Tourism
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Richard Branson confirms Virgin Galactic's first space tourism flight will launch next year with him on board
Richard Branson has long said that he'd be on board Virgin Galactic's first commercial space tourism flight, and he's now confirmed that will take place sometime next year with his two adult children along for the ride (a bit of a delay from the company's original 2011 target). That trip will of course be made with the company's SpaceShipTwo craft, which has already completed a number of test flights, and which is capable of flying 100 kilometers (or just over 60 miles) above the Earth for a planned two and a half hour flight with five minutes of weightlessness. As the AP notes, some 529 people have already signed up for the $200,000 per person rides into space, each of whom will have to take part in a week of training prior to their trip. Bookings can still be made on Virgin Galactic's website.
Miyamoto's DS patent offers upgraded tourist hunting techniques
The DS Lite could see society's next great advancement in GPS technology, at least in tourist-heavy areas such as museums and haunted-home expeditions, a patent from Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto suggests.The patent describes a system where an overhead grid of infrared "positional information transmitters" reads a user's DS to light up floor patterns and potential walkways. The user can then pick which route he'd like to take, reading tourist facts along the way.Nintendo has already infiltrated the museum scene with the 3DS giving guided tours in the Louvre, and it's doing a pretty great job, from what we hear. There's no guarantee that a patent will translate to an actual product, but the thousands of infrared beams hovering over the Mona Lisa fulfills a few of our own spy fantasies, so we'll hope this one works out in some way.
Nintendo patent application tech tracks your DS from above, serves as tour guide
Nintendo is already guiding you through the Louvre with a 3DS, but a newly published US patent application takes that kind of tourism to a very literal new level. Legend of Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto's concept describes a way to direct lost tourists by beaming position information through an overhead grid of infrared transmitters to a mobile device (portrayed as a DS Lite) held by the confused visitor below. The handheld then talks wirelessly to a server that lights up floor displays with maps and directions, and a helpful app on the device lets visitors pick their route while they read up on sightseeing tips. Like with any patent, there's no certainty that Nintendo will act on the idea and start wiring up museums with IR blasters, but the January 2012 patent may still be fresh in a frequently inventive mind like Miyamoto's.
Nintendo puts 3DS in the Louvre, France remains generally indifferent
Sharing a birthplace with Arséne Wenger, Jean-Paul Satre and Jules Verne, the Louvre is France's most prized national treasure. In partnership with Nintendo, the museum finally replaced those cumbersome handheld guides with 3DS units a fortnight after the anticipated March launch. The consoles will provide a variety of tours, offering detailed lectures around the entire museum, or the Cliff's Notes edition for the lazy connoisseur. Shigeru Miyamoto popped up to demonstrate that you can examine HD snaps and 3D images of the sculptures on show, just in case looking up and seeing it in the flesh stone would be too traumatic.
Madrid's visitors can rent tourist-friendly iPads
If you're vacationing in Madrid, you may want to check out PadInTheCity before you arrive. The local service lets you rent an iPad for the duration of your stay. The iPad is filled with apps and games to make your stay more enjoyable. According to Springwise, you'll find apps like Metro Madrid, Weather HD, City Maps 2Go, Emergency Numbers, iTranslate, and the Prado Museum Audioguide. They even put Angry Birds on the tablet for some casual entertainment. The iPads are delivered to your location in Madrid and individuals can rent one for €25 (US$33) per day after a €390 ($516) deposit. The company also offers volume rentals to hotels and corporations who can insert their own branding onto the device.
