Debbie Mayo-Smith: Travel and photos with your smartphone

First and foremost, from my database survey in 2013; nine out of 10 business people have a smartphone.

If you go to Google statistics, as of last May,2013 (think pre-Christmas gifts) 65 per cent of Australians and 54 per cent of Kiwis have smartphones. Here is a link to get worldwide statistics from Google in Chart form.

If you have a smartphone or tablet, you'll know about using it for the norm of phone, and about how to use that little powerhouse in your hand for work, text, internet, email. How about when you're on holiday? What apps have you downloaded? They can be vacation changing you know.

Here are a few of our traveling family's favourites that can save you time, money and increase your enjoyment immensely.

Download the PDF list here

What about sharing your holiday

Facebook. Well the kids are leaving it in droves now for Snapchat (where the photos they send disappear after 15 seconds). That isn't my cup of tea and you sure don't want that for your holiday pictures.

How you can bring your family and friends along with you is by uploading your holiday photos onto Facebook at the end of the day - or two days - or whenever you're at a wifi spot! In fact, you can upload multiple photos and also if you have your location services on, you can identify where the photo was taken.

You don't need to put it on your personal page where all your so called 'friends' can see it. Why not create a special holiday page or group? A Facebook Group has the advantage of:

1. It can be public (anyone joins), closed (anyone can ask to join or be invited) or secret (must be invited).
2. Your posts and photos in the secret groups can only be seen by members.
3. You can email members
4. You can upload more than one photo and they can be put into different albums

So before you next go away on an exciting holiday, why not consider opening a secret group, add your family and friends via their email addresses (they must be on Facebook) and then you can shoot through a Facebook message or email every time you have uploaded something new.

P.S. Don't forget to download the Facebook app.

P.P.S Don't forget to take videos to use for business if relevant. Here's one I just did. It's 30 seconds long -and this is raw footage with a simple caption. You can do a lot of editing on YouTube. Here's a better one from Santorini