You have a great trip planned, but you want to bring all your friends and family along with you. Well, let technology help. You don’t have to be a celebrity or a tech genius to enjoy documenting your travels. You can preserve your travel memories as they happen and keep everyone up-to-date back at home with videos, pictures and journal entries. Utilize your social media accounts or keep it a private, closed group. No matter the destination or mode of transportation, applications on your cell phone make sharing and saving your travel experiences simple.

How do you choose which app is right for you? Do you know anyone who has experience documenting their travels? Ask around and see who in your circle of influence can make recommendations. Get online and do some research of your own. Your phone app store is a great place to start. Be sure to read the reviews that pertain to each particular app. When traveling internationally, make sure that you will have access to the internet to post anything you want to share. Also, watch for ease-of-use from the reviewers.

Once you have decided which application you are going to use, download it and give it a test run. Before you travel, recruit a few friends or family members to help you out as a test audience. Now, document your daily routine for a few days and see if you like how this app displays or functions, and determine its ease of use.

Does it have all the features that you would like? For example, do you want to live-stream some of your trip? Do you want to upload several pictures at once? Does it have a journaling area where you can document your thoughts and feelings about your trip? Then as you use it, ask your friends and family to give you feedback. Do they find it easy to get the updates and see your pictures and comments? Or do they find that they get too many notices when you post? This allows you to see whether the app is a good fit.

Sharing your travels with those back at home is a wonderful way to bring them along on the adventure.