how to build or buy the best apps for smarter, safer, more adventurous travel
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Posted on Dec 14th, 2015
What the heck is a “Phablet”?
You’ve probably never heard of one, and I kind of wish I hadn’t, but a “phablet” is a hybrid between a phone and tablet like the iPad. I don’t think the name is catching on, and I hope it doesn’t, because ubiquitous computing, at its best, does not live in a box with a label, but instead “disappears in to the background of our lives.” Computers really are getting to where Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame...
Posted on Sep 1st, 2015
Satellites and Soup Nazis: The Trials and Tribulations of Using GPS in a Smartphone Tour
My first attempt to build a smartphone tour was an abject failure. I used a framework that I thought was fantastic until I started testing my own product. Then the app had me walking into duck ponds, slamming into concrete barricades, and becoming entangled in rose gardens. Not good! The problem was that both the framework developer and I tried to get too fancy. We were using the device’s Geographic Positioning...
Posted on Jun 6th, 2015
Advice from the Cheshire Cat: How to Tailor Your Smartphone Tour App
One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.” I love that pearl of wisdom by Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland. If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will get you there! This is especially true of smartphone...
Posted on Apr 20th, 2015
Mobile Tours are a Time Machine: Why We Need to Act with Urgency
The huge advantage of mobile technology is that a variety of content (audio, video, pictures, etc.) can be linked to an exact position on earth and consumed on demand by the smartphone carrying tourist. That content can be highly specialized. Multiple languages can be offered, heck, even multiple interpretations of a thing. As I write this, I am Buenos Aires, where the famous La Casa Rosada (The Pink House) has a...
A nomadic upbringing whisked me through 13 schools in nine years, from the dusty deserts of Arizona to the snowy villages of Germany, with back road trips through 23 countries around Europe and the Mediterranean, and eventually to Asia and Central America. After earning an engineering degree in the US, I spent 17 years with IBM, where I was introduced to mobile and embedded computing, and had the marvelous privilege of working with brilliant human factors experts. In 2000 I became an entrepreneur. Today I advise businesses of all sizes on how to design, build and manage successful technology based projects.