Nintendo 3DS tour guides might make the Mona Lisa less underwhelming
Other than wine, cheese and overwhelming apathy, the Louvre stands alone as France's most prized national treasure. It's enormous, it's teeming with art, and it's really old. Starting in March, though, the museum will get an infusion of comparatively new technology, thanks to the Nintendo 3DS. As the AFP reports, Nintendo has agreed to provide the Louvre with some 5,000 pocket consoles, to be offered as digital tour guides for museum patrons. With these devices tucked securely inside their fanny packs, wandering tourists will be able to pinpoint their location within the museum, select themed itineraries, and listen to audio commentary available in seven different languages. The consoles will eventually replace the museum's more traditional audio guides, as part of a wider campaign to bring 21st century technology to the Louvre's 12th century confines. "We are the first museum in the world to do this," Agnes Alfandari, the Louvre's head of multimedia, told the AFP, adding that a slate of dedicated smartphone and tablet apps is also in the works. [Image courtesy of TrendHunter]
Apple posts photos of Grand Central Terminal store opening
We've already seen some great shots of the Apple Store opening held in Grand Central Terminal in New York last week thanks to our own Mike Rose, but Apple now has the store's official page posted on its website, with additional photos and information about the big setup. It looks very impressive -- as promised way back when, the store is pretty seamlessly integrated into the big GCT lobby, and some really excellent lighting makes the whole place really stand out at night. I'm impressed. Obviously Apple always does a nice job with its retail spaces, but this is such great design -- looks like I've got one more destination to add to the tourist list next time I visit the Big Apple. [via CNN]
Google Goggles Android update makes your vacation photos slightly more interesting
Google Googles' powers of perception have become a little more perspicacious, thanks to a new update for Android users. With version 1.6, tourists can use their smartphones to take a picture of a given area, while Google's visual search app works in the background to identify any notable landmarks, paintings or other objects. If it picks up on anything of interest, it'll automatically notify the user, instantly endowing him or her with gooey chunks of knowledge. It seems like a pretty user-friendly refresh, though things will really get interesting if faces ever get involved. Hit up the source link below to download the update for yourself.
Tips for traveling (or not) with the iPad
Gary Arndt has written an interesting blog post about traveling with his iPad for a year. In it, he offers some very helpful tips to world travelers who carry Apple's wonder device with them. As a fellow world traveler (I've been to 30 countries in two years) it was interesting to read and contrast his experience with what I've found. First, some of his tips I agree with: "Not all countries have the iPad yet. If you are going somewhere that is less developed, check ahead to see if there is a carrier which has micro SIM cards which you can use." "If you are concerned about theft, buy a Scottevest. Their jackets have an internal pocket which holds an iPad. I travel with a Fleece 5.0 and I can carry my iPad with me and no one is the wiser." "If you [have a Wi-Fi-only iPad] you can still use the map. Just create your route before you get in the car and have an Internet connection. Then zoom in and follow the route you will be taking so those parts of the map are in the cache of the iPad. The map software will cache map images in the order of whatever was viewed most recently. The cache isn't huge so don't view anything other than your route once you've made it." Arndt also makes some good points about what the iPad isn't good for while traveling. While he likes reading books, he's found, like I have, that the iPad isn't that great as an ereader if you're not sure where your next charge is coming from). I've written about this before (and actually wrote this post on my iPad while flying from London to Porto, Portugal). As Arndt points out, yes it's great to be able to carry dozens of books with you on your travels, but what's not great is the limited battery life your iPad is going to give you while reading (blame it on the LCD display, which is much more power-hungry than the e-ink screens of many dedicated ereaders). If you're a huge reader, stick to a Kindle or my preferred choice, the paperback. Reading books aside, there are some great things I've found the iPad useful for while traveling, most obviously not having to do with the device, but with the apps: Worldly - An Offline Travel Guide: Anyone who travels knows about WikiTravel. It's a free online travel guide other travelers edit -- a Wikipedia for travelers, if you will. It's a great resource, but one you obviously can't access without an Internet connection. That's where Worldy comes in. It allows you to download the entirety of WikiTravel to your iPad. Goodbye guidebooks. Worldy is US$2.99. Galileo Offline Maps: This app solves another "no Internet connection" problem. Galileo allows you to download and save OpenStreetMap map tiles to your iPad. However, unlike the above tip for saving cached Google Maps tiles, Galileo allows you to download maps tailored to particular purposes like tourism, walking, driving, and cycling. Galileo is a free download. However, as much as I love having WikiTravel and offline maps at my fingertips, when I resume my travels early next year, I'll be leaving my iPad back in my flat. Instead I'll opt for traveling with an unlocked iPhone 5 and an 11" MacBook Air. Why? Simply because the iPad is too bulky to carry with you all day while you're traveling a new city. I've seen an iPad, with its larger, harder-to-secure form factor, suddenly ripped out of a traveler's hands in a plaza in Madrid. I want something I can slip in my pocket and hold with one hand while walking around, like an iPhone. But the biggest reason I won't be taking my iPad with me is because I do a lot of content creation on the road. I write books and for blogs and magazines. The level of writing I do makes the touchscreen keyboard on the iPad impractical -- and the 11" MacBook Air a godsend. The iPad can definitely be good for traveling, but it just depends if you're on a short jaunt, or on a round-the-world trip, and also what kind of work you'll be doing (if any) while traveling. At the very least, an iPhone or iPod touch is a must while traveling, but it's a toss-up between an iPad and MacBook Air and your answer will come down to the amount of work you'll be doing on the road.
