PlanetEye

Travel Beyond Words

June 27th, 2010

Deconstructing a travel blog

Juan Gonzalez
Vice President, Technology

Even though we’ve running our own network of travel writers for almost 3 years, we keep asking ourselves why we blog about travel and how do we add value to those who come to our posts looking for inspiration.

A few weeks ago we announced that we were making some of our tools available to any travel blogger that wanted to try an approach to travel writing that we’ve been using for a while. The fundamental idea is that whatever you write about is likely a place for which there are lots of other pieces of information that need to be found, sorted and integrated into your story so the reader can use the blog as a gateway to a new journey. We did get a few bloggers interested and have been testing our methods out in the field.

One of the most important realizations during this period was the fact that we need to loosen up out tactics to create links to our own database. In the beginning we thought that bloggers would have no problem linking to our “Place” pages because they had lots of useful information and even an interactive map, but the fact is that almost every blogger has brought up this as an important issue. So, with the next version of our Maps plugin, we’ll let bloggers decide what they link to. The most important breakthrough is that even if the decision is to link to other sites we can continue to add meaningful information to the blog article. In a way, instead of trying to drive traffic to our pages, we believe we can push some of our content into the blogs.

For example, in a recent article that we produced jointly with one of our bloggers, we managed to create a few “smart widgets” that added relevant information to the article, just by adding the proper location data when writing:

In this case, the writer only had to pick from a list of places the one she was writing about (similar to doing a checkin in Foursquare) and from that simple action any information we had about the place can suddenly be added to the article without the blogger having to worry about it. Photos, address, phone numbers, prices, links to sites, maps, are all possible and we believe they can be served dynamically so they even stay up to date.

Over the next month we’ll be producing a number of travel articles exploring various styles of travel writing and experimenting with a variety of widgets. We hope to end up with a decent collection of tools that bloggers can leverage to enrich their stories without disrupting the flow of their writing. Of course it would be great to have more bloggers join this effort. Did I mention is all free?

As travel bloggers converge in New York this weekend to trade stories and improve their craft at TBEX, we’ve heard there is a serious debate about keeping this profession authentic while enabling them to make a living. We have some ideas on how to make that happen, but first let us focus on getting the toolset right.

Reach out if you are a travel blogger.

June 6th, 2010

Manifesto for Travel Bloggers

Juan Gonzalez
Vice President, Technology

Half-drunk with a bottle of Casillero del Diablo, sitting on the floor in the middle of Plaza Mayor, Madrid, having had a great lunch at Museo Del Jamon, and enjoying a spontaneus “Concierto de Aranjuez” interpreted by an anonymous street musician, it felt very close to the most perfect vacation moment I’d ever had. It was 4 years ago and I still remember the realization at the time of how that moment would not fade away. No fancy hotels, no tours booked that day, no galleries to visit in the area and no intention of standing up any time soon. (via @globalculture)

There are certain snippets of inspiration that are written in such a way that forever change our perception of a particular place. Travel bloggers have a special power to influence the destiny of a place by making their own experiences a template for a dream, something that their readers will easily relate to and invoke every time they go into the crazy process of planning a new trip.

For people planning trips, the paradox is that as more information and online tools become available, it takes longer to make the connections between all the various sources until the plans start to take the shape of our next vacation. There is a better way and with this manifesto we outline our vision on how travel bloggers can become a key player in the overall process.

