Somebody finally has the right idea.

January 2, 2009 2:30 PM

Offbeat Guides create personalized, up-to-date travel guides that cover over 30,000 travel destinations, using a combination of search technology and curation by both amateur and professional travel experts.

You can personalize (and save) the information you want based on your travel dates, preferences, and destination. The guides come with local maps, festivals and events going on while you're there, exchange rates, key phrases in the city's language, weather forecasts and more.

posted by gman (30 comments total)

So.... I entered my travel city, it gave me one page of mostly useless info, then asked me if I wanted to *buy* a PDF of the page for $25. Or I could just buy the PDF file for $10.

$10 for a PDF file of the html page I'm looking at. That's........ really freakin' stupid.
posted by aapep at 2:43 PM on January 2, 2009

Hard copy for $25 that is...
posted by aapep at 2:43 PM on January 2, 2009

$25 for a printout of a bunch of wikipedia pages? This has the potential to be the next Cuil!
posted by steveminutillo at 2:52 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

Sorry, but I don't like to pull out a massive guide in the middle of a street and have the vultures swoop in on the fresh meat. This allows you to customize information and then read the history, etc. and jot down shit you may need on your trip, like place to stay or markets, etc.
posted by gman at 2:52 PM on January 2, 2009

Or you could just go to Wikitravel where it seems they have nicked all their information.

Of course, this guide has your name on it, so I suppose there is a warm, fuzzy feeling about that.
posted by Serial Killer Slumber Party at 3:09 PM on January 2, 2009

A lot of the info it provided for the cities I selected (in N. Africa) was pretty good - but I'd probably do the same thing that gman did.

Er, that is, if I didn't know the stuff already...,</small)
posted by HopperFan at 3:11 PM on January 2, 2009

Ouch! Lots of wrong information in the Baltimore guide. Wrong prices for museums, incorrect parking prices, wrong climate info....and I've barely started looking at it.

You are better off ripping useful pages out of a Rough Guide, then picking up a City Paper once you get here.
posted by QIbHom at 3:22 PM on January 2, 2009

Yeah, it is just wikitravel, bundled and sold commercially. Here's part of the fantastic (sarcasm) entry for my neighborhood:

General advice: avoid the eating establishments close to the British Museum like the plague - hugely overpriced, they form a genuine ‘tourist trap’ and are seemingly designed to help travellers part with their cash at a rapid rate! Best to walk up to nearby Oxford Street for a huge range of food outlets.
...
If stuck for food, there are a number of common travel venues (Upper Crust, Burger King, Cornish Pasties, etc) at King’s Cross station.
Drink

...
* The Museum Tavern, 49 Great Russell Street. Opposite the British Museum, is a very good pub, offering a wide range of real ales, and some excellent food. Can get busy in the summer months.

In summary: Eat at Burger King in the train station because ALL restaurants near the British Museum are touristy crap. Or eat at the Museum Tavern, which ignoring our own generalities, is a good place to go.

Horrible advice, of course. Better to pick up a copy of Lonely Planet's London Encounter (for £5! Less than the cost of this PDF!) which is compact and is actually quite good (left at my place by a recent houseguest!)
posted by vacapinta at 3:25 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

When you try to close the tab, you get an actual pop-up window saying "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?" That's pretty obnoxious.
posted by octothorpe at 4:19 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

Ouch! Lots of wrong information in the Baltimore guide.

