Location-based travel guides – why should you be using them?

Here at Hummba, we’ve long said that the days of carrying around a bulky travel guide book are numbered. What was once a useful tool (before the advent of the smartphone), is now becoming nothing more than a nuisance when travelling abroad. The travel information contained in guide books is notoriously outdated, and of course they can be quite pricey. Adding to that, unless you buy a ‘pocket version’, they can also be quite heavy and bothersome to lug around from one place to the next.

According to the Pew Research Center in Washington, more than 46% of Americans owned a smartphone in February, 2012. This represents an increase of 11% when compared to the numbers from May, 2011 (source). People are beginning to explore the capabilities of their mobile phones, as well as rely on the devices to carry out everyday tasks, such as check train timetables or read restaurant reviews. The emergence of third party applications is also adding fuel to this fire, showing smartphone owners the sheer amount of information they can easily access at the touch of a few buttons.

Enter Hummba, the intelligent travel guide for your mobile phone. Our intelligent audio guides use mobile GPS technology to provide smartphone users with accurate travel information that is relevant to where they are in the world. For example, you can find up-to-date information about the nearest place to grab a bite for lunch, while you’re standing on top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. With Hummba, you’ll have access to an unprecedented amount of audio and text travel content, right there on your mobile phone.

We offer two ways to get the travel information you need. Firstly, you can download the Hummba application to your iPhone or Android, free of charge. You can then search for paid or free guides to your favourite travel destinations and download them through the app itself. Download multiple guides and use the Hummba app to get the most of your travels.

If however you’re looking to download a guide to a single travel destination, then you can visit the iTunes Store or Android Marketplace and search for the Tourism Radio standalone guides as well. Search for the Tourism Radio New York City Guide, for example, if you’re looking to find out more about the Big Apple.

Location-based travel guides for the mobile phone take all the legwork out for getting travel information when you need it most. Visit hummba.com for more information on the Hummba application, or head straight for the Hummba guide store and start searching for guides.

New and improved version of the Hummba mobile travel application available for download

We recently released the latest version of our location-based Hummba mobile travel application (available on iPhone and Android). The app now comes jam-packed with new features, including the ability to find and purchase guides though the app itself, filter points of interest by category, as well as find your way with the innovative ‘go there’ button.

The new category filter allows Hummba users to search through thousands of museums, restaurants, historical attractions, and more, at touch of a button. The partnership between Hummba’s parent company, Tourism Radio®, and Frommer’s® Unlimited, a world-renowned travel guide publisher, has ensured that our guides now contain an unprecedented amount of up-to-date, quality travel information.

The Hummba application also supports in-app purchasing. This means you can search for the guides you want either on the Hummba website or in the app itself, where you can make your purchases directly. Just download a guide to your favourite holiday destination and pay for it through the Hummba app, even while you’re on the move. There’s no need to find a computer and search through the app store for your guides.

On top of these features, Hummba also puts you in the right direction. Need to find the quickest way to get from your hotel in London to Big Ben? Just select the Big Ben point of interest in Hummba and hit the ‘go there’ button in the top right corner. Hummba will use your current location to map out a route. There’s no need for bulky guide books and impossible-to-use city maps, just use Hummba.

For more information about Hummba, the Hummba app, or our comprehensive city guides to popular tourist destinations all over the world, visit hummba.com.

The convenience of technology has drastically changed the way we travel

There’s no denying that the way we travel has changed. Making holiday arrangements, which used to take days, weeks or even months, can now be done in an instant. The reason for this is quite simple: travellers are embracing the convenience of technology.

The internet has led the charge when it comes to innovations in travel. Booking your flights, accommodation and vehicle hire online are common occurrences. The fact that you can do all this from the comfort of your own home, outside normal working hours, has only added to the method’s popularity.

But now the mobile phone has entered the fray and there’s no need even to have access to a computer. There are hundreds of Android and iPhone applications specifically designed to help travellers and at Hummba, we’re doing just that.

With Hummba, you can download free audio guides directly onto your mobile phone. We’ve got informative guides for hundreds of tourist attractions all over the world. Our location-based technology means you’ll get the information you need, when you need it most.

