Tourism Radio City Guides, featuring Frommer’s

Hummba’s parent company, Tourism Radio® recently partnered with US-based travel guide publisher Frommer’s® Unlimited; check out the earlier blog post here. In a nutshell, the partnership sees Tourism Radio’s audio city guides significantly beefed up with quality Frommer’s travel content.

That means we’ve now got more than 40 guides, to destinations all over the world, with more on the way. Our current offerings include guides to New York, Paris, Berlin, Singapore and even the islands of Hawaii. You can find these through the Hummba guide store or search for your favourite destinations through the continent and country pages on the Hummba website.

Just click on North America, for example, and you’ll be provided with information about the continent, as well as a list of the guides we have on offer. There are several city guides in the United States of America, and Canada, that you can download directly onto your mobile phone.

Thanks to our partnership with Frommer’s, these guides now contain detailed information about the various tourist attractions, restaurants and accommodation facilities found in the area, and much more! What better way to explore the cities you visit on your travels? You can even use them to discover more about the cities you’ve lived in for years.

On top of all that, there are also a number of ‘lite’ guides, which can be downloaded absolutely free of charge. These lite guides give you the opportunity to sample the content of some of the more popular travel guides, before committing to paying for the full one. We recommend you give the Paris and London lite guides a try, and if you like them, purchase the full guides.

For more information about Tourism Radio’s City Guides, visit hummba.com. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter as well (@tourismradio and @hummba). That way you’ll be the first to know when we release new city guides in the coming weeks.

The Next Step-Location Based Video

Remember when YouTube came out? It was a video feeding frenzy, people from all over the world rushed to their PC's to upload all that they could from music video's to self made promo's and everything in between. I originally thought it was all text, all of the time, but it seems to be all video, all of the time. Even Twitter, famous for it's "one liners" is part of the video craze, every person's tweet is littered with links to video's. What can I say? We are a visual nation.

This is what we took into careful consideration here at the brains of Hummba.com, you're new way of connecting and we are excited to announce launching the location-based video application today!

We would love to hear from you so drop us a line and tell us how you feel about our new feature! One things for sure, this blogger is loving it and uploading constantly!

Oops.....

With technology rapidly taking over the world in the 21st century, there are bound to be some bumps in the road. But who knew that Jury Duty would be one of them? There is an outcry in the US because Jurors are causing mistrials, exclusion of jurors, and imposition of fines because of their techno savvy and claiming that there is nothing said to prohibit them from using the net, going onto facebook or even tweeting during a court case.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon challenged her misdemeanor embezzlement conviction after discovering five jurors "friended" one another on Facebook during the trial. This is only one of the many instances of techno Jurors causing havoc with the system. New restrictions will have to be put in place to ensure that when you have a juror, they are as objective as possible. Personally I believe that this shouldn't even have to be said, but apparently it does.

Social networking and the internet has become so ingrained in our day to day lives that it's become routine. Tweeting or updating your facebook status is almost an unconscious action but when it comes to the issues of the law, awareness is what is needed and breaking the habit for the allotted amount of time is imperative. Objectivity is the name of this game, and adding fellow jurors as friends on your facebook account is hindering this important process. Take it seriously, how would you feel on trial with a bunch of tweeting jurors?

His Holiness the Tweeter

While driving to work this morning I caught the end of a conversation on the radio, from what I could gather, they were talking about the Dalai Lama being on Twitter. Of course I dismissed this and though I had caught the end of a prank but as I was scouring the news, it was there in black and white.

The Tibetan spiritual leader has joined the micro blogging service Twitter and he's attracted over 55 000 followers in only two days. His feed-@Dalailama-was launched on Monday. Where did this come from and why? These are the questions I've been asking. He apparently met with Evan Williams in Los Angeles who is one of Twitters founders. His Holiness was pitched the idea of using it and according to the founder laughed about it but after the meeting the tweets began.

Before you get excited and start looking him up for his pearls of wisdom, the only tweets that have been posted so far are links to articles and photos of his activities during his current US visit. But who knows, he could share a few noteworthy tweets in the future with us? A fake Dalai Lama account had been set up over a year ago and because of it, the founders have started verified accounts but that faker attracted tens of thousands of followers so it shouldn't be long for the real Dalai Lama to exceed those numbers. I know I'll definitely be one of them.

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.

I love you more than Facebook

A story circulated about a month ago about a man from Maryland, USA who interrupted his own wedding ceremony to update his twitter and Facebook status. As the minister said he could kiss his bride, he reached for his cell phone and made the necessary changes/ updates before making if official so to speak. So there you have it, social media truly has become a part of everyday life and once in a lifetime days. Well, I can do Facebook one better I think.

