Nov

22nd 2007

Panoramas from around the world

Filed Under Travel, World | Leave a Comment

An interesting site for armchair travelers is the Panoramic Earth site.  The site is driven by users who can submit their own 360 panoramic images from sites of interest located around the world.  There are currently over 1,400 panoramic images that users can access by either drilling down through the Google Map application, selecting from the highlighted places list or through search results.  Each panoramic is accompanied by text describing the location.  Click through the Google Maps application to find additional nearby panoramics.

Sep

07th 2007

VeoGeo

Filed Under Google Maps, Travel | Leave a Comment

VeoGeo is a site that mixes a Google mashup, GPS, and video to present user submitted sites of interest around the world.  The site is newly launched so there currently are about twenty videos that have been added to the site.  The main page is a Google mashup showing the location of all submitted travel shorts.  Click on a marker and the video is loaded, showing you the route that was either walked or driven.  If you are zoomed in on the location (unfortunately the site doesn’t zoom in automatically) then you can see the marker move along with the route of the video.  Additionally, zooming in can only be accomplished by clicking the “+” button which can be odious to zoom in from a map showing the world to the location of the video.  The site is clearly still in development but it’s an interesting idea that can grow. 

Sep

06th 2007

Prague offers GPS for tourists

Filed Under Europe, GPS, Travel | Leave a Comment

The city of Prague has started offering tourists a GPS-based tourist guide system.

“The guide will offer places of interest and monuments along with their history to tourists, as well as cultural events, sightseeing routes, Prague restaurants and many other things.” ~ Dagmar Houbova, spokeswoman for the organising Prague Information Service (PIS) company

The guide is currently offered only in English with plans to add other languages as the popularity of the GPS guide increases.  About 8 million tourists a year visit Prague and about 8o percent travel solo.

Source: Prague Daily Monitor: Prague offers tourists a new GPS guide

Jul

03rd 2007

Virtual Parks

Filed Under Travel, United States | Leave a Comment

If you’ve ever aspired to visit some of the world’s greatest natural parks but haven’t been able to get to them, the site VirtualParks.org can help you virtually explore some of the parks found in the western portions of Canada and the United States.  The site was created by Erik Goetze who has shot thousands of panoramic photographs.  You can explore the site through a ranges of options including drilling down through a map of North America, sorting by theme, or in alphabetic order.  Also available are Fullscreen panoramas.  This site also offers a tutorial on how to make your own panoramas. 

Jun

25th 2007

Five Million Using Outdated Maps

Filed Under Europe, Mapping, Travel | Leave a Comment

A survey by Trafficmaster, a travel information company based in the United Kingdom, has found that nearly 5 million drivers in that country use maps created before the year 2000.  One percent (138,000) of drivers use, astonishingly enough, maps created before 1950!  Three percent of the 2,196 adults surveyed said they could not read maps, while one in five have now ditched their road atlas in favor of other technologies such as online mapping directions and GPS systems. 

Jun

24th 2007

Google Maps on Jet Blue

Filed Under Google Maps, Travel | Leave a Comment

On June 5, Google announced that real-time access to Google Maps would become a regular in-seat experience to travelers on Jet Blue.  While entoute, passengers will be able to track the progress of their flight location, altitude, and air speed.  To celebrate this new venture, JetBlue is holding a photo contest. The best in-flight photo between June 4 and September 3, 2007 will win two round trip tickets to anywhere that JetBlue flies. 

To celebrate, the low-fare, high-frills airline is launching a “JetBlue Point of View” photo contest(a), inviting customers to share their own summer travel routes on a Google Maps mash-up on www.jetblue.com/google.

Customers can enter the contest by visiting www.jetblue.com/google and submitting their favorite photo taken from the window of any JetBlue flight scheduled between June 5 and September 3. One photo can be submitted per email address along with the date of travel, origin and destination cities, and the approximate location of where the photo was taken in-flight. As an option, customers can also submit the name of the JetBlue plane that flew them to their destination. JetBlue will post customer photos to a Google Maps mash-up, where customers can vote on their favorite shots at the end of the summer. Based on customer votes, the top 10 photographers will receive roundtrip travel for two to any of the airline’s 54 destinations.

Jun

22nd 2007

Ben’s Place of the Week

Filed Under Travel, World | Leave a Comment

The Oxford University Press has an official blog which features posts from Ben Keene who happens to be the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.  Each week, Ben provides readers with a quick tidbit about a selected location somewhere in the world in his “Place of the Week” section.  His blog posts are great quick reads to pick up interesting trivia about the world.

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