Space Adventures will shoot you (and your ego) to the moon for $150 million
Y'know, there are only so many pristine beaches and spectacular slopes one can see before terrestrial tourism becomes blasé. That's why Space Adventures -- who lets folks vacay in space via suborbital jaunts -- is offering to shoot you to the moon during your next work sabbatical. Amateur astronauts won't actually land on the lunar surface, of course, but their Soyuz spacecraft will get within 62 miles of it. To indulge in your lunar fantasy, it'll only cost you 150 million bucks, or roughly the GDP of a [insert small island nation here]. One of the two seats is already taken, but the company needs another would-be moon man or lunar lady before the trip's a go. The only thing stopping us (and everyone we know) from signing up is an empty bank account -- does Fastweb do spaceflight scholarships?
That hotel towel you're stealing might have an RFID chip in it
For many travelers, stealing hotel towels or bathrobes is more pastime than petty crime. Hotels, on the other hand, apparently take it more seriously. So seriously, in fact, that some have begun embedding specially crafted RFID tags within their linens, just to help us avoid "accidentally" stuffing them in our suitcases before heading to the check-out desk. The chips, designed by Miami-based Linen Technology Tracking, can be sewn directly into towels, bathrobes or bed sheets, and can reportedly withstand up to 300 wash cycles. If a tagged item ever leaves a hotel's premises, the RFID chip will trip an alarm that will instantly alert the staff, and comprehensively humiliate the guilty party. The system has already paid dividends for one Honolulu hotel, which claims to have saved about $15,000 worth of linens since adopting the system last summer. But small-time crooks needn't get too paranoid. In addition to the hotel in Hawaii, only two other establishments have begun tagging their towels -- one in Manhattan, and one in Miami. All three, however, have chosen to remain anonymous, so swipe at your own (minimal) risk.
Boeing plans to add space tourism seats to its CST-100 flights by 2015
Boeing has announced plans to add space tourism to its CST-100 -- or Crew Space Transportation-100-- low orbit flights by 2015. Operated by a partnership with Space Adventures, the flights will be able to carry up to seven passengers about 62 miles above Earth's surface, and the craft are currently being developed with the help of NASA.The vehicles could also be used as a ferry to get people to and from the various space habitats companies are working away at. There's no word on what the pricing of one of these journeys will look like, but trust us: Jared Leto will be able to afford one, while you probably will not.
The Daily Grind: How many games can you play at once?
Most of us here at Massively play multiple MMORPGs, and we're betting a large majority of the readership does as well. Whether it's the standard main game and one or two flings on the side, or the game-hopping manifesto that compels us to try anything and everything that comes down the pipe, everyone has his own method for enjoying his favorite genre. The only problem is that of time. Personally I don't have enough of it, as I could retire tomorrow and still never get to try all the games that interest me. Currently, it's all I can do to manage two "main" games and sample several others on a weekly and sometimes monthly basis. What about you, Massively readers? How many MMOs can you realistically play at once?
Space Adventures undercuts Virgin Galactic -- announces $100,000 space tourism flight
Space tourism is something we here at Engadget have always been pretty fond of in theory -- it is the final frontier, after all -- but the prohibitive (exorbitant, extravagant, ridiculous) $200,000 price tag on a Virgin Galactic flight pretty much ended any small hopes we ever harbored of getting on one. So, would a reduction of about 50 percent be enough to get us to sign up? That's the question that Virginia-based Space Adventures is asking. The company's just announced it's going to offer flights into suborbital space through an exclusive agreement with Armadillo Aerospace, which is currently developing the rockets for the journeys. A trip with Space Adventures is set to cost just $102,000. We still can't afford it, but we're certainly glad to see the prices fall from insane to outrageous. So, what about you? Are you in?