  1. Passion: It all starts with a passionate account of a journey, a perfectly framed shot that captures the intimate essence of a hidden alley, a once-in-a-lifetime roadtrip through forgotten sinuous highways meant to be driven in a convertible, a month spent volunteering in a rural community, a week spending without regret the savings of a whole year in a luscious beach destination or a year living frugally around the world on a tiny budget but happier than ever.
  2. Experience: Travel bloggers have a keen eye for analyzing their own travel experiences and dissecting the elements of each journey that are unique and make the whole thing worth their time and the time of their readers. Stumbling upon a little cozy family restaurant where the house wine is better than the best bottle you’ve ever had may be a fortuitous accident for the blogger, but it will certainly be the highlight of an entire day trip for her readers. The kind of selfless joy that comes from sharing unique experiences with our readers is an attribute of great travel bloggers.
  3. Connecting the dots: Who hasn’t read a great travel article and decided to follow the steps of those first explorers only to hit a wall that consist of poor geographical references, abundance of results in online travel services and a general feeling that “this can’t be what I’m looking for”. If the proper research is not established in the original travel article, the chances that any reader will be able to use it as a template for their own vacation plans will fade. How to get there? Where to stay? What is the best season of the year to visit? Are there unique cultural rituals that shouldn’t be missed and where to find them? Are there any locals that will be helpful in securing resources? How to blend in? These are only a few of the questions that we hope every travel article would answer but are left out most of the time, forcing the reader to jump back and forth between the article and an endless collection of online services that have no idea of what your real dream is.
  4. Service: Every blogger knows the thrill that comes from that first comment left on a carefully crafted article. The validation that long hours of research about a destination have not gone in vain is just the beginning. The anticipation of a reader that decides to make our journeys their own is perhaps the highest compliment that any devoted fan will pay. Travel bloggers are often willing to become travel agents trying to figure out ways to help their readers realize these written dreams.
  5. The trip: Instead of abandoning your readers to an increasingly complex world of travel services we believe that it is possible to make every travel article the starting point for a journey, making sure your readers get access to the precise recipe that will guarantee the best experience while earning some of the commissions that are generated in the complex world of online travel services. Think of your blog as a little tip jar where those travellers that decide to take the leap of faith and follow your steps will leave a few coins behind. Hardly a payment for your efforts but certainly a huge endorsement to your skills as a travel blogger.

PlanetEye is now making available its wide range of travel services to every travel blogger that uses its Maps plugin to connect their stories with our always growing collection of unique destinations and partnerships. From figuring out complex itineraries to finding that unique villa in the middle of nowhere to arranging tickets for that one-of-a-kind event, our only hope is to make a great travel article our script for a unique travel experience.

May 14th, 2010

Live Foursquare Map

Juan Gonzalez
Vice President, Technology

As part of our ongoing efforts to aggregate sources of information that will help us produce great local recommendations, we’ve put together a Live Foursquare Map currently featuring information mostly about Toronto. As with any of our maps, this one is optimized to display a large volume of geolocated information while maintaining a clean enough map canvas. It provides various coloured tabs to access recent Checkins, Tips, Specials and Known Venues.

Click to open the live Foursquare map

It is important to clarify that while it would appear that we are able to display all recent checkins in the city, this is not the result of a new Foursquare API feature, but a careful reconstruction of the timeline after inspecting all known venues in the region. We don’t have access to the Foursquare firehose as other commercial solutions like Social Great may have. However, through methodic inspection of each venue and the people that have been there recently, we can little by little create a good summary of what the city has to offer.

We are confident the information we are aggregating can be used to provide accurate summaries of what each particular neighborhood in the city has to offer, along with the tips that its most frequent customers leave behind. This kind of information is gold for those that are traveling and may be unfamiliar with a place. So even if you have no friends in Toronto, next time you visit we probably can give you a few good ideas of what to do depending on where you stay. This is not a novel idea, but having Foursquare being the source makes it much more powerful.

April 30th, 2010

St. Lawrence Market guide

Juan Gonzalez
Vice President, Technology

With the launch of the PlanetEye St. Lawrence Market Guide, we continue our monthly showcase of great online travel guides. Taking elements from our ongoing quest to inspire travel and ideas that have evolved from my personal journey with the Global Culture blog, the result is a stunning interactive guide to one of the most liveable neighbourhoods in Toronto. I’ll tell you why we believe this type of guide represents the future, but first let me put some context.

