5 Periscopers To Follow For Major Travel Inspiration

Periscope is my new favorite app. I love "traveling" to other places and interacting through the comments with the person broadcasting. Though Periscopes can be about anything, the ones I tend to watch the most are those who show their city or where they are.

A few of my favorites:

5 Periscopers To Follow For Major Travel Inspiration

@BaseGiulioBase

Giulio is literally the happiest, most optimistic person ever, always telling us to "look at the beauty!" A film director from Rome, his 'scopes include walks around his home city, other parts of Italy - and my recent favorite - Cannes during the Cannes Film Festival.

@EuroMaestro

Euro is a Parisian who shows us around Paris. Walking along the Seine with Euro had me reminiscing about my trip to Paris last year and it felt like I was back there too. A couple of days ago he took us up to Sacre Coeur as well as Versailles - two things I didn't get around to doing on my trip - so I was very happy to get to experience it through Periscope.

@moeinteractive

Moe lives in New York and broadcasts tours around NYC's favorite spots. He'll take us around and show famous landmarks such as the Empire State Building or the Brooklyn Bridge, oftentimes talking to people along the way. He always seems to stumble among the coolest happenings too - such as street performers or a filming location for a movie.

@carpediem

I first found Carpe Diem when she was streaming on the beaches of Cancun. It took less than ten seconds for me to bump up Cancun and the Yucatan Penninsula on my travel list. Those white sand beaches!

@GlobalPeriscope

@GlobalPeriscope is always suggesting awesome 'scopes around the world to watch. I never get bored opening up one of their suggestions.

Some of Periscope's recent updates include an app for Android, the ability to create an account without connecting to Twitter, and searching for broadcasts in both list and map form.

Learn more about Periscope here, and make sure to follow me @allyarcher!

Periscope: See The World Through Your Phone

Today I've had the pleasure of walking along the streets in Paris, watching an Italian chef prepare pizzas in Milan, and listen to live music in Austin, Texas. I got to join a guy and his friend walking their dogs around DC and listen to Brad Paisley's bandmates rehearse music. All without leaving my home.

I can't believe it took me a few months to learn about Periscope, a live video app owned by Twitter. Periscope, a new app on the scene since March 2015, wanted to build the "closest thing to teleportation."

This app is seriously so cool.

What makes this more of a conversational app is the ability to comment. Viewers can type in questions or comments and they pop up on the bottom of the screen. When I was watching a video in France, I wrote, "Hello from Phoenix!" And the broadcaster responded, "Hello, Phoenix!" So fun.

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When I first heard about this app, I thought it sounded similar to Snapchat. (I love the different cities featured on Snapchat Live! Who's with me on that?!) The difference with Periscope is the live aspect - the ability to show what you're currently doing/recording at that very moment and to interact with viewers.

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This afternoon, I tried it out for myself on my lunch break. I walked around campus and answered questions from the people commenting. It was so cool to see people from around the world watching and joining in on the conversation.

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Safety: There is an option to turn the location of your video on, which I find really cool! One of the first updates with the app was to change the location from the exact point to a larger geographical area - so no need to worry about viewers finding your home address. I also haven't seen any "inappropriate" broadcasts, but there is a way to report it and block users if that were to happen.

Updates: I also learned of a new update as of today, which allows people to sign up for an account using their phone number instead of with Twitter. If you don't have a Twitter and don't want to get one, now you don't have to in order to use Periscope.

What do you think about this app? Comment with your username below (mine is @allyarcher, same as my Twitter) and I'll follow you!

Screenshots are from my experience using the Periscope app; all imagery credit goes to Periscope.

Cool App Translates Languages in Real-Time

Some of the greatest/most frustrating moments you'll come across while traveling are when you're trying to get past the language barrier. It's always helpful to learn key words and phrases before you go, though if you're traveling to multiple countries, it's just not practical to become fluent in each and every language.

Signs, instructions, and menus are all important things to be able to read when you're traveling. You don't want to be stuck in a situation where you're unknowingly disobeying certain signs (let's not get arrested in a foreign country, please) or you order the completely wrong item on the menu.

Enter: World Lens, a cool (and free!) app that translates languages in real-time.

You hold the phone up to text and the camera shows a translated version in your desired language.

Languages: English <---> Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese

Before I had an iPhone, I was using the Bing Translator app on my Windows Phone. That app worked well, especially when a friend and I were trying to figure out what to order on a menu written completely in Turkish while in Istanbul. Luckily the restaurant had wifi so we were able to use the app and figure out the menu without having to ask the server in attempted, choppy Turkish. There are some aspects of World Lens that I find better than Bing Translator, though.

What I like about World Lens compared to Bing Translator

-No need to be connected to a network: Anyone who travels internationally and doesn't buy SIM cards in every country knows the importance of being able to access an app like this without wifi.

-Pause feature: Once you get your words translated, you can pause the camera so you don't have to continue hovering in the same spot. You can take the phone away from the text without losing your translation.

-Speed: The Bing app is fast, but when comparing the two, World Lens is faster. The faster the speed, the quicker you understand what the words mean.

-Other features such as a translate dictionary and an off/on light switch. It's the little things like this that make things so much easier.

However, Bing Translator has more language options.

I couldn't use World Lens to translate Turkish, because as of now, that's not one of the language options. Hopefully they update the app with additional languages in the future, especially because Bing Translator isn't available for download on iOS.

Have you used this app? What are your thoughts? Please suggest any other helpful travel apps!

This is not a sponsored post. Just wanted to share this cool app with all of you!