Wednesday 26 July 2006 by Edward.

Google Maps Mobile (GMM) now lets you view directions, maps and satellite imagery on your mobile phone, and locate nearby places of interest — restaurants, theatres and banks.

It doesn’t take long for a user group to form! Here are some excerpts from the Google Maps for Mobile User Group (900 postings by 11:43am Atlantic Time, Canada).

GMM works in Poland
“… I am most excited about being able to build my own mobile ‘mash-ups’.
In 4 years time FIFA will be held in South Africa .. a good idea to get it done there.
“Working a trip to London, trying to leverage this … to look less like a tourist.”
“It would be very handy to be able to save locations as bookmarks …”.

Here’s a really useful tool for tourists stuck in traffic. GMM can be used to see real-time traffic in 30 US cities, so that you can either avoid the traffic or fully comprehend the mess you’re in.

Suppliers currently supporting GMM include: Alcatel, Audiovox, BenQ-Siemens, Blackberry, HP, HTC, LG, Mio, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, O2, Philips, Qtek, Sager, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Sony Ericsson, TMobile and Toshiba.

What mashups will we see coming, especially with GPS/RFID-enabled phones?

Posted in mobile phone, Maps, DURING the visit, BEFORE the visit | No Comments »

Wednesday 26 July 2006 by Edward.

Word-of-mouth travel recommendations have been shown to be an effective way to direct travellers to “unknown” gems, and locations “off the beaten path”.

LocalWeekender is a free, community-based website site for ‘word-of-mouth’ recommendations. It’s an online guidebook of local, outdoor spots and weekend trips. Spots might be a quiet place to read a great book, a favourite jogging route, a small, tucked-away restaurant with a great dessert, or an un-named snowshoe trail.

Battle Creek , for example, is a great place to simply relax and walk. Sites are limited to the USA at present, not all are yet populated with recommendations, but I can see this site’s formula easily extend to other countries. The site’s webmaster emailed me and plans to include Canada very soon.

Roger A. Brooks‘ Rule 16 “The Rule of telling stories” states that ‘Great stories make the campfire memorable.’ Does your site tell a story? Sometimes it’s the little things that make a place special. I recall my unplanned visit to a small museum in Skagway, Alaska, 100 years after the great Alaskan gold rush. The museum was quaint, but the young curator told me the greatest story about the local Klingit Indians. That story made my museum visit indelibly memorable.

Posted in Website/Event, BEFORE the visit | No Comments »