The St Lawrence Market Guide

A few months ago I wrote the post “I could live here”, pointing out a paradox:

The age of discovery is over. Every corner of our planet has been documented ad nauseam… or has it? The availability of super detailed guides and maps for every city in the world would certainly give us this illusion. But I bet that for every map which highlights 10 “points of interest”, there are another 10 not so interesting. And yet, I believe these are the places that will increasingly attract the independent traveller. The key to their rise will be their ability to offer new and unique experiences that may not include master art or landmark architecture, but showcase the modus vivendi of little known micro-regions and their people.

Even though we are equipped with more tools and data than ever before, the sheer amount of information available about any particular city is such that making travel decisions seems to be getting harder, not easier. Picking a hotel for my last few trips has been excruciating because I can compare not only price but other attributes such as rankings, reviews, maps with local amenities, nearby services, street-level photos and many other things that I couldn’t before. The process is not getting easier.

We’re so focused on the details that we’ve forgotten the essentials of what make a great destination. Perhaps that was the spirit of my post the greatest destination where I suggested the attributes that would make a great destination: Hyper-connected, Sustainable, Evolving, Diverse, Unique and Livable. The idea was to put together a robust framework that would allow us to filter out the noise and leave us with choices that we could handle more easily.

Back to our newly launched St. Lawrence Market Guide, not only we made a very useful interactive guide, but tried to stay close to the spirit of the original idea of highlighting a neighbourhood so rich in many ways that you would truly want to live there. Here are a few highlights:

- Curated content: the fact that we limited the scope of this guide to a very small section of the city, allowed us to be thorough in our research. You’ll find that our features are carefully selected and represent the best this area has to offer.

- Great photography: Yes, there are photos in every page and every map. Some of them we took while walking around the neighbourhood and others were organized photo-shoots with pros. All the photos are geolocated and can be expanded so they can be appreciated fully.

- Super useful maps: Every one of the sections in the guide features a couple of interactive maps: one with the features written about, and another with a larger collection of places. The maps a fully functional and will allow you to explore the area without ever worrying about “too much information”. The best part is that the maps are powered by the PlanetEye technology which allow us to continuously update their content as new places appear and others close. You can expect this guide to remain current.

- Essentials: travelling is not only about finding a good hotel, a nice restaurant and a photo opportunity. We tried to include a small collection of essential services that every traveller has needed at least once while on the road. My favourite? Essentials/Working Spaces will show you several locations that provide reliable WiFi or will even allow you to rent a desk for a day.

- Variety: not everyone is looking for 5-star hotels and so we made sure to offer a good range of options across all categories. Reasonably priced options as well as some that would be attractive to the traveller with a long stay ahead.

- Sustainable, Livable: above it all, we wanted to feature a destination that could easily give you access to everything you could possible need… within a comfortable walking distance.

If you’re considering travelling to Toronto on business or pleasure and plan to spend more than a couple of days in our city, I can assure you this guide has everything you need for a memorable travel experience. At the end of the trip you may even find yourself thinking “I could live here“.

December 3rd, 2009

A Realtime Twitter Map

Juan Gonzalez
Vice President, Technology

When we heard that Twitter was launching a geolocation API, we figured given the volume of people using Twitter every day, the total number of geolocated tweets would soon become unmanageable in a map interface. Precisely the kind of challenge that we like to take. I’ll share how we solved the problem and why this is important to us, but first take a look at our Live Twitter Map (hint: zoom out/in or move and you should see new markers appear every now and then)

Live Twitter Map

Live Twitter Map

How to build a Live Twitter Map

While we don’t have a partnership with Twitter, we were able to use their Streaming API to get a good sample of tweets in realtime. They must have a way to pull all geolocated tweets as Bing Maps started using such a feed this week. Regardless, with our approach we are getting up to 400 Kbps of data consistently and we have to filter such stream to find tweets that are geolocated.

Once we have the geolocated tweets, we can run them through our clustering algorithm and store them temporarily (we keep up to seven days of data). As you can see, our approach to visualize large volumes of data on the map scales better than trying to put a marker for each data point. Also worth mentioning is the fact that the clusters refresh in realtime as new data is added to the system. Ironically, while testing the implementation of Twitter on Bing Maps I was consistently getting delays of up to 5 minutes for a given tweet to appear on the map, while it would show in our map within seconds.

