THING 33. TRAVEL 2.0

ARTICLES ON TRAVEL 2.0

Next Wave of Travel Sites feels like MySpace describes travel 2.0 as the "second wave of travel sites on the web". What's different according to author Gregory Lamb, is the use of social networking. Travelers can post discusssions of their trips and answer questions from those planning a trip. The article discusses TripAdvisor.com, Farecast.com and Gusto.com. So far my use of the web for travel has been limited to checking flight schedules and airfares. After doing this Thing, I'll look at travel 2.0 sites when planning a trip.

Under TRAVEL BLOGS & PODCASTS, I looked through The Lost Girls. This was the winner of the 2009 Lonely Planet Travel Blog Award for Best Destination Blog. I looked at this around Easter. The Easter events on Oahu listed among other things, a $78 Sunday brunch at the Monarch room of the Royal Hawaiian. Meanwhile the Four Seasons Resort Lanai had a cheaper brunch for a mere $65. Remind me not to go to Hawaii for Easter.

TRAVEL MASHUPS

I looked at Fastfoodmaps.com. I am not a big fan of fast foods, but I looked at this anyway. When I clicked on caffeine maps, a map of the U.S. comes up showing dots for 10,709 Starbucks (this is as of July 2008). You can't zoom in and there are no street addresses. Just dots on a map.

The map for fast foods shows markers for places around the country for 10 fast food chains. Minneapolis is on the map, but there are no markers-- meaning there are no fast food places there. Not very accurate, I'd say.

THING 32. GOOGLE MAPS AND MASHUPS

I created a map called "Walking and eating in the Roseville area" (exciting title, huh?). I outlined Bennett Lake in Central Park, Lake Como and Snail Lake. I clicked on places of interest and then under dining checked Seafood, Italian and other. This adds dots to the map to show the location of the restaurants. So far so good. How do I take some of the restaurants off the map and leave others? I can't find a way to do this. Also I discovered that the restaurant dots disappear when you sign out and then sign back in.


Google Maps: 100+ Best Tools and Mashups has many interesting maps. I looked at these two:

Prescription drugs in drinking water across the United States-- The only drug that showed up for Minneapolis was caffeine.

If the earth were a sandwich-- This is the point on the earth that is the exact opposite of the selected point. I selected Minneapolis. It's opposite was somewhere in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and western Australia.