Lonely Planet City Guides
Lonely Planet guidebooks are a great travel resource.
At first designed for backpackers, these books offer local insight and “hidden” gems. As Lonely Planet has grown in popularity, their audience has broadened to include casual travelers as well.
The LonelyPlanet.com website has always been pretty cutting edge, so it was no surprise when they starting releasing iPhone apps. The iPhone is a great travel device (world phone, GPS, wifi, camera, etc.)
I installed the San Francisco City Guide app to check it out. The guide includes the entire City Guide “Book” in digital format as well as maps, a search function and a “nearby” tab that brings up points of interest in your current vicinity.
Just having the book in digital format is awesome and saves a lot of space and weight (alone worth the price of admission). The nearby feature and maps work as you’d expect and should make for some easy bar hopping.
Some more social features like media uploads or a way for users to provide on the spot reviews would be welcome but I’m sure stuff like this is on the way.
These apps sell for $15.99 each ($0.99 for San Francisco) and are currently available for about 20 cities. While a little on the spendy side, they’re about the same price as the physical books. If you like Lonely Planet and were considering buying a city guide, this is definitely the way to go.
[ Lonely Planet on iTunes ] [ Lonely Planet ]
