Product review – Lonely Planet guides for Nokia mobile phones

by Scott Carmichael on

Earlier this week I posted the announcement of a new initiative by Lonely Planet and Nokia to bring the famous travel guides to GPS enabled Nokia phones. One of the big questions I had, is whether these new phone based guides could actually replace your trusty paper Lonely Planet.

So, in this review, I’m going to give you a closer look at how the Lonely Planet guides work, how they can help you find nearby recommended points of interest, and whether they really can help save some trees.

The Lonely Planet guides are part of a larger collection of guides available for Nokia Maps 2.0. Maps 2.0 is available on most recently released Nokia phones running the Symbian S60 operating system. To learn whether your phone runs Maps 2.0, check out the list on the Nokia site.

For the purpose of this review, I tested the Lonely Planet guides on a Nokia N78 smartphone. You’ll get a closer look at this phone in an upcoming review, but I can already reveal that it is absolutely perfect for travelers. It has outstanding battery life, 3G, GPS, Wi-Fi, an FM radio and FM transmitter as well as superb music/video support.

To download a guide to your phone, you simply open the Maps application, then point the phone to the “Extras” menu, then “Guides”. In this menu, you are presented with a list of all available countries to select. You can then see all the available guides for that country.

In my case, I have the Lonely Planet guides installed for Chicago and Honolulu. The guides vary in size, the Chicago guide is 172kB. Using the speedy 3G connection on the phone, I was able to download other guides in about 7 seconds.

%Gallery-30290%Each guide costs $13.95, but a trial is available. That trial is only valid for 10 minutes, after this (very limited) time, you will have to enter a license code. The license can be purchased directly on the phone using Visa, Master Card or American Express. The entire license activation process is handled on the phone, which is actually very convenient, especially if you suddenly need access to a guide away from home.

Now on to the guide itself. I’ll let you know right away; these guides are not the same as a “regular” Lonely Planet guidebook. The Chicago Lonely Planet guide for Nokia phones only covers a limited amount of information.

The “regular” Lonely Planet city guide for Chicago is 280 pages, it contains maps, event guides, history and culture, information on day trips and more. The Nokia Lonely Planet guide covers 75 attractions, 76 shopping destinations, 75 hotels, 74 restaurants and 11 “general” locations, mainly consulates and embassies.

So, does this make the guide useless? Certainly not! The information provided in the guide itself may be fairly limited, but the combination of this information, on a phone with GPS navigation really does prove to be quite powerful.

You can lookup Lonely Planet recommendations, read their description, and then add it to your “My Places” address book in the map application. The paper Lonely Planet guide is great if you are sitting on a bus, or in your hotel room, but if you are out and about, being able to lookup the things you want to do, and have your phone tell you exactly how to get there is fantastic.

When browsing the information, I did come across one very annoying issue; many of the phone numbers listed in the guides are not correctly displayed, making it impossible to call them from the maps application.

Each guide entry contains some basic information; the address, their phone number, website address and a brief description. Once you find an entry, you can:

  • show it on the map
  • navigate to it with the “walk to” or “drive to” option
  • add it to the “My Places” address book
  • add it to an existing route
  • show the details
  • call the listed phone number
  • browse to the listed web site address
  • send it another phone using Bluetooth or an MMS message

Final thoughts: It would have been a little more honest (in my opinion) if the press announcement by Lonely Planet had been more descriptive. The initial announcement made it sound like a complete city guide would be available for the phone, when in reality all you get is a list of locations. The price is fairly reasonable, but you do need to take into account the additional cost involved with using the navigation feature on a Nokia phone (starting at EUR70 per year for drive/walk turn by turn guidance in a local region). If you are traveling to multiple cities, you’ll also be spending $14 on each city, which can add up very quickly.

In the end, you need to ask yourself whether the convenience of easy access to Lonely Planet listings on your phone is worth $13.99. As a geek, I can certainly appreciate the ease of use, and the ability to plan a day in advance right on my handset, but if you are already carrying a Lonely Planet guide, you may want to spend that $14 on souvenirs and enter the address by hand, as I just don’t see the phone guides making the books obsolete. Another option you could consider, is the ability to purchase individual chapters from Lonely Planet guides, and download them in PDF format, ready for you to print.

Lonely Planet Joins The Hotel Booking Game

by Josh Lew on

Since it was sold to the BBC, everybody’s favorite guidebook company has had uncertainty looming in its future. The brand took a step away from its paper-and-binding roots recently by signing a deal with Expedia and Hostelworld. The trio will join forces to provide an online hotel booking service.

Lonely Planet will put all those hotel reviews it has in its vaults to good use, while Expedia and Hostelworld will provide the nuts-and-bolts.

The move is good for LP. They are actively bringing the brand to an online audience, and by doing so, are ensuring their survival in a world populated by websites featuring user-generated travel reviews and tips. With guidebook writers already scouring the globe and bringing back write-ups about hotels, guest houses and hostels, it shouldn’t drain the budget too much.

Expedia might also come out well in the deal. They are a giant among booking sites, but perhaps not much of a player when it comes to the backpacking set. By working with LP, they will gain exposure to a new group of customers.