Another advantage of our approach is that in any given region of the map our clusters will tell you how much data there is in total. It seems that other maps are cursed by the limitations of having too many markers on the map and they usually opt for displaying “the 50 most recent”. Certainly nobody will want to read every single data point (especially if they are tweets), but being able to see the areas where the majority of the tweets are generated is in itself useful information.

Why build a Live Twitter Map

Over the last couple of years we’ve learned to integrate all kinds of data into our system for the benefit of our clients. When we consider all hotels, restaurants, attractions, activities worldwide, we end up with a very large data set that needs to be managed efficiently if we are to make any meaningful recommendations. In every single instance the process to acquire the data consisted in negotiating some sort of XML feed or parsing a delimited file, which would always create a delay between when the data was updated on the source and when it would be available on our maps for consumption.

Now we know that it is possible to apply the same principles that we used to create a Live Twitter Map to continuously update data from our various partners and make it available to our subscribers. Imagine being able to see on a map when tickets to a given event become available so you can be the first in line to grab them. Or noticing a new promotion that would give you a great discount on a hotel you are planning to book. With our technology to acquire and process geolocated data along with our mapping techniques we have a killer solution for clients in the travel space and we are working hard to bring these solutions to the end users.

If you have an interesting data set that needs to be put on a map to enable easier discovery, we want to hear from you.

UPDATE: On December 9th, Twitter’s Director of Platform Ryan Sarver announced that the firehose will become available to everyone. In principle this would allow applications like ours to become aware of every single tweet and use that information to build custom applications around them. In our case, the possibility of processing every single geolocated tweet would allow us to showcase the power of our mapping platform with the largest test case there is.

November 30th, 2009

PlanetEye Traveler: our online travel magazine

Juan Gonzalez
Vice President, Technology

On the wire today:

PlanetEye is pleased to announce the launch of PlanetEye Traveler, a feature-rich online travel magazine that is packed with unique and advanced user-friendly functionality. Designed for consumers and travel industry professionals, this award-winning portal features eye-grabbing editorial and rich visual content which is provided by dozens of travel writers from around the world.

You can read the full press release, but I thought it would be interesting to recap how we got here:

Oct 2007: as par of our original launch, we invited a select number of local experts to write for PlanetEye covering their cities. At the time we knew their insight would help us provide much better recommendations. Because we wanted their writing to be cross-referenced against our city guides, we used our own tools that allowed them to map whatever they were writing about.

Oct 2008: after a year of great writing we realized that in order to scale this operation we had to embrace open standards and we took the first step by endorsing microformats. Our thinking at the time was that if we had a neutral approach to recognize location information in blog posts, we could extend our program to other bloggers beyond our own network. It didn’t take long before our own bloggers realized that the tools we created for others were in fact much easier to use than our proprietary system. And so the journey began.

Jan 2009: after rewriting our entire toolset we released all our archives into blogs running on Wordpress. Since then all our writers have been using nothing else but Wordpress with a custom plugin that does all the magic: every single time a writer tags a post with a location through our plugin, we embed a Google Map on the post making them more useful to the readers, but we also associate that post with our destination database so we are able to do a few more interesting things behind the scenes.

Oct 2009: With the launch of PlanetEye Traveler, not only we bring our entire team of writers under one site to create a very unique online travel magazine, but we also showcase what readers can expect in the future from ours and other similar magazines: travel articles used to be completed detached from context. With our technology it is now possible to bring relevant location information (such as the map) into the article and vice-versa. Really impressed with that Restaurant review in your city? You may soon be able to check the menu, read other reviews, see the latest buzz or even reserve a table.

Of course, the inspiring travel writing will continue to be the most important aspect of our travel magazine. Whether you are catching up on the latest events around a city or the highlights of the season at your next destination or finding incredible travel stories from abroad, we think we have a great source for you.

