Shout out to Andrew Chen for reading the Internet so that I don’t have to. Specifically he found a great study published by Hitwise. They keep track of the traffic to about a million web sites daily and ranked those in the travel destination and accommodation content area based on the total amount of US traffic. The end result is a list of the top 10 web sites in this area. Of the 10, 7 are for hotel chains. The remainder are TripAdvisor, the U.S. National Park Service and Six Flags. Some people might make a good argument that TripAdvisor is actually heavily used as a way to get info on accommodations.

The main point is that these sites are used primarily by travelers before they travel. Once they get to their destinations, there is usually little reason to look for hotels if they have already reserved one. These results suggest that travelers are not making as much use of the Internet after they arrive at their destination as you might expect. You would expect that travelers would make more use of the Internet in unfamiliar surroundings such as when they travel.

Travelers are not using the Internet as much after they arrive because they are not familiar with which local web sites can give them the best local info. Instead, they still rely on conciercers and local travel desk staff for recommendations and local information.

As the mobile web becomes easier to use and more local information gets cataloged on the web by latitude and longitude, travelers will begin to look to the mobile web for immediate local info.

Geogad is to its part to make the mobile web richer for travelers every day.

For all you busy travelers who can’t tune into the radio to find new music or may have forgotten to load your favorite CD onto your MP3 player, Pandora can solve your problems.  Pandora came from the Musical Genome Project.  This volunteer project was to break down all songs in the world into a basic description of its musical properties.  It essentially was trying to define the musical DNA of each song in its database.

Pandora is easy to use.  Surf to the Pandora web site using your high speed Internet connection and tell Pandora what are your favorite artists and/or songs.  It will take your starting list of favorites and match it with other songs by other artists that have similar DNA. All of the songs, the ones you know and the ones you are just discovering, are served directly to you over your personal Pandora “station.”  You can mix the song styles to create your own personal Internet “radio” stations. 

The best part for travelers is that your music is always on the Internet for you.  The only down side is that you are going to need a high speed connection.  Pandora can also have trouble if the server that you are using is configured to prevent streaming. 

Try it out, and let me know how well it works for you.   

Technorati tags: travel, Internet, radio, music, Pandora, personalization, streaming music

A few days ago, I hinted around about the object of Geogads’s next tour.  If you knew your St. Patrick’s Day trivia then you knew that the southern U.S. city that throws the biggest St. Pat’s party is Savannah, Georgia.  In the case that this surprises you, then you may like to know that Savannah had a huge influx of Irish immigrants during its cotton boom of 1850 and after the Irish Potato Famine of the late 1840’s.  Call it a perfect storm for creating green beer and grits.

If you are in Savannah this weekend for this party that has been called the Redneck Mardi Gras, then enjoy.  But don’t forget that now you can skip those pricy yet geeky tourist buses and explore Savannah in style, your style.  Just download Geogad’s latest Mobile Tour for Savannah’s Western Historic District and see Savannah the way that it was designed to be seen: in a relaxing stroll.

Technorati tags: Geogad,, Mobile Tour, Savannah, Historic District, free MP3 tour, walking tour, travel, entertainment

Attended the NewTech meeting last night.  Came late and left early because I have so many other things to do.  It is really terrible because it is a great meeting to network.

Of the presentation, the two best were neighboroo.com and thinkfree.com.  Neighboroo was one that had popped onto my radar earlier, but I did not have a chance to research them.  They are essentially a mashup between statistical data and local market locations.  For example, they mash Google maps with the U.S. census data to show in visual format the percentage of people between the ages of, say, 20-30 year old that live in a certain zip code.  They can also how areas are divided based on numbers of Democrats and Republicans or Muslims, Jews, and Christians or by level of income.  Basically, if someone has polled for this data and they can get their hands on it, Neighboroo can show it.  It is a great use for people moving to new areas and for retailers interested in opening new stores in other locations.

Thinkfree is essentially Office-on-the-web.  You can work on and create your own doc, xls, and ppt files in your free account at their web site.  This company has been working on creating the software from scratch since around 1999.  It is based on Java and should be pretty solid.  This service would be great for people who want to collaborate over long distances or who are traveling and want to use Office products from anywhere in the world without having to drag all the files with them.  Basically, it would be great for any world travelers to work as they travel. The best feature is that it is supposed to work almost seamlessly with Microsoft products.  So you can open a basic Office file in Thinkfree (they support 85% of Microsoft features), work on it on the web, and then save it back to your hard drive in the future as a completely compliant Office doc. The one feature that they seem to be missing is the ability to trace changes at the line level for groups of people working on a single file.  This feature will probably be added in the future.

Technorati tags: NewTech, Neighboroo, Thinkfree, networking, Silicon Valley, travel, travel tools

Special treat today.  I attended a lecture given by Michael Kohn, who has been a journalist in Mongolia, researched Lonely Planet guidebooks in Central Asia and across the world and has just released his latest book, Dateline Mongolia. The lecture was given in a packed auditorium at the Santa Clara Library.  Judging by his schedule, Michael is focusing on talking at libraries, which is better for the audience.  Many bookstores have their authors lecture in crowded stores with customers milling about as the talk proceeds.  Convenient for the store, but distracting for the author and audience.

Michael used both a slideshow presentation and background music to add to the feel of the talk.  He is an expert on travel and Central Asia, especially Mongolia.  You can tell that he is passionate about his subject, but his talks will improve if he shows a bit more of this passion as he goes through his presentation.

His book, Dateline Mongolia, seems like a must-read for anyone thinking of traveling in this area.  The best way to get the book is directly from his website so that he can autograph it for you.

Even though you may not be able to attend his talks, you can still get a small taste of them by checking out his excellent travel photos in his gallery.  They can really get your feet aching to get off the beaten path.

 Technorati tags: travel, lecture, Michael Kohn, Dateline Mongolia, Mongolia, Central Asia, Lonely Planet, travel guides