GateGuru (for Android)

Imagine this grim scene: You have a three-hour layover at LaGuardia and the unenviable choice between the Auntie Anne’s or the sports bar—which option is least apt to inflict irreversible damage on your stomach lining? With GateGuru (for Android) you can use your smartphone to save yourself the plight of past LaGuardia travelers. User-submitted reviews help you ferret out the best grub, tips enable you to spot a deal on that day-old pretzel, and airport maps and checkpoint wait times will spare you from extending your tenure. Add integration with social networking sites for real-time status updates (to satiate your friends’ schadenfreude) and tie-ins to KAYAK and Tripit for flight details, and GateGuru proves a gracious travel companion in the least hospitable airport.

Credentials, Connections, and High Flyers
Of the app’s four main modules—Trips, Account, High Flyers, and Airports—you’ll probably spend most of your time taxying the Airports section, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go exploring. While GateGuru doesn’t require users set up an account to use the app, if you’re interested in managing travel and social networking tie-ins, you can sign up through the Account section (“User”) of the app. From here you can also connect with Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Gowalla to share updates on the social networks or sign into Tripit or KAYAK to see your flight information from GateGuru (“Connect”). You can even post your own suggestions (“Reviews Tips”) or tabulate the points you’ve earned through activity (“Scores”).

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The Trips and High Flyers sections build on those features. In High Flyers, you can access the leaderboard and view Global champs (forget Mayors, “60MinuteMan” is “Captain” of GateGuru) or filter to your Facebook friends. Meanwhile, Trips automatically retrieves itineraries from KAYAK or Tripit (registered through Accounts).

Plenty of Coverage
As useful as the previous modules may be, Airports is the hub of the app, and indispensible to your LaGuardia layover. GateGuru includes impressive airport coverage, especially for the domestic traveler: Despite cautious international support (just 6 in Asia and 7 in Europe), GateGuru has entries for 94 airports in the United States. You can either browse the entire list (“All”), filter by your location (“Nearby”), or search by an airport code or city name (“Search”). Clicking on an airport—I used New York LaGuardia Airport for my testing—opened a fresh screen with tabs for Terminals, Checkpoints, Reviews, and Tips.

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