PlanetEye

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

Learn a Language Online

Mark Evans: Director, Community

When you’re traveling, it’s amazing to see what a huge difference it makes if you can speak a few words in a foreign language. A simple “thank you” or “I’d like a glass of water, please” not only starts to immerse you within a destination but shows the locals that you’re open to new experiences and different cultures.

The Web has become a great tool for learning languages with literally thousands of sites offering tutorials, translation tools and dictionaries. A new player on the scene is Mango, which is offering 11 courses for free. Each course has 100 lessons available so if you’re serious about learning a language, there’s lot of material to meet your needs.

Each lesson features a number of phrases that you hear. You are then prompted to say each word and then the entire phrase. You can also click on a specific word to hear it. What’s great is you can go as quick or slow as you want.

The courses now available are Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, French, Greek, English for Spanish Speakers, and English for Polish Speakers.

Posted in Online Travel Services
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Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

For $14,500, It Better be Delicious!

Mark Evans: Director, Community

If you’re into luxury travel - and have a few dollars to spare - then you should probably swing by The Fortress resort in Koggala, Sri Lanka.

On the menu at Wine3 is a dessert that will set you back a cool $14,500. So what do you get when order The Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence other than a hefty bill?

Well, this decadent dessert features gold leaf Italian cassata flavoured with Irish cream, served with a mango and pomegranate compote and a Champagne sabayon enlighten. It also comes with a chocolate carving of a fisherman clinging to a stilt, an age-old local fishing practice, and an 80-carat aquamarine stone.

Although there has apparently been plenty of interest in the dessert, no one has bought one yet.

(Hat tip to Paul Johnson of A Luxury Travel Blog)

Posted in Travel
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Monday, September 24th, 2007

Geotags Moving Into the Spotlight

Mark Evans: Director, Community

Slowly but surely, the concept of geotags is starting to evolve from the geek-dom into the mainstream.

As the technology becomes increasingly popular and available, more people are realizing there is tremendous value in being able to accurately pinpoint the location of their photographs. Travelers, for example, are discovering that geotags are a great way to track their journeys, while businesses are learning there is huge value in being able to tag all kinds of data to provide consumers with an aggregated view of the world.

In a recent story, the Globe & Mail’s Shane Schick wrote that: “Although today geotagging is more of a hobbyist pursuit than something happening on a grand scale in corporations, that could change.”

Naturally, we couldn’t agree more given geotags are a key element of PlanetEye’s travel guide service.

More: If you’re looking for easy-to-use geotagging tools, check out Batch Geocode, iBegin’s Geocoder and Flickr’s geotag organizing service.

Posted in PlanetEye
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Friday, September 21st, 2007

Destination: Exotic Udaipur

Mark Evans: Director, Community

Earlier today, one of our smart developers looked at my white board list that has a long list of destinations on it, and asked “Where’s Udaipur?”

Often described as the “Venice of the East” or the “city of lakes”, Udaipur is located in Indian state of Rajasthan. It features an amazing variety of stunning architecture, including the beautiful City Palace. Built in granite and marble and surrounded by crenellated fort walls, City Palace is the largest palace complex in Rajasthan and stands on a crest overlooking Pichola Lake.

For people looking for the place to stay in Udaipur, the Taj Lake Place in the middle of Lake Pichola is among the most beautiful in the world. The palace, which is spread over four acres and built in white marble, was built in 1746 by Maharana Jagat Singh II, 62nd successor to the royal dynasty of Mewar.

The beautiful photo above, which comes from our Flickr group, really captures Udaipur and its architectural wonders.

Posted in Travel
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Thursday, September 20th, 2007

PlanetEye’s New Logo

Mark Evans: Director, Community

Drumroll please…

We are excited to unveil the new PlanetEye logo. A huge shout out goes to the incredibly professional creative team at the Toronto Interbrand office.

PlanetEye is an online travel guide for photography-loving travelers. Our hope is that our yellow viewfinder will become synonymous with inspiring travelers to explore and discover new places around the world. It represents your perspective and how you see the world. Our viewfinder reflects how we each capture the memorable moments along our travel journeys. Your photographs tell a story. Share them with us.

This is the beginning of our journey. The countdown to our beta launch has begun. T-minus 11 days. So if you love to travel or if you have a passion for travel photography – drop us a line (infoATplaneteye.com) or sign up to receive an invite to become a beta tester.

Posted in PlanetEye
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Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

CN Tower’s Finally Loses its Title

Mark Evans: Director, Community

For 31 years, the CN Tower in Toronto enjoyed the distinction of being the world’s tallest free-standing structure.