November 13th, 2009

Geocoding with GeoAPI

Juan Gonzalez
Vice President, Technology

Trying to keep up with the latest developments in the Geolocation space is though, specially when you get all those tweets from friends checking into a new bar every few minutes with Foursquare. Not surprisingly the integration of some forms of GPS into mobile phones has made us into full “blue-dot” converts. As with most technologies, the basic test case has to be fundamentally simple for the masses to adopt it and in the case of geolocation that test case is “Here I am”.

The geolocation game is a lot harder than it seems and this has nothing to do with displaying a dot on a map. Just ask any geocaching fans and you’ll understand how the map and the GPS are the easy part of the equation. Finding your way through terrain, cities, dealing with unexpected (unmapped) characteristics of the terrain is what makes it interesting and fun. For us dealing with geodata day after day, the challenges start with ethereal questions such as “who owns a coordinate” and branch into a number of data crunching issues.

One particularly interesting challenge that will likely continue to draw the attention of many players in the space is how to geocode information that wasn’t properly tracked. Our ability to do so will reveal a new way to correlate such information on a new geographical index, bringing another relevancy metric into search. Being able to do a reverse geocode, specially with a very robust database of place names is a great starting point. Already Yahoo had put together a very valuable set of tools to this effect. Now with the launch of GeoAPI from Mixer Labs, the game gets more interesting.

November 5th, 2009

New in PlanetEye: Google Maps

Juan Gonzalez
Vice President, Technology

We’ve had a love-hate relationship with Google Maps for a long time. Back in the early days when PlanetEye was still in stealth mode there was no Google Maps API and a lot of work had to be done to get some of the first prototypes to work properly. When the Maps API first appeared there was a quiet celebration within the team just planning all the cool things that would be possible, but this was mostly a temporary exhilaration as we soon bumped into the limitations of a great product still in the works.

In what could be a juvenile strategy we decided to build our own mapping stack using Flash. Those of you who have been around since the early days will likely remember our maps with animations, images popping up, and in general enhancing the browsing experience. For those of you who didn’t have the pleasure, I’ve put together a gallery with some screenshots of various maps that we did over the last couple of years.

The point is that we learned not to depend on any single API to accomplish what we wanted and that freedom let us create some very interesting maps.

I’ve always said that we are not a mapping company, but we like our maps. And after a long process of evaluation we’ve decided to come back full circle to Google Maps as we’re convinced that many of the limitations we had in the past have been resolved. But most importantly, by aligning ourselves with such a mature mapping product, we can focus all our energy in ideating ways to enhance the maps with useful information, visualizations and other artifacts that will make them ideal to showcase travel information.

We call them Travel Maps not only because they are great to showcase places visited during your travels, but because we’re always looking for ways to make them more useful to people in the travel industry. Whether enhanced visualizations with embedded photos, clusters to cleanly show large volumes of data points or easy features to bring these maps into your own site, we are focused into making these maps the perfect language to connect travellers with travel businesses.

We’ve changed a lot of things within the site to showcase our new maps and have made it possible for anyone to create a new map, even without an account. If you are in the hospitality business, you will love how our maps come bundled with a lot of useful data so you don’t have to go around creating mashups. We’ve done all the work for you.

One thing you can expect from us is to continue pushing the boundaries of what can be done with maps to make them even more useful for businesses in the travel space and their customers.

June 15th, 2009

Keep blogging about your city

Juan Gonzalez
Vice President, Technology

We’ve been running our Local Expert program for almost two years. Thousands of articles about world-class cities are available to help you understand each destination before engaging in a new journey.

More recently we started to invite independent bloggers to post their articles within our city guides. Bloggers in Lima, Marrakech, Mexico City, Rome, Santiago and Singapore have already enlisted. If you write a blog about a city for which we don’t have a featured Local Expert, we want to know about it!

And for all of you moleskine die-hards or modern story-makers, we would love to get pointers to any bloggers who are sketching their cities. Encouraged by the sketches of artist Gabriel Campanario, we are hoping there are more people out there that make it a habit to bring their drawings to the online world after a prolific session with their notebooks. Hopefully you’ll remember to note the address of whatever you’re drawing, as we are all about location.

