Bangkok--Jan 13--eTurboNews
The travel book publisher, Rough Guides, has broken into the hi-tech market with audio guides that you can listen to as you explore a city. They have launched a series of podcasts for download to an iPod, mp3 player or laptop computer.
They provide themed spoken commentaries that aim to capture the essence and quirks of a city, while bringing in-depth information from the vast resources of the renowned printed guidebooks. The first cities to be covered are London, Glasgow, Prague and Santa Monica, California.
The podcasts can be downloaded free from the Rough Guides web site and new audio guides will be released every month.
The service is run in partnership with iToors, a provider of travel, music and lifestyle audio content. A podcast is an audio program broadcast over the internet instead of the airwaves. It is a method of publishing audio content that breaks free of the barriers of place and time and can be played on desktop computers at home as well as on portable devices as you travel.
Although anyone with a computer can download a podcast and listen to it automatically, most people prefer to listen on-the-go. Listeners can put it on to anything that will play an MP3 file. The most common device used to play podcasts is currently the iPod However, they can be played just as well on any MP3 player as well as any CD player, PDA, or mobile phone.
Rough Guides managing director, Kevin Fitzgerald, told eTurboNews that podcasting is intended as a new communication venture for the modern traveler. "We aim to lead the market in this innovative new field. It gives users a very personal experience in that they have an expert friend telling them the story of a city in effortless fashion," he said.
This reporter sampled the Rough Guide podcast on Literary London and found it to be full of fascinating insights such as where to see original lyrics of John Lennon's Beatles songs, why the British Library was a favorite haunt of KGB spies and how to appreciate the landscape and scenery that inspired Douglas Adams to discover the meaning of life, the universe and everything for his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The podcast is voiced by engaging presenters with American accents, which indicates that it is especially suited to US visitors to the British capital, but there is a lot of material that will captivate travelers from all over the world and offer something new also to domestic tourists.
The podcast on Prague will be of special interest to serious music lovers as it is themed on following the footsteps of Mozart to create a walking tour of the Czech capital, visiting sites connected with the composer and the theatre where Don Giovanni was premiered. The Rough Guide podcast for Glasgow also has a music theme and guides listeners through the Scottish city's heritage up to the present day with a guide to the venues, the hang-outs and rehearsal spaces where top bands such as Franz Ferdinand were discovered and continue to work.
The Rough Guide podcast on Santa Monica introduces listeners to the early work of renowned architect Frank Gehry, and where stars like Courtney Cox do their shopping. The audio guide to Paris in the Rough Guides launch collection is themed around the life and work of Ernest Hemingway who lived in the French capital as a young man and wrote much of his first book, The Sun Also Rises, during his stay in the city.
"It's easier to express personality and excitement from a third party in a podcast," said Fitzgerald. "You pick up enthusiasm and excitement from the presenter as you listen and we hope that it will be infectious. A book has the information, but requires a lot of understanding by the reader. Books will continue to be a valuable reference source, of course, but podcasts are entirely different, not a reference source so much as a form of entertainment through information."
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