Sadly (at least for Torontonians), this is no longer the case. The top-dog title now belongs to Burj Dubai in Dubai, United Emirates. When completed next year, the $4.1-billion hotel/residential/commercial building will be 800 meters high and feature a staggering 150 stories.

Believe it or not, the Burj Dubai may not have the luxury of holding the “world’s tallest” title for that long. The Al-Burj, which may be built just down the road from the Burj Dubai, has been designed to be 1,200 meters.

If you find yourself in Dubai and stumble upon the Burj Dubai, it would be great if you could take a photo and send it to us (infoATplaneteye.com).

Update: To give you a sense of the Burj Dubai’s height, here’s a good chart (Hat tip to InventorSpot)

Posted in Travel
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Monday, September 17th, 2007

Kudos for My City

Mark Evans: Director, Community

AppRate, one of the leading Facebook application review sites, was nice enough to take a look at PlanetEye’s fast-growing My City application.

The review is extensive but the highlight - at least for us - is the opening line: “My City is a good application that, with some work, could be great”.

AppRate provides some valuable constructive criticism about the features that My City needs to offer. Fortunately, we’ve been actively updating My City so some of AppRate’s suggestions have already been implemented.

Among the recent improvements include the ability to include a Web site address when you answer a question, which creates a link to a map. We’ve also added a new feature that makes it easy for My City users to invite their friends. As well, the look and feel of My City has been refreshed so it’s more user-friendly. We’ll be adding some more features soon so stayed tuned.

One of the things that we’ve been pleasantly surprised about is how My City has been embraced outside North America. Among the largest communities are Sydney, London, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Jakarta and Stockholm.

If you have yet to hear about My City, it’s an easy way to share your favourite local spots with your friends, and discover their local favourites as well. Check it out, and let us know what you think.

Posted in PlanetEye
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Friday, September 14th, 2007

Where to Go…and When

Mark Evans: Director, Community

Traveling can be exhilarating and exciting but if you visit a destination at the wrong time of the year, the adventure may not turn out quite as expected. Anyone inquiring about visiting Toronto in mid-February, for example, would be well advised to think twice…unless they’re keen about cold weather and far more darkness than light.

Anyone looking for insight into the best time to visit a specific destination may want to pick up a copy of “Where to Go When” when it hits the bookshelves later this month. Published by Eyewitness Travel Guides, Where to Go When is cleverly divided into the 12 months of the year with 30 destinations highlighted for each month.

For October, one of the recommended destinations is Tuscany, Italy. If you’re a food lover, October is harvest time in Tuscany for grapes and olives while local delicacies such as porcini mushrooms and truffles start to appear on regional restaurant menus.

Now, that’s inspiring!

Posted in Travel
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Thursday, September 13th, 2007

How to Buy a GPS

Mark Evans: Director, Community

Everyone’s hot to trot these days about global positioning systems technology, or GPS. Whether it’s wireless devices such as the Blackberry, automobiles and, increasingly, digital cameras, it’s becoming easier to know where you are and where you want to go. Of course, it also helps that companies such as Microsoft and Google are promoting GPS through their ever-improving mapping technologies.

Buying a GPS device, however, can be daunting because there’s so much choice. You can spend $200 for a basic system or $1500 for something with all the bells and whistles. Do you want something with a small screen or do you need a large screen? Do you need a no-frills model or something with multi-media capabilities?

PC Magazine will hopefully make the decision-making process easier with an in-depth article looking at some of the more popular GPS devices as well as the options and features worth exploring. If you’re at all interested in buying a GPS or just interested in how the technology is moving towards the mainstream, the article is well worth reading.

Posted in Gadgets
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Wednesday, September 12th, 2007

“Geo” in the Spotlight

Mark Evans: Director, Community

The emergence of GPS technology in the last couple of years has literally turned the world upside down.

Through the use of tools such as Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and Google Earth, the Web now lets people see the world in a growing number of ways. Want to see Craigslist apartment listings with Google Maps? There’s a mash-up for that. Want to see all the Tim Horton’s locations in Toronto? There’s a mash-up for that too.

It’s a whole new world when you can search based on precise information about a location such an address or longitude and latitude. The pace of innovation is astounding with an army of developers launching mash-ups while Microsoft and Google pour some serious money into R&D.

According to a recent article in The Economist looking the “Geoweb”, Microsoft has spent a “couple of hundreds of millions of dollars” on Virtual level” on Virtual Earth. Most of the money has been spent on the acquisition of imagery, which now totals 14 petabytes on 900 servers.

Even with all this activity going on, it’s still early days for GeoWeb and GPS. In the not-too-distant-future, every digital camera and wireless device will likely have GPS has a standard feature, which will let you figure out exactly where a picture was taken or where something is located.