As we discover them, we’ll make an effort to link to them from our city guides and give travellers a new way to explore destinations.

We’ve also made it easy for any PlanetEye user to submit reviews attached to a location by virtue of blogging about it:

Within your profile, you will now see a check box labeled “Import my travel-related posts.” By entering a valid blog URL (it must have a valid RSS feed containing your content), checking this box, and then saving your profile – each time you write a post that links back to a PlanetEye city or place, an excerpt will appear and link back to your blog post.

For example, if you were to write a post about the Peninsula in Chicago, all you would need to do is include a link to http://www.planeteye.com/Place/The-Peninsula-Chicago+357902.aspx

This should be pretty useful if you have a blog but don’t write about your city all the time. Just make sure to include the proper PlanetEye link whenever you do have a post about a location and we’ll link to it.

June 9th, 2009

Didn’t we all cheer for Gilligan?

jonah
President, CEO & Counsel

Pardon the television reference, it’s in my blood. Every time the white hatted, orange shirted sidekick messed things up, didn’t we all even if quietly root for him? I know I did.

It was a cold blustery January morning nearly 17 months ago when I first met Butch Langlois to talk about PlanetEye and his vision for it. From my perspective at least, there was an instant connection. We shared many things right off the bat, a passion for travel and technology, interest in sports and coaching our kids, previous backgrounds in hockey, a love for good food, Seinfeld and a common belief in a travel market opportunity and the way to take advantage of it. I was looking for a new opportunity in general; one that would only come with the right person at the helm. I, needed my “Skipper”. Not being one to speak for others, but in retrospect, I believe that Butch was looking for his “Gilligan” (I refuse to say little buddy). That first meeting took place at Marche in what is now Broofield place on January 28, 2008 and my first day with PlanetEye would come on February 25th, less then one month later!

The easy line would be that the rest is history. Not exactly in this case, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Over the next several months the company would experience incredible growth. Planeteye hit remarkable milestones, each time surprising both Butch and my expectations. The primary reasons for that success was the great people behind the scenes working hard to fulfill our demands and the original piece of technology from which our company was founded, continuing to perform at the level we needed it to. Not everything has turned out exactly as we had planned, but the company has experienced growth we can all be very proud of and we have maintained a clear focus on our strengths and goals.

Throughout this period of time, I have been able to tackle things I never imagined possible before, and have focused on areas I didn’t have exposure to in my previous roles either. Working with Butch has been a tremendous period of personal growth for me. So you can imagine my reaction when he told me that he was leaving. Upon reflection, the right reaction is to thank Butch for working tirelessly to get PlanetEye on the right track, believing in a vision and having the conviction to stand behind it. He has built a team that is unlike any other I have experienced before and this a real tribute to his hard work, dedication and character. He has been an excellent boss, role model, teacher and friend. I think all of us are indebted to him for that.

The one thing that I think and hope every PlanetEye employee would tell you about Butch and I is that we have been completely in step with the vision for the company. My plan is to stay on that course and continue to share with the world all that PlanetEye has to offer from both a content and technology perspective. At the same time the PlanetEye.com site will continue to evolve, becoming the dominant online presence we all believe it can be. In the coming weeks and months we will be able to share with you some things that we have been working very hard on and are extremely proud of. We hope to be able to share that first major “B2B” partnership with you very soon.

All of us wish Butch and his family every success in the future. We will all be cheering loudly from the sidelines. I remain as excited in what is ahead for PlanetEye as I was on that first day back in January of 2008. Our future is bright, our path clear and our team strong. I am excited to take the reins as President and CEO and am grateful for those who have believed enough in me to entrust the reins with me.

One day, I think we all hoped that things would work out for Gilligan, and that when given the chance to shine he would make the Skipper proud and get the castaways off that Island. I am not planning on letting Butch or the entire PlanetEye team down either!

Jonah

PlanetEye

This is a blog about travel, photography, technology and their convergence online. Visit PlanetEye to learn more about our one-stop travel planning service.

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