Printed guidebooks are made from dead trees, but APPS — they are really Alive! Just touch the screen of your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch and you have opened an interconnected, internet-driven, living guide bursting with more up-to-date information about your destination than even a complete bookshelf could hold. And it all fits in your pocket and costs so little!
In a sense, apps are like a cloud of ideas, where everything links to everything else, cross-pollinating thoughts much as the human brain works; or a Google search engine.
The Future of Travel Guides Has Arrived!
You will soon see fewer and fewer printed guidebooks; in fact this is already happening. Electronic guides, read on such devices as the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Blackberry, Kindle, and a host of others, have it all over their paper predecessors.
Just a few of the advantages:
- Up-To-Date Information. There’s no guarantee of this, but the potential is there for very frequent updates, not just once a year or worse.
- Vastly more information on file. iDevices can hold far more, many times more, than any book you could lift. And it’s easily accessible since everything is interactive, with links from everything to everything else.
- Information is easy to find using interactive indexing or search features; no more thumbing through pages.
- Links! Any good application (or “app” as they are called) has dozens or even hundreds of internet links to outside sources, such as museums, train schedules, restaurant menus, and so on, available through Wi-Fi or cellular networks.
- Maps. Interactive Google maps right on the screen let you easily orient yourself in strange places.
- Color imaging. Most i-devices have full color screens, so photos, charts, and maps really pop.
- Lightweight. Most i-devices are much smaller, and weigh a lot less, than printed books. The iPhone and iPod Touch slip into a shirt pocket with hardly a bulge.
- Cost. Downloads of electronic guides usually cost considerably less than half that of printed books. Mine, for example, cost only $2.99 for more information than any book could handle.
So help save the Earth by reducing the use of printed books, get a much better product, and save lots of money as well. If you don’t already have one, run out and get your hands on an electronic reader. Preferably an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch from Apple — so you can download my guides and all the others from the gang at Sutro Media!
Here’s for starters: My name is Earl Steinbicker and my very first app, Waltzing Through Vienna, is now on Apple's iTunes store for $2.99. Click here to read about it, or here. It covers far more than just Vienna, with fully-described one-day outings to Grinzing, Wienerwald, the Kahlenberg Heights, Baden, Schneeberg, Dürnstein, Eisenstadt, Mariazell, Wachau Valley, St. Pölten, Linz, and more.
Now Online: Innsbruck and the Alps, covering the city and much of the Alps in Austria and Germany. Learn more about it by clicking HERE. And there's more in the works.
June 2011. My new London's Backyard travel guide for the iPhone, iPad, and iPodTouch is now available for download at a very low price. Check it out Here.
February 2012. It's now available for ANDROID devices at just $2.99 for the download, with free future updates. CLICK HERE for a free preview.
July 10 2011. INNSBRUCK & THE ALPS has been greatly improved with the addition of many more Diagram Maps making everything even easier to find. The new version 1.1 is now available on Apple's iTunes store. Updates for previous owners are, as always, free. CHECK IT OUT HERE.
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