Last week, Geogad released its Mobile Tour of Victoria, BC to conincide with Canada Day, which is basically the birthday of the formation of the Dominion of Canada.

Of course, since Geogad remembered the Canadian birthday celebration, then it could hardly ignore the birthday of the United States. In that spirit, Geogad has added its latest professionally created audio tour to its collection of Mobile Tours in time for the July 4th holiday. This latest tour covers Philadelphia’s Independence National Historic Park, the most historic square mile of the United States.

If you have never been to Independence Park, it is really a great place to realize how small and tiny the United States was and the determination that it took for the founders of the American Revolution to stand up to Great Britain. Geogad’s tour is great for first time travelers who may be overwhelmed by all that there is to see and do in the park. This tour gives travelers an easy-to-follow overview of the top attractions in the park so they can decide what they might like to spend more time on. For busy travelers who have a small amount of time, they can focus on what they can and let Geogad fill in the blanks as they travel from site to site. It is also a great tour for armchair travelers to feel as if they are touring the park being lead by a knowledgeable tour guide.

The tour begins at the Independence Park Visitor Center, which has knowledgeable volunteers that can provide visitors with the latest opening times of the park attractions. The opening times and days vary depending on the season. The center also is a convenient place to park if you bring your own car. After the traveler is armed with all of the advice that the volunteers can give, this tour guides the traveler through the heart of the park by visiting the Liberty Bell Center and then Independence Hall, perhaps the most important building in the colonial history of the United States. After exploring the people who fought for the freedom of this country to determine its own destiny, the most amazing part of the story is that a bunch of well educated and, in many cases, wealthy men formed a government in which power was transferred from leader to leader based on what the people voted, a bizarre, radical form of government that had not been tried in over 2000 years. These ideal young revolutionaries paid a heavy price as we learn at the next tour stop that was a mass grave for American Revolutionary War soldiers. The next few tour stops focus on one of the most prolific of these revolutionaries, Benjamin Franklin, from his work and home to his devotion to science and state and even the mundane things in life like forming institutions to protect Philadelphians from fire. Other tour stops focus on how the people of the early US lived and fought for their freedoms.

Whether you are just touring Phiadelphia while taking this Geogad mobile tour on your favorite mobile device or if you are just exploring Philadelphia from your armchair, do enjoy your tour and let us know what you think.

Geogad is thrilled to announce the release of our latest Mobile Tour and our first tour of Europe, Geogad’s Mobile Tour of Jack the Ripper’s London.

No longer are travelers forced into herds with dozens as they strain to listen to a tour guide. No longer do they have to freeze in bad weather simply because that was the only time available to take the tour. No longer do they have to hear guides who have no real info on Jack the Ripper or Victorian London make up stories as guides try to dodge questions.

As always, this new Geogad tour, like all of its other professional tours, are available for free with ads over the Internet, as zipped downloads, through Geogad’s mobile web site and over its latest platform, Geogad’s Android application. For those who prefer no ads, the tour is available ad-free for $9.99.

According to a report by Chetan Sharma Consulting and Fierce Newsletters, the US has become the biggest mobile data spender in the world. This is really amazing since the US trailed so far behind Japan and Europe for years. It just goes to show how much money carriers were leaving on the table by giving customers confusing handsets and making markets difficult for developers.

Canada is pushing the edge of the landline and the cell phone together. Now Rogers, Telus and Canada Bell customers can send text messages to landlines for about $0.15. The text message is converted to speech and an automatic voice reads the message to the user over the landline. The lines and services are definitely blurring.

Mobile search company, ChaCha, has been on a tear this last year. I saw a presentation given by one of their execs back in June at NewTech. Since then, they have really been growing. They report 1.7 million users asking a total of 50 million questions since the product debuted in January.

The question that the exec really could not answer at the time is how were they going to make money. They have now released the answer, rich media SMS. Right now, the service is really used by the under 25 age group. It will be worth watching over the next few months how these type of ads fair during the economic slowdown.