The Hummba app uses your phone’s GPS location to point out interesting things to see and do nearby. Your mobile phone can be your own personal tour guide as you take a walking tour of New York or Paris, for example.

With Hummba, you can also share your travel experiences, as they happen. Create a travel route and tag pictures along the way. It’s the perfect way to keep your friends and family in the loop while you’re on the move.

Visit Hummba.com to find out more about our free audio travel guides for your mobile phone.

iCheat

Tiger Woods. Images of a golf legend getting down and dirty with countless women is most likely what springs to mind first. And so it should, the cheater gets caught, like that's never happened before. What amazes me is that the jokes that were flying around the office, happened within minutes of that story breaking. Opportunities sprung from other people's misery, it's the way of the world unfortunately.

That's why when TigerText came out, I wasn't in the least bit surprised. It's a new iPhone application that allows user to send text messages and once the message is read it is instantly deleted, leaving no trace of infidelity. This includes erasing received and dialled calls logs. Of course, I found this quite amusing when I first read it, can you imagine all the hassle that could have been spared in the case of our billionaire golfer if he had had this application? But there are other questions that plague the mind when thinking of this application.

There was a comment from a reader on the article I had read stating "This application is actually making cheating easier! I wish one of the people who developed this thing gets the worst of this application. They are encouraging cheating. I can't believe this!" A good point. But I don't tend to agree wholeheartedly. An application like this doesn't encourage cheating, if someone wants to cheat they will, regardless of an Iphone application but I do think that it's not the most moral of applications.

But when it comes to phone applications as with the internet or technology, it's definitely not about morality, it's about the freedom to choose. It's about being given the options of new advances and deciding whether or not to use them based on your set of values and opinions. Not everyone is the same and someone who maybe believes that it is alright to cheat (I'm sure there are people out there) this is something they would choose to use purely because it is something that will help them with something they believe is ok to do. It's like the great pornography debate, some believe it can spice up a stale marriage, others believe its filth that shouldn't be entertained. It all boils down to choice and of course making loads of cash for the developers.

Videogame Makers Racing to Develop iPad Games

Courtesy of IOL Technology:

Washington – As an electronic reader, Apple's iPad has been touted as a possible Kindle killer but what has videogame makers buzzing is the potential of the touchscreen tablet computer as a gaming platform.

"It's going to be a really powerful handheld game console," said Asbjoern Soendergaard, founder and chief executive officer of Tactile Entertainment. "It's going to be an awesome gaming experience."

Soendergaard's Denmark-based company is building a pet simulation game for the iPhone called Pocket Creatures and he said the iPad will allow the game developers to add "features that we only thought we could a year ago."
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The iPad's larger screen, rich graphics and processing power has videogame and application developers around the world racing to put the final touches on programs for the iPad in time for when it hits the stores next month.

Free and paid applications for the iPhone - more than 150 000 to date - helped make the smartphone a smash hit and developers are hoping for similar success with the iPad, which goes on sale in the United States on April 3 and in nine other countries at the end of the month.

"We're very excited about the iPad because it gives us more room to play," said Brian Meehan, the head of worldwide product development at Sourcebits, a company focused on mobile applications and gaming with offices in Atlanta and Bangalore, India.

"It's got a larger screen obviously and more CPU," Meehan said of the iPad's central processing unit, what Tactile's Soendergaard described as the "power under the hood."

Besides games, one of Sourcebits most successful products is Knocking Live Video, which allows iPhone owners to share live video with each other and has attracted over 750 000 users in just three months.

"We'll ultimately build that out for the iPad," Meehan said.

"For gaming, the iPad's going to be kind of in a bit of a world of its own," he added.

"If you look at Sony's PSP and all the other portable gaming devices they may be a little bit bigger than the iPod Touch or the iPhone but they're all in that same size area.

"Now you have this device that's also going to be able to connect to (the Internet)," he said. "That in itself is a big playing field for everybody in the gaming world."

Soendergaard said the iPad is "different from the iPhone where you have your personal apps" and predicted it will be "a family device, a shared device.

"On the multi-player side it's going to be really exciting," he said. "Maybe you can play board games on it."

Mike Rasmussen of Durham, North Carolina-based Republic of Fun, publisher of Slug Wars and other iPhone titles, agreed, saying the iPad opens up all kinds of new possibilities for game makers.

