Thursday 12 October 2006 by Edward.

You have a mobile web-enabled phone. You also are dying to have a coffee and need to find the closest Tim’s (Tim Horton’s coffee) or Starbucks. No poblem! Go to FindByClick and you can summon up the Great Canadian Coffee Map. I never realized how MANY Tim Horton’s coffee shops there were in Canada until I looked at this map — and I know not all are shown on the map.

Rule 7 “The Rule of Perpendicular Signs” in the book ‘The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism’ by Roger A. Brooks and Maury Forman states that ‘20/20 signage equals $$$.’ When you drive into a new town the most obvious signs you’ll see are the ‘perpendicular’ signs — the signs that best cross your line of vision. The best tourist maps are those that show a single theme, like the coffee map or the Toronto beer map. It’s simple, to the point and clear.

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

Friday 29 September 2006 by Edward.

During a 5-week period in August-September, Disney’s imagineers tested how a cell-phone game, Kim Possible, might enhance the tourist theme park experience, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

Everyday about 100 visitors were randomly selected and handed the cell phone mystery game that centred about the UK pavillion. The idea was to solve clues in the game.

Imagineer’s R&D group are testing the concept of adding new technology (such as segways) to the park, but making sure these technologies do not detract from the essential theme park experience. They envisage the technology also being adopted elsewhere at other venues, destinations and activities.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, mobile phone, DURING the visit | No Comments »

Wednesday 2 August 2006 by Edward.

Pull out your smartphone and take a picture of that secret wilderness waterfall you just discovered and automatically record its location.

ViewRanger from Augmentra (a location-based mapping company from Cambridge UK) is an “immersive” mapping tool for GPS-enabled, mass market smartphones. It is designed for the countryside and displays a 3D panoramic view of your surroundings. This is a great tool for the “occasional” tourist and outdoor traveller.

Maps are available for Great Britain and their national parks.

Richard Bloor of SymbianOne recently interviewed Augmentra’s founders, Craig Wareham and Mike Brocklehurst. ViewRanger, he reports, is available on the Symbian Operating System and the S60 mobile phone platform, used on phones such as Nokia 6630, 6680, and N90. They are in discussion with overseas partners to export their technology. The founders’ goal is “to ensure Viewranger is the off-road satellite navigation system of choice of consumers and outdoor professionals.”

In my correspondence with founder Craig Wareham, he indicates that Canada and North America are attractive (markets) for several reasons — the large ‘non-urban’ spaces in those countries, the potential number of consumers, and simplicity in (business) dealings. A current European mapping project, he adds, is expected to consolidate ViewRanger support for mapping, points of interest, etc. worldwide.

Roger A. Brooks Rule 6 “The Rule of Wayfinding” suggests that ‘Real men don’t ask for directions.’ Sometimes a landmark will have no sign. It may have meaning only to you. Mark your map. Post your smartphone GPS point and photo. Create signage.

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Thursday 27 July 2006 by Edward.

uConnect, Skype’s phone converter, takes the signal from your traditional home phone and converts it into digital data for transmission over the Internet. Simply attach your uConnect to your regular phone line and your computer’s USB port, load up the included Skype software, dial **, and your ready for bargain-basement long distance VoIP calling! VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) allows you to make free phone calls using your Internet connection.

This is perfect for North Americans with Skype’s free North American calling, and still a great deal for anyone else because of skype’s very low calling rates.

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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 »

Sunday 16 July 2006 by Edward.

Brown and Chalmers, from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, found in their study of Tourism and Mobile Technology that tourist groups are highly mobile and often split up at a destination and need to get back together again. Parents, they found, spend a large part of their holiday “managing” the group and making sure nobody got lost. Mobile phones, then, become a useful tool.

Disney Mobile is designed to help these tourists while visiting the Disney destination. Their DM-P100 phone has a family locator that can help locate your party members’ phone with GPS tracking technology, has a control to limit your family’s wireless spending, has a family alert signal, and a date/time control on use of the unit. It also includes branding applications like Radio Disney, Disney Graphics and more.

Roger A. Brooks‘ Rule 20 “The Rule of Branding” states that ‘Make it easy to tell your cows from my cows.’ Branding is the process of setting yourself apart from everyone else. It includes defining who you are and appealing to all the senses, then promote like crazy.

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Friday 14 July 2006 by Edward.

To best market your tourist destination these days, it’s important to know how high tech gadgets rank in use and prestige.

Synovate, surveyed 5,500 people in Canada, China , France, Hungary, India, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Taiwan, and Thailand. They asked repondents about their attitudes towards the latest high tech gadgets.

Mobile phones were seen as most indispensible (especially in Saudi Arabia, Romania and India), followed by laptops, then by plasma/LCD TVs. Under 35 year-olds found DVD, MP3, and TiVO systems most useful. Canadians were least concerned about brand or prestige in owning these systems, as opposed to Saudis and Indians at the other end of the spectrum. Ease of use was most important to Asian respondents. Chinese showed greatest passion in adopting new tech devices. The survey included some interesting demographic patterns as well.

Roger A. Brooks‘ Rule 1 “The Rule of Planning” states that ‘Success begins with a good architect.’ Build your tourism plan as if you were building a house. You need to know what to build and how to build it.

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Monday 10 July 2006 by Edward.

Tourists often split up to wander about independently in new surroundings and pre-arrange a rendevous location. Sometimes they need to know each other’s locations while roaming.

Belinker is a Chinese-developed cell phone webservice that can help these highly mobile tourists.

You key in your location, say “@MArtGallery”, to Belinker, and your travel partner(s) know where you are. If they are logged in, you will know where they are. The Shanghaiist reports that the service is to be launched in Shanghai on 14th July, 2006, and is targeted to foreigners.They also state that Belinker appears very similar to the US service at Dodgeball.com. At Dodgeball you text message to 36343 (’dodge’) for example “@MArtGallery” then click send. All you friends will then know where you are.

Now what about extending this concept to a map-based, cell-phone where points on the screen show the location of all those in the tourist group? Experiments are already in progress where near real-time GPS locations of people are fed to a a Google Earth/Map display (see Where’s Tim).

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