Hostelworld and Lonely Planet are a match made in backpacker heaven. The budget accommodation booking service gets to put its name next to two of travel’s biggest, LP gets the technical side of the venture taken care of without having to break a sweat, and Expedia, like I mentioned above, gets some exposure in a new demographic.

No word on when the service will be up and running, but I’m sure quite a few people are holding their breath in anticipation.

Photo from Flickr user ChihPing

Download your local Not for Tourists Guide online for free!

by Grant Martin on

I have mixed feelings about guidebooks, partially because I hate going to a super lovely secret destination and finding 300 other people there with the same guidebook, but have to admit, I am kind of fond of the Not For Tourists (NFT) guides that have been around for the past few years.

These guidebooks are a library of information, containing extremely detailed maps, overlaid with points of interest, restaurant and other juicy city tidbits — which is really where they get their name. Not every tourist wants to waste space on the details of the PetCo on the corner of 92nd and Broadway — they would rather learn about that awesome bistro in SoHo that Ed Norton was seen in once.

To each his or her own.

Fortunately, NFT recently started posting their guidebooks on their website free to download in PDF form. Now, you snark the articles and maps that you want, print them out and build your own frankenbook to take along on your journey.

So how do they make their money? Well, I guess they hope that you’ll like the online guides well enough to purchase one of their books. At least give the online version a try and see what you think.

Former Technorati master to start guidebook series

by Grant Martin on

Ever used Technorati? It’s a slick little blog searcher that scours over 100 million blogs for articles like the stuff you read here on Gadling. It was founded by a fella named Dave Sifry and is a highly awarded web site and search engine.

Yeah yeah, another search engine, you say. Well what makes it sweet is that it’s made using open source software, similar to Linux or Ubuntu or OpenOffice. With none of that licensing and litigation crap that Microsoft and Apple have to weave around, the software is cleaner and more efficient.

Enough of my own opinion though– since his departure from Technorati, Sifry has moved on from the blogosphere into the travel guidebook realm. And he’s taken the open source roots from his former business into his new venture: Offbeat Guides.

The trick behind Offbeat Guides is that it takes open source data from all over the web, Wikitravel, Flickr, Google Maps and other user generated data and puts it into a form factor (in either PDF or bound, sent to your door) that is tailored to your use. You can pick areas or activities that you like, thus cutting down on all of the superfluous data that you don’t need, like Rick Steve’s favorite two star hotel in Kalamazoo. Result? Cleaner, more efficient guidebook.

Sounds pretty neat, but if you’re going to spend the time putting together a guide like this, why don’t you just make a frankenguide?

Offbeat Guides, proper, is still in the invite-only beat (read: super secret — don’t you want in?) phase, but you can sign up for an invite on their site.

Thoughts on the Lonely Planet scandal: Guidebooks are a sham

by Jeffrey White on

So, Lonely Planet writer Thomas Kohnstamm, ‘author’ of the guidebook giant’s Colombia title, turns out to be a fraud.

That’s one of the big stories today, as dutifully reported and followed by Gadling’s Aaron. Of course, the travel world has a right to be outraged by this, and that’s including the numerous LP writers out there who simply do what is expected of them and produce honest work.

But I have this question: Who really cares? Is there anyone out there who takes these guidebooks seriously? Who honestly feels his or her confidence in the racket that is the global guidebook industry has been irrevocably shaken? No one? Exactly: We were doubtful from the beginning.

The Kohnstamm revelation further cements in my mind — and I’m betting in a few of yours — the belief that guidebooks are by and large a sham. I know writers for LP, Time Out, Let’s Go, DP and a few others. While certainly I am not suggesting I have first hand knowledge that they are guilty of the kind of intellectual laziness and deceitfulness that should surely turn Thomas Kohnstamm’s name into a punchline, I know them to call in favors, farm out their work, barter, happily receive comps and overall travel in a way that is, well, rather less than incognito (I witnessed once a writer for a well-known guidebook series making a pitiful pitch over e-mail to get a free weekend at a new, five-star Central European hotel by throwing around his title’s name).

This brush is not meant to paint the entire industry and those who write for it. But I’m aiming at a wide enough canvass, those who want to somehow influence our reaction to a place through gross generalizations and trivial detail, while allowing us to fall back on information that somehow always seems to be not quite right – which, of course, the disclaimers more than prepare us for.

Aaron gives us some reasons why we should be outraged by the Kohnstamm affair. They’re thoughtful and well-presented. But we shouldn’t be outraged. And we shouldn’t be surprised.

Guidebooks are the CliffNotes of travel writing, nothing more than a hand-holding exercise. They’re good for a few names and a few addresses, some initial info, and maybe even the surprising fun fact (but you better verify it). Beyond that, they’re useless. They’re often wrong, more often skewed, and they seek to rob you of the only thing you have as a traveler: your impression. How the hell can you come to some conclusion about a place using one of these things? The guidebook views you as an idiot incapable of asking questions: You really can’t figure out how to find a restaurant wherever you are? Stick with it and you’ll be seeing what someone else thinks you should see rather than perhaps what you need to see.

For me to point out the number of times that a guidebook has been wrong would be to point out the well-known. I hope what the Kohnstamm affair really does is to get people thinking long and hard about relying on a guidebook for anything in the first place.