I have been quiet on the blog postings lately.  The reason is that Geogad is putting together a new tour that should be available this week. 

I will give you a hint what city the new tour covers.  This city will throw the biggest St. Patric’s Day party in the southern park of the United States in just a few days.

Good luck guessing!    

Technoratit tags: Geogad, St Patricks Day, new tour 

Been working on adding more functionality to the Geogad web site. This increased functionality will include more Flash.  All of the information that I have been reading about adding Flash to web sites usually suggest that you don’t do it because it will make many people angry.  I have to wonder if that is still the case any longer.  If Flash is used in a way that makes it easier for people to see Geogad’s mobile tours, then I have to think that it will be considered a good addition by most.  The biggest issue is the required bandwidth and including comments about the content that search engines can understand.

The other issue that I am researching is how to add more transparent advertising systems.  I would like to see something a bit more like Google’s Adwords and less like the one-size-fits-all system that is currently in place.  Like traditional advertising in newspapers, magazines and most web sites, Geogad changes a set amount per month for each type of ad media.  The goal is to get something more like a cost per view or cost per download model.  The real difficulty with the model is not tracking the views or downloads.  It is finding a simple way to charge customers each month with a varying fee that is based on served ads.  The payment system that Geogad is currently using is Paypal.  While Paypal has a subscription service, the payment amount is fixed and agreed to before the customer is charged. 

Technorati tags: Geogad, Flash, Paypal, Google, Adwords, redesign web site

 Today at Macworld I spoke to RouteBuddy and Garmin about the idea of making a open source method to allow users to upload Geogad Mobile Tours and similar content to their GPS products and solutions.  Let’s hope that they are interested in a nice, simple open format as I discussed in my previous post.  It would make a killer app from their side and allow regular people (and Geogad, of course) to create and post their own tour content.  All in all, very Web 2.0. 

Today at Macworld, Steve Jobs finally put the rumors to rest.  Yes, Apple is introducing the much rumored iPhone.  Judging by today’s demo, it will be a hot device.  It is quite literally the merging of the iPod (music, video, and photo) with a phone with an Internet browser.  Just to review the basic features, it is a device with a single button that has a 3 1/2 inch touch sensitive hi-res screen.  It will only be available on Cingular (soon to be the rebranded AT&T, …it’s BACK) for $499 for a 4G model and $599 for a 8G model.  Both versions require a 2-year plan.  The iPhone will be available in the US in June, which will give everyone a chance to start saving their latte money to buy this new phone. 

From Geogad’s point of view, the new iPhone looks great.  Its large screen and iPod functionality will allow travelers to view and play their Geogad Mobile Tours as a selected playlist.  The iPhone will even allow the user to see the album art in each MP3 as if they were books in a bookshelf so the user can see what is coming up and what they have already listened to.  The Internet browser seems to be able to view regular web pages in vivid detail.  If so, then it may be possible to surf to the regular Geogad web pages without having to deal with the limited WAP-type pages.

On the downside, the Iphone was reported by CNET to not have 3G capabilities.  They create a multimedia phone with a low speed connection.  What are they thinking? Maybe they are planning to have the user handle high speed communications with WiFi.  Now we just need to roll out WiFi.

Another downside for Geogad is how to best support providing our content to mobile devices.  After all, the big mobile streaming standard were MP4 and Microsoft WMV and WMA.  The other major trend in mobile content is also one of the biggest.  Verizon and YouTube/Google are teaming up to offer limited YouTube downloadsvia Flashlite.  It seems that the future of mobile content standards are going to be determined by the big cell phone and content companies teaming up to offer their content flavor to their customers. 

Let’s just hope that they work among themselves to provide some interoperability.  It is still a messy, mobile world out there. 

Speaking of messy, how do you suppose that you keep the screen clean if you are always touching it.  Also, how do you protect the screen from scratches if you are always testing it.  iPod are great devices, but they are notorious for how easily they are damaged.  Will this be an issue with the iPhone?  After all, is there any standard portable electronic device that has to take as much punishment as a regular old cell phone?

Another downside is the pricing.  But given that Apple does not want to lower the margins on their iPods, they really could not have sold the iPhone at the standard pricing for smart phones in the $200-400 range.  After all, that is the price of the standard Video iPod now.  Since the iPhone is also a phone and Internet browser, it would have to be price at least $100 higher than the Video iPod while still below the important mental price point of $700.  After all, you are starting to get in the range of a good laptop computer at that point. 

iPhone, Real, Flash, Cingular, MacWorld, Garmin, RouteBuddy, open source, GPS, multimedia, Verizon, WiFi, Geogad