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!