My daughter will be spending her March Break traveling with a group from her school. We agreed that this makes an ideal time to try some communications and trip updates via her iPod Touch in wifi mode. I am sure she will post on Facebook via the Facebook mobile app and send emails from her MSN or Hotmail accounts. We also wanted to try extending our communications with 2 additional applications.

Earlier this year, I had tried Ping! with @dougpete and @rebrouse. I bought the ‘pro’ version for 99 cents. The Ping! app gives you text messaging between iPhones (cell or wifi modes) and/or iPod Touch units (wifi mode only). I have found the application to work great. This trip will be a great ‘international’ test.

We are also going to try some Skype audio calls. I purchased a set of the iPod earbud headphones with the built in mic. In the photos below, you can see the 3rd marker on the pin connector and the inline microphone.

We have tried some iPod Touch to iPod Touch calls here at home as a test run and everything works great. The grand plan is to use Ping! to set up a call time, then have Skype running at the time of the call. In testing, we discovered that you can stay logged into Skype if you ‘swap out’ to run another app, but in this state you will not be notified of the incoming call.

I am sure she will have a great trip, and I look forward to our iPod based communications. Now, off to check out the wifi availability in the hotels listed on the itinerary.

~ Mark