily at hand for reference. You can share this itinerary and view other users to quickly build up a very detailed plan of action. This is a vital tool when on holiday or on day trips, allowing you to carefully plot the best attractions.

Although SpotWorld has certainly proved its worth for planning, one of the charms of the app is certainly its ability to take you on a tour of the world. Learning more about destinations you have always craved to visit, viewing the photographs, the history and hopefully keeping your dreams alive by seeing positive ratings. Articles can also be read-aloud using the text-to-speech feature.

SpotWorld also includes a ‘Friends’ section, so if any of your phone or Facebook contacts use SpotWorld, you can easily add them to the app and share your visits worldwide.

In a similar experience to Foursquare, you can earn points for checking in at the various locations SpotWorld has stored. These are used to compare yourself against in particular your friends, although certainly at this point of time SpotWorld seems to lack the same userbase as that enjoyed by Foursquare, but that may change.

Not everything is free as there are ‘Premium Articles’ available for further reading, but this is completely optional.

Conclusion

Hunting down popular and life changing destinations has been made far easier thanks to SpotWorld. An app that allows you to search for and analyse the attractions that appeal to your own sensibilities with a detailed amount of information, photos and more importantly – other users recommendations.

There is absolutely no excuse now to be left in the dark when travelling either locally or around the world as SpotWorld carefully takes you by the hand and guides you through the wonder you might otherwise miss.

iTunes Store Link: SpotWorld – The Global Social Travel Guide