Tuesday 25 July 2006 by Edward.

Use Earthclimber and Google Earth to locate climbing destinations worldwide.

Earthclimber is free to use. The website maintains a list of climbing destinations. Once you have Google Earth installed on your computer, you enter Earthclimber and navigate to your area of interest then view the climbing site in 3D.

There are 63 current locations as of 23 July 2006. To add a location, Earthclimber has a tutorial and registration form. They check each site submitted. Acceptable sites are: ‘rock climbing only’ sites; ‘easy access’; and no trespassing issues.

Some sites include: Baffin Island, Castle Crags, Shipton Spire and Torres del Paine.

Posted in Maps, BEFORE the visit | No Comments »

Monday 24 July 2006 by Edward.

SUICA is the popular “touch and go” RFID train pass/prepaid train ticket in Japan, reports Ubiks. Japan Rail East is introducing a convenient service that will allow some passengers to automatically recharge their ticket as they pass through a ticket gate so they don’t have to go to a ticketing machine to add more money to the card.

Posted in DURING the visit | No Comments »

Monday 24 July 2006 by Edward.

The best thing about the Waterproof Shaking Flashlight, states the GadgetStore.com is that no batteries are required! You generate the power to produce a bright light simply by shaking the flashlight. This would be ideal on back packing, canoe, hunting and fishing trips. One minute of shaking provides 30 minutes of light, even underwater up to 2m.

Posted in DURING the visit | No Comments »

Sunday 23 July 2006 by Edward.

Whether you go backpacking, surfing, cycling or snorkelling, this wrist-strapped camera (waterproof to about 20m) may be a great companion. GoPro sells this Digital Hero” camera for US$79.95.

Specifications: 32 10-sec video; 260+ 640×480 photos; 1 AAA battery; self-timer; USB no driver needed; PC 98SE/ME/2000/XP; Mac 9.1/10.1/10.2; auto-exposure

Roger A. Brooks Rule 21 “The Rule of ‘wow’ photography” states that ‘Photos are worth a thousand nights.’ Nothing sells tourism like great photography. Always have a camera ready. When you use photos, make sure you pick the best.

Posted in Multimedia, DURING the visit | No Comments »

Sunday 23 July 2006 by Edward.

GeoWeb2006
GeoWeb2006 is a conference “where the web meets GIS (Geographic Information Systems)”. The 5-day conference is held in Vancouver, British Columbia, and will have 13 1/2-day workshops, about 70 technical papers, keynote speakers, and a presentation of products and services. The conference would be of interest to those involved in location-based tourist products and services.

Selected papers at Geoweb2006

From mouse click to Camera Click
Davide Carboni and Stefano Sanna, software engineers, CRS4
CRS4 presents an application that allows on-the-road users to use their camera phone with GPS connected via bluetooth to capture images in a spot and immediately share them on the Web with their physical location and timestamp.
The Emergence of Open Source Geospatial Software
Geoff Zeiss, director of technology, Autodesk, Inc.
The years of 2005 and 2006 are a watershed for the geospatial sector because of the widespread recognition that geospatial has joined the IT mainstream.
vScribbling With a Purpose
David Russell and Chris Wolfe, LPA Systems
Frequently, the most effective way to facilitate communication is to “scribble” information on an image or map. With modern geospatial systems and Web technologies, appropriate standards ensure that these annotations can be communicated to the right people as quickly as possible.
Cell Phone Tracking Within 3-D Situational Awareness Systems
David Colleen, CEO, Planet 9 Studios
Through our work with the U.S. Army, we have developed a robust approach to the tracking of GPS cell phones, displayed within 3-D situational awareness systems. We will discuss how XML and X3D are central to our Web-based Earth visualization systems and strategies.
GeoRSS Adding Location to RSS Feeds
Raj Singh, director of the Interoperability Program, Open Geospatial Consortium
This talk will explain the geographic RSS encoding, GeoRSS 2.0, and will cover some emerging applications of the format in the real world.
Delivering the Right Report to the Right Audience
Phil Lee, executive vice president, TerraGo Technologies
TerraGo Technologies presents and demonstrates how GeoPDFs, “Delivers the Right Report to the Right Audience,” be it the CEO or the field service technician.
Building Online Geocollaborative Systems Using Open Standards
Ian Turton Pennsylvania State University, Alan MacEachren, Scott Pezanowski, and Brian Tomaszewski
The system presented allows users to share a map environment and to annotate maps for each other.

