Law Students

wikitravel on android and in print

By Luis

In preparation for a honeymoon in places where data access is expensive I’ve put all of wikitravel on my Android phone via the OxygenGuide project. I’m not sure how useful it will prove in practice (especially since all maps are stripped out and there is no search) but this seems to me to be an obvious next step for travel guidebooks- everything in your pocket, searchable (at first by text and later by GPS coordinates), etc. It certainly is not a straightforward process right now, and eventually it will be obsoleted by cheap, global data access, but in the meantime I look forward to using it on this trip and in the future.

In the meantime, I’ve also become a bit intrigued by other custom uses. I was just at the wedding of a friend in an exotic-ish location; as part of the gift bag that many wedding guests put in the room of their guests there was a very nicely done printed version of content from the city’s wikitravel page (which also included bios of the bride and groom, a schedule of events, etc.) I may do something similar, albeit probably just by emailing pdfs to people :) Will be interesting to see how this and open street map integrate in the future.

I have to admit (and I’m curious to know if others have had this experience) that I’m reluctant to rely on the hotel recommendations in wikitravel; not sure why that is- probably just that it seems fairly unsystematic and prone to manipulation?

Full post as published by Luis Villa's Home Page on August 28, 2009 (boomark / email).