With hummba you can elope to get married, but here's the best part...you and your soon to be better half don't even have to go to the same place to elope. You can update your status and location live from your mobile phone so all you have to do is give a little "I do" on your status and wham! you're married. There are some minor details to sort out but in this day and age...you're Thailand, he's Northern Ireland - no problem, hummba will take you there! Virtually anything is possible.

Happy hummba-ing to you!

Required: Full time Tweeter

Social networking has changed the rules. First, how we communicate and now, what we choose as a profession. That's right, companies, unable to counteract the effects that Facebook, Twitter and Myspace have on staff, have jumped on board and started using these sites as another, more focuses way of talking to their customers. The moral of the story? Where once, you could only apply for positions like book keeper, receptionist and salesperson, you can now be employed by a big corporate as a "Tweeter."

Tweeters have the task of promoting their companies products, clearing up misconceptions about the brand and just talking to customers about anything, the weather, traffic, global warming. It gives a whole new meaning to the term "small talk" that was once reserved for stuffy PR functions. Now small talk is literally small, 160 characters or less to be exact.

Tweeters, Facebookers and Myspacers have replaced the dated traditional marketing roles and in essence removed the vacuum from the marketing clean up. Silly? No, not really. They are full time jobs, some dedicated employees stay up all hours to talk to followers in different time zones.

Big names like Coca Cola and Ford Motors have declared it their responsibility to talk to the people who are talking about them. In a way, it has bogged down social networking media sites with lots of marketing bumph, but on the other hand..."first hand" information has never been so readily available.

Customer services and call centers have, in many respects, shown their inability to really develop a relationship with customers. Much less cement brand loyalty. Social media can fill in the gaps left by traditional forms of communication with customers. I think the difference is that with social media, the focus is to engage people. It's the text message from a large retail store on your birthday, only better because it isn't a computer generated message, its from Joe Blog, fellow Tweeter, Facebook friend. The guy/girl that you can truly say that Myspace is their space.

So here's to talking to the people that count, or should I say...Tweeting to the people that count. Speaking of the people that count...log on to www.hummba.com to meet up with fellow travellers, download free audio guides and share your experiences with the Footprints application. It's geo tagging at its best.

Anti-Social Behaviour

There was a time when social networking sites were a friendly space. Sure, there were a few incidents with some guy that you've never met sending you a stream of friend requests but on the whole...it was a happy cyberspace. But as the old saying goes...where there's space, there's room for trouble.

All the idle hands seem to be making light work of all the hacking that can be done. Facebook, MySpace and the myriad of other social networking sites have become something of a playground for cyber-criminals. Ah, for the days when your purse got stolen and you had to re-apply for your ID and change your locks and cancel your credit cards. These days, all your information is right there in front of your criminals, name, address, birthdays, star signs, employment details, hobbies, email and phone numbers. We've never been more accessible to evil. Good times.

Now, before you go adding privacy accounts to anything and everything...listen to the rest of the story. Early this week I wrote about the Campus Party taking place in Valencia, Spain. Its one of the world's biggest online entertainment events and has been taking place annually since 1997. Its the meeting place for internet enthusiasts and a sort of cyber church warning users against the dangers that hackers present in the social networking world.

Meet Koobface. "Koob" for those of you who don't know is "Book" backwards, so "Facebook" in reverse. While Facebook is all about spreading the love, Koobface is a vicious virus that has been infecting users of Facebook and Twitter since 2008.

As with all virus there are a number of variants or strains, in this case, more than 4000 have been detected. The virus hijacks accounts of users on the mentioned SNS and sends messages steering you to nasty sites containing malware. FYI...malware equals "malicious software often designed to infiltrate a computer system for illicit purposes.

So its counts in real life and in cyber space now too...know who your friends are. That's usually how they'll get you...Koobface will send you a friend request or another invitation, either to update software or download applications and the like. The social networking sites being affected have assured their users that incidents have been very few and that they do take precautions to ensure that their space remains your space.

One thing to remember is that most hackers aren't just hacking to make your life miserable, there are Cyber Mafias out there (not kidding) who hack for profit. Cyber Mafias have been identified in Brazil, China, Russia and the Ukraine. and they're making a killing. So do yourself a favour, know who your friends are, if it seems suspicious, it is and report people who aren't playing the game, the friendly social networking way.

Hackers or no hackers, social networking is one of the ways we can stay in touch. Visit www.hummba.com and discover a whole new way to see the world.