"It's about the right size to place down on a table between four people," said Rasmussen, whose title at Republic of Fun is "el presidente" in keeping with the name of his company.

"We've really started thinking about it as kind of the ultimate board game device which can create really interactive, fun, multi-player experiences for groups of people that just are not possible on a device like the iPhone."

Game makers are not the only ones bullish about the iPad. So are financial analysts and application developers.

"We were able to demo the (iPad) at the launch event and were impressed by the gaming and e-book experience in particular," said Ben Reitzes, an analyst at Barclays Capital.

"We found the gaming experience to be far superior to the smaller screen platforms and wouldn't be surprised if gaming popularity turned out to be one of the gadget's big surprises," Reitzes said in a research note on Friday.

PointAbout, a Washington-based technology company which has built iPhone applications for the White House, the US Coast Guard and The Washington Post among others, is looking to adapt its popular AppMakr service to the iPad.

AppMakr can make iPhone applications for as little as $199 (about R1 400) and has been used to build 3 800 iPhone programs in just the six weeks since it was launched, said PointAbout co-founder and chief operating officer Daniel Odio.

"We will probably end up adding iPad into AppMakr so that people can build low-cost iPad apps," Odio said. "I imagine it's going to take us three to six months to do that but it is our goal." - AFP

The Techno Dating Dance

Dating has always been a difficult task, there are certain rules that have been perfected over time and when the internet came along, the dating game changed forever. You don't need to interact with people on a personal level anymore, you could MySpace them, send them an email, a message on Facebook, join an internet dating site that can search through its database for your perfect match! It's all text, all of the time. I believe it takes the fun out of meeting someone naturally, but I can also understand the desire to avoid the awkwardness of a first meeting, the uncomfortable silences and the need to impress.

Keeping this is mind, I came across a new dating game, Flitter, a curve ball in the technological world of dating. It's inspired by none other than the world renowned Twitter. A group of web-savvy singles suit up and number themselves and enter a room filled with fellow tweeters. The tweets start fast and furiously as people size up the potential dates, writing who they would like to hook up with and eventually a face to face meeting, only if you're interested, is all set up. It's a sure fire away to dodge the bullet of rejection.

The reviews are mixed, some say it's the perfect way to sift through the crowd to find the person that tickles your fancy while others think it hampers being able to approach the person you're interested in. I think it must be extremely interesting to watch, a bunch of guests gazing closely at their iPhones and Blackberrys in a dimly lit room, their thumbs tapping away at their mobile devices on Twitter. This test run was hosted in Canada and it seems to have been a hit. I have a feeling this is only the beginning in a string of new dating ideas, as technology advances, so does the dating game.

iArt? A Great iDea?

You see that painting by Botticelli. It looks like those women are dancing doesn't it? Except for one thing, the look on their faces doesn't scream fun do they? Nope. I have another theory...these women are fighting about a cell phone, some Roman god was calling and the excitement caused a scurry between the beauties in the picture. That’s my story and I'm sticking to it. It makes sense really, if you think about it...

Recent reports have made it even easier to view the world's finest art from your cell phone. Or, more specifically...your iPhone. There was a time when art fundi's would take the pilgrimage to the Louvre or in this case, the National Gallery in London. Not anymore, art lovers can now get their fix with the latest iPhone application.

Two hundred and fifty of the gallery's best-loved paintings are available for a casual browse. If you're more of a fundi than just merely interested, you can zoom in and examine the work of masters like Botticelli, Renoir, van Gogh and Rembrandt in minute detail. What’s more is that the application also includes 200 minutes of audio content, recounting the stories behind the art and some interesting interviews.

The London Gallery is the first museum to offer this sort of service where users can either view paintings at random or by theme, like love and death. They claim to have a few more options though, thank goodness.

In a statement from the gallery, the application is intended to appeal to art enthusiasts and the gallery is a pilgrim for making art accessible in such an innovative way.

So good times for iPhone users, what’s even better than the new application is actually travelling to the London Gallery to see firsthand what a Botticelli looks like. When you're done, you can record your voice on your phone, reviewing the art or just telling the world about your experiences, complete with pictures before uploading it all onto hummba.com. Visit www.hummba.com for more!!!