Selected Workshops at Geoweb2006

GOOGLE EARTH and KML
Michael Ashbridge

GOOGLE MASHUPS
Doug Ricket

INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUAL EARTH
Steve Milroy

Posted in Website/Event | 2 Comments »

Saturday 22 July 2006 by Edward.

You want to plan a cycling trip through wine country in the Finger Lakes area of New York State, USA. How do you find a “great” travel agent? Via 1Trip3.com. That’s how. You enter your destination, the type of trip you want, and any special travel needs. 1Trip3.com returns quotes within 24 hours from three travel agents, from among those that are registered with the service. You pick the agent you want. The goal of the site is to connect you with the best travel agents that match your travel plans.

1Trip3.com is free for tourists to use. Registration for travel agents is free. 1Trip3.com plans to make money through agent referral fees. The advantage here is that I would get to communicate with someone who knows the area and can suggest alternatives — a true empowerment for both tourist and travel agent. A disadvantage might be the varied standards presented by the travel agents. Future enhancements might include tourist rankings/comments/recommendations and trip stories and experiences. I’m keen to see how this site evolves.

Home&Abroad offers a similar service but with significant differences. I wanted to bike the Finger Lakes area of New York state and visit wineries. This site limits me to 58 destinations worldwide with no Finger Lakes to choose from. Ok, so I decided to do the wineries in Québec City, Canada, instead. The site had pre-selected 18 trip themes. I picked “The Inner Einstein” theme. A menu of possible destinations were presented from which I chose enough to fill 5 days of travel time. Finally, an itinerary, map and travel guide was available for printing. The site did not involve one human, though “experts” designed the destinations and themes. An advantage here is consistency in presentation and quality. A drawback is that I could not go to where I wanted, and could not communicate with a real expert familiar with the area. I was limited by what was presented to me.

These types of services might reverse the online trend that shows travellers migrating away from online agencies to airline, hotel and car rental supplier sites.

Roger A. Brooks‘ Rule 2 “The Rule of Partnerships” states that ‘Relationships require more than one person.’ The most important rule in creating a successful tourism strategy is to establish partnerships. The more partners you have the more successful you’ll be.

Posted in BEFORE the visit | No Comments »

Saturday 22 July 2006 by Edward.

National Geographic Interactive is a great place to visit online. Be prepared, however, to upload recent media files at this site, such as RealMedia, to experience video and sound. The Grizzly WildCam on 22 July 2006, at Alaska’s McNeil River Falls, showed several bears fishing for salmon. This sanctuary has the world’s highest concentration of grizzlies. The website has been put together through the partnerhip of the US National Park Service and the Pratt Museum in Homer, Alaska, to provide “what many visitors consider one of the richest experiences of their lives”.

The Grizzly site has a narrated video gallery, a great grizzly photo gallery, notes about bears, a grizzly blog, links to other resources, bibliography and related links, and technical notes on the WebCam.

The live video signal is recorded from a camera embedded in a fake boulder on the river bank. The signal is transmitted via wireless microwave technology and relayed over about 165 km to the Pratt Museum where the cameras are controlled. The video feed is then relayed to servers at RealNetwork in Seattle, WA, then posted to the internet at National Geographic.

Posted in Webcam | No Comments »

Friday 21 July 2006 by Edward.

HughesNet provides RV-ers (Recreational Vehicle) an automatic pointing mount and dish, and communication service called Datastorm. Datastorm is a mobile high speed satellite internet service. Datastorm users have set up their own users group to share travel experiences, help members with problems or questions, and also post locations to an interactive map.

The map, displayed with Microsoft’s MapPoint, shows users their GPS position, displaying the Dish ID, User Name, brief messages, and time of the the last update. Users can link to email addresses.

Roger A. Brooks‘ Rule 6 “The Rule of Wayfinding” reads ‘Real men don’t ask directions.’ They probably use MapPoint and Datastorm.