The myth of the World of Warcraft tourist
Last time we took a look at an elusive breed in the MMO universe, it was the sometimes spotted but never conclusively studied console MMO. This time, however, we should take a look at the World of Warcraft tourist, which should be compared to a brontosaurus. Not because it's a slow-witted lumbering creature -- because it doesn't exist except in the minds of people who find the concept easier than the real state of affairs. As Serial Ganker points out, most people playing World of Warcraft aren't doing so until something better comes along -- they're doing so because they enjoy playing the game. The players who are lumped in as "tourists" are people who, more often than not, had already left the game and were looking for a new game to call home. This, in no small part, is why it's hard for games that clone WoW to find an audience, as the people who are looking for a new game want something different. The ultimate conclusion is that the idea of a tourist shifts the blame from developers to players -- that the game was fine, but people just jumped ship because they really wanted to go back to WoW anyway. It's a convenient myth, but really, we'll all be better off if we just put the right head with the right skeleton.
The perils of MMO tourism
MMOs are a big business these days. This hasn't always been the case -- Ultima Online might have been the first real game of the genre, but it didn't make everyone want to build a competitor. It was the success of World of Warcraft that really opened up the idea that there was a huge amount of money to be made from the genre, and that in turn has brought almost everyone to the table in a rush to build a game, find a method that works, and try to hook as many subscribers as possible. The only problem is that we might find ourselves with an industry drifting toward what MMOSH refers to, quite fairly, as The Bad Place. We've all found ourselves buying new games, playing them only until the trial is up, and then never picking them up again. Sometimes we don't even give them the full month. And some developers seem to be adopting this mentality as well -- there are rumors here and there about the future of Champions Online after its first month, and both publishers and players are treating it as if the first month is everything. (Their recent free trial seems to tie into this -- you could argue that where MMOs once got new players by word of mouth, they seem to be in love with constant trial offers to entice players now.) And that's just the tip of the problem, really -- the post goes into further detail about the cycle of hype, release, and abandonment. As it says, gone are the days when we should stick with the game that we had and wait for it to improve -- and that might ultimately be far more harmful than whatever holes in the game lead us to leave so quickly.
Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo caught mid-flight on video
In case you were wondering if Virgin Galactic's efforts at space tourism are still going strong, the company's released new footage from a recent test flight of its WhiteKnightTwo near its Mojave headquarters. Much longer and higher res than the last bit of video we had, it also provides some new aerial shots of it mid-flight. The craft's public debut will be a fly over at the Virgin Galactic Spaceport America groundbreaking ceremony next month, so until then, navigate your browser to after the break for the feature presentation.
Pokemon Center is a hot Japanese tourist destination
There's plenty of essential sightseeing spots and activities any tourist must partake in during a visit to Japan, such as hitting up the local jumbo-sized arcades, dropping by the beautiful Sensoji Temple, and falling in love with a washed-up actor in a luxurious hotel. However, according to travel site TripAdvisor.com's Top 20 most popular Japanese tourist destinations in 2008, the third-hottest locale for visitors was Tokyo's Pokémon Center store.It seems a little silly that a retail outlet dedicated to Poké-merch was so outrageously popular amongst Japan-bound travelers last year. Then again, where else are you supposed to heal your sick or injured pokémon -- the veterinary hospital? Don't be ridiculous.[Via Kotaku]
Robot, giant squid have epic battle in Japanese tourism videos
You have to be a special kind of city to think that insane videos of a giant squid / robot attacking and duking it out while destroying your beautiful, historic buildings is a great way to bolster tourism. World, meet Hakodate: their official tourism board has produced an amazing series of videos over the past few months that you really just have to see for yourself. Oh, did we mention that the videos worked? Yeah, we're totally there. Hit the read link for all three videos; our favorite, Hakodate's winter video, is after the break.[Via Pink Tentacle]
Philadelphia pushes Comcast Center HD Video Wall as tourist attraction
There are a few must-do things when you wind up in the City of Brotherly Love: see the Liberty Bell, check out Independence Hall, scarf down an authentic cheesesteak and... peek the HD Video Wall at the Comcast Center? Shortly after wowing locals and making customers suddenly aware of where their money was going, the official visitor site for the Great Philadelphia area is now pushing the wall as a can't-miss tourist attraction. Comical though that may be, we can't say that it's really that absurd -- after all, who wouldn't want to see 2,000 square-feet of beautiful LED action when waltzing through a city on vacation? On that note, have any of you actually stopped and checked it out?[Via Gadling]
