PlanetEye

December 2nd, 2007

New in Beta: Our Home Page

Juan Gonzalez

Vice President, Technology

One of the most important objectives we’ve tried to accomplish with the product we are building is to offer an experience that allows users to discover new destinations and be inspired to travel. With the latest build we are one step closer to deliver on such experience by engaging the traveller in a very visual journey that starts with our Home Page.

Throughout the months of research we realized that most offerings out there had taken a very traditional approach to travel planning: take the travel guide in its booklet format and translate to the online world without major changes. The result was a collection of web properties that were full of text reviews, editorials, lists of hotels and absolutely nothing that would inspire.

With our new Home Page, we wanted to engage the traveller with some of the best travel photography, no prelude. We call the widget at the top of the page a “culture shot” and you’ll have to agree it is smooth and inspiring. In case you are wondering, each one of those images are real images from our database and they are all geotagged (notice the little viewfinder displaying the lat/long).

Further down, you get a sample of what our mapping technology has to offer with a widget displaying the 10 most popular destinations in our system. Our maps are well beyond the usual mashup and we hope these samples will be enough for users to start exploring the world at their own leisure. On the right column we’ll feature some of the local talent helping us document their cities, completing what we think will be a compelling offering: great photography, advice from passionate locals and all of this integrated into beautiful and engaging maps.

Since we first launched our private beta, we haven’t stopped seeding the site with new photography and we believe you should be able to find something interesting in many of the major travel destinations around the world. Go ahead, discover your next travel destination.

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