Map? Schmap!
Filed in archive Travel Accessories on June 15, 2006
I've seen the future of travel guides and the future is Schmap.
Schmap is a publisher of worldwide destination guides, but these are not your grandmother's traditional bookbound travel tomes. Schmap is a series of digital travel guides for great locations around the world, viewed not by flipping through pages in the order the publisher determines, but in an interactive, constantly updated Schmap player you download to your Windows desktop. Think Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy but without the towel.
According to the creators, Schmap Guides include five times more content on average than their hard-copy equivalents: "Every Schmap Guide comes with dynamic maps, useful links, playable tours, top picks, plus photos and reviews for hundreds of sights and attractions, hotels, restaurants, bars, parks, theaters, galleries, museums..."

The Schmap Player puts a huge amount of information about the city at your fingertips, allowing you to use the mapping and indexing features to find restaurants or attractions near your hotel or to play, pause and fast-forward your way through a suggested city tour.
Coverage is pretty good at the moment; they've generated 56 US and European guides since launching in March, which bodes well for their promise of 200 guides by the end of the year.
Because its a desktop application and not a website, you can use your laptop to view your guides from the plane or poolside at your hotel. Alternatively you can use Schmap to bookmark your favourite parts of your chosen guide and then print out your bookmarks into one personalised travel guide for your trip.
Pretty schnazzy!
Permalink: Map? Schmap!
Tags: travel schmap wandalust destination travel+accessories sojourn+part wandalust+archives
Vote for Map? Schmap!:
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Rating: 8.88 out of 17 vote(s) cast.
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Response from:
Garrett
(06/29/06 7:13pm)
They've also been soliciting pictures from flickr users of the featured towns and cities (with full credit given). One of mine has made it into the Oxford guide. Toot my own horn? Me?
Response from:
leather recliners
(05/31/07 9:00am)
This map must be expensive, i have been waiting to see when such work would come up. I wonder how much does it cost and if the cost differentiates for different countries.Anyway this desktop application is welcomed world wide.
Response from:
Dining Room Furniture
(06/28/07 3:37pm)
Schmap Guides, however, are useless thanks to this new technology called a “search engine.” That, and who wants to download and install something that you can already get on the Web with software you already have? I’d probably be a lot more gentle with these guys if I didn’t receive a generic email from the CEO.
Response from:
dujose
(05/02/09 6:11pm)
Sometimes money can turn into having a say. And I don't put anything past MS anymore, they can be very patient when they want to be. Still, they haven't had enough guts to violate a true open source license as of yet, so perhaps it won't happen here http://rapid4me.com/?q=money+MS
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