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City Tours, photos, maps, reviews, and Schmapplets from your desktop Schmap 2.0 (Beta)
Written by Glenn Letham
Thursday, 05 July 2007
With the busy summer travel season upon us here in the Northern Hemisphere there's a strong demand for travel maps... enter Schmap! This amazing resource offers up free travel guides/maps that enable you to easily explore virtually any major destination on the planet. The company has schmapped 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - just pick and click to get schmapping! Plan a walking tour, view photos and reviews, cjeck out hotels, restaurants, nightclubs and much more. Perhaps coolest of all, create your own "Schmapplets" and embed them into your blog. This is likely one of the coolest, Free apps you'll stumble onto this summer!
Schmap’s series of digital travel guides integrates dynamic maps with useful background reading, suggested tours, photos from the traveling public and reviews by local correspondents (for sights and attractions, hotels, restaurants, bars, parks, theaters, galleries, museums and more) to profile 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Schmaps are fun, cool and as unbelievable as it seems they are free!
Schmap Guides can be browsed online, or downloaded for offline trip planning and traveling with a laptop.
To begin I downloaded the Schmap Client and the Denver Guide. I then load the Schmap 2 (Beta) player and get greeted by my welcome screen. This reveals "My Guides" which now include Denver, and a lengthy list of all the other available guides. Planning a summer getaway to Banff, Nice, Sydney, Auckland, New York, or ??? no worries, you can simply Schmap em before you go!
The Schamp Guide list is quite extensive
Next, I click on my Denver Guide and it quickly loads up and presents me with loads of viewing options: suggested Denver tours, neighborhoods, top attractions, or regional maps. What's very slick is the intro documentation that includes detailed text describing useful things for the newcomer including where to stay, getting there travel info, entertainment suggestions and much more. These detailed descriptions are provided by Wcities. Using the handy navigation tabs I can easily jump to other options like picks, tours (how about a walking tour of LoDo), a directory, and useful links. Schmap takes all the work out of planning your trip. Select tours and I'm presented with walking tours of downtown. Icons displayed are hand-picked to provide me with a great experience. Some of the items that appear for the tour of LoDo include Coor's Field, Wynkoop Brewery, Larimer Square and many others. Hovering over each place's icon brings up a photo along with a detailed description, useful links and more... nice!
My Denver City Guide
Browsing Suggested Sports events in Denver - notice the map showing the location of Coor's Field, photo, description, and weblinks.
Mapping Functionality The WOW behind the app is obviously the maps... these are very appealing cartographically and are also easy to print out and take along with me on my trip. Optionally I can toggle on/off a scale bar (handy), measuring tool (measure distance between pts before going on that walking tour), and a textual scale bar - mouse-over tips would be handy though so the user knows what they are clicking on! Finally, users can create a tour and play it as an animation, optionally toggling on/off a number of features for the area (museums, churches, pubs, sports, hotels, and more)
Once you view a map you can easily toggle on/off a number of useful information layers and POIs
About the Technology The innovative technology behind Schmap Guides is also used by clients, partners and bloggers to power the display and syndication of schmapplets – a range of fully customizable map mashups and map widgets.
Schmap’s platform enables users to:
• Collate, edit and manage place related text, photos and maps. • Publish fully customizable mashups directly to the web with a single click. • Power websites or blogs with a range of templates and choice of mapping APIs. • Syndicate content via fully customizable map widgets. • Support mobile browsing, custom printing, and much more.
For a traveler or local resident, schmapplets are a great way to share recommendations, trip itineraries, local expertise and reviews. For the professional web publisher, schmapplets add an interactive mapping element to a website with a travel, events or local interest focus, and a compelling way to promote and syndicate map-related content to readers or fans.
Schmapplets
I'll be honest, I haven't developed a schmapplet yet, however, it's definitely on my list of things to do! Using the schmapplet technology I can easily create an attractive webpage to show off my neighborhood or create a fun map series that might show things like the coolest pubs in my town, great places to eat, or maybe places I've been! Along with a groovy map, a schmapplet can also contain photos and detailed descriptions to go along with them. The UI enables users to simply hover over a photo and the related description will then be displayed as will a highlighted icon on the map showing the location... this is very slick! A selection of showcase schmapplets can be viewed at www.schmapplets.com.
Create your own Schmapplets - this one shows a user's favorite literary stops in London
Schmappers with broadband can save on download clicks with one of our humongous Schmap MegaPacks:World MegaPack - Europe MegaPack - America Megapack -200 95 94Guides Guides Guides (551 MB) (260 MB) (260 MB)
Top destinations - North America Boston Chicago Dallas Hawaii Las Vegas Los Angeles Miami New York Orlando Philadelphia San Diego San Francisco San Jose Seattle Washington DC Calgary Montreal Ottawa Toronto Vancouver Browse by countryEurope: North America: Australasia: UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, more... United States, Canada Australia, New Zealand
Top destinations - North America Boston Chicago Dallas Hawaii Las Vegas Los Angeles Miami New York Orlando Philadelphia San Diego San Francisco San Jose Seattle Washington DC Calgary Montreal Ottawa Toronto Vancouver
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Top destinations - North America 
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