Here’s a little hack I came up with while I was in New York. Since I don’t have an iPhone, and even if I did, I can’t afford the outrageous prices of international data roaming, I needed a way to keep directions to where I wanted to go without an Internet connection, in case I couldn’t find a Wi-Fi hotspot for my iPod touch. Maybe this will come in handy for someone else in the same situation. Here’s what I would do:

1. Before leaving the hotel in the morning, I’d go to Google Maps on my computer and get directions to all the places I wanted to go to that day.

   

2. Hit the “print” button right above the map to open the print version of the directions.

   

3. Print, and use Mac OS X’s “save to PDF” option to save the directions to my Dropbox folder. If you’re using Windows, you can install CutePDF to get the same functionality. (Thanks to Steve for the tip.)

   

4. Repeat for any other directions I might need.

5. Once Dropbox finishes syncing the PDFs, open the Dropbox app on the iPhone or iPod touch, find and open the PDF, and tap the star at the bottom of the screen so it gets saved as a favorite. That way it gets stored locally and you can open it whenever you need to check the directions, without an Internet connection.

   

That’s it. I plan to use this a lot in San Francisco, despite the obvious downside that you need to know your plans before leaving the hotel, but it beats getting lost or having to hunt down a Wi-Fi hotspot to use the Maps app. Hope this helps!