How my phone made me an instant New Yorker – CNET

We’d only been living in Manhattan for a few weeks when my in-laws came to stay. On our way home from visiting the spectacular One World Trade Center, we had to take a couple different subways, through which my wife and I steered the out-of-towners with little difficulty.

“I’m just amazed,” my mother-in-law Theresa said, “at how quickly you’ve adapted to living here.”

I was slightly taken aback. New York is a full-on, high-octane, high-rise city and we’d just moved from sleepy, leafy, low-rise south London, where we’d lived for years. I didn’t think I’d adapted at all. But I knew what she meant: A suburbanite from outside Washington, DC, she had no idea how to get around the big city. But we did it with ease.

“Oh, well, we just use our phones,” I said. She shook her head in bemusement.

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Citymapper makes getting around the subway easy peasy. It doesn’t stop you sweating.

Sarah Tew/CNET

New in town

Carrying the internet in our pockets at all times has changed the way we relate to our environment, nowhere more than in cities. And when you’re new in town, apps and online services are invaluable to getting you settled in, as we found.