Lots of wrong topped with a soupçon of useless. I love that it tells you to contact places to verify hours of service but doesn't provide any contact information.
posted by weebil at 4:28 PM on January 2, 2009

This thing is useless to the point of being a bit insulting.
posted by lunasol at 4:48 PM on January 2, 2009

Also, FWIW, Rough Guides has most of the content of their dead tree books available for free online. Much better than this.
posted by lunasol at 4:50 PM on January 2, 2009

Didn't check out any developed cities. Although it needs fine tuning, I like the idea. Personalized and it gets rid of the useless 90-odd% in other guidebooks. Add to that the fact that I know firsthand that when the LP does an update, it involves a "writer" sitting in a comfortable guesthouse paying local grunts to do their leg work for them. The Philippine LP, for instance, was "updated" in under 6 fuckin' weeks.
posted by gman at 5:43 PM on January 2, 2009

So getting information from the locals is useless. But copy-paste from random websites is useful. Right.
posted by aapep at 5:55 PM on January 2, 2009

Any LP/Rough Guide writer I know, laughs at their own updates - a couple dudes rewrite a guidebook about a country (Philippines) of 7000 islands in 6 weeks. And do you know what these assholes (those who take credit) are paid? A site which personalizes and allows for both "professional" and "amateur" contributors is heading in the right direction.
posted by gman at 6:07 PM on January 2, 2009

Those sites exist, in fact those existing sites seem to do the job better than Offbeat Guides. And without trying to get visitors to pay $10 for something they could get for free by hitting "print".

Is this a self-link? You seem to be going out of your way to bump a site many here see as useless.
posted by aapep at 7:14 PM on January 2, 2009

The Museum Tavern

I have a distinct memory of being very tired but very elated after having spent a few hours in the British Museum and relating to my boyfriend the various stories behind the art and the reading room and the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen tie-ins and then being so knackered and balls out that we just fell into this pub and while it seemed very boostery and touristy and proud of it's ..location, it was more than okay for a post Museum carb-n-beer fuelup and was nice despite it's vaugely cafeteria air.

Cause really, after all that, a place where you slump in and point at the fried fish and then get fired fish is kinda okay
posted by The Whelk at 7:33 PM on January 2, 2009

Nothing personal about this at all , except for the name that you enter on the form.

All the information seems to have been stolen as well. Do not want.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 8:22 PM on January 2, 2009

This thing should be a infobundler widget for Wikitravel, not a site in its own right.
posted by benzenedream at 8:48 PM on January 2, 2009

Wherever the writing came from, it seems kind of political.
Looking at Berlin, the beginning description of each district caught my attention:

Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg— Associated with the left wing youth culture, artists and Turkish immigrants

Prenzlauer Berg— A trendy district in the former East Berlin undergoing gentrification

Schöneberg— Cosy area for ageing hippies, young families and homosexuals

Zehlendorf— Zehlendorf is one of the greenest and wealthiest districts in Berlin and the biggest university in town

I can't speak for others, but it doesn't feel like the kind of guide I'd like to follow when I'm exploring a new city as a traveler.
posted by mannequito at 8:53 PM on January 2, 2009

I gave it a town that I knew pretty well as my start and end positions. I told it that I was tripping though the entire month of January. The site then proceeded to regurgitate the wikitravel article on my city, which summarizes events that occurr throughout the year. This guy needs to be doing more than just blindly redistributing wiki pages and weather reports to earn his $10.

gman: Please tell us about this later, when this guy is actually doing something clever.
posted by simoncion at 8:58 PM on January 2, 2009

First off, I'm the founder and CEO of Offbeat Guides, so if this comes off as defensive or boosterish, I'm going to apologize right from the start, feel free to skip to the end.

The whole idea of Offbeat Guides was to bring you the best and most up-to-date travel guide for tens of thousands of out-of-the-way places, and to incorporate as much open and freely contributed information as possible, as well as adding professional curation, and package it up in a way that makes sense for the time-constrained traveler. We incorporate a lot of information from places like Wikitravel, Wikipedia, CC-licensed (CC-BY, and CC-BY-SA) information and photos from Flickr and others, and event information from sites like Eventful, Meetup, Zvents, and others, maps from Google, and more.

You also get a place to add your own research into your book by adding custom chapters (as many as you like), so you can add recommendations from friends or from wherever you get your reseearch.

Of course, if you already know about all of these places, and you're happy bookmarking them or printing them out and carrying all the info around with you, then there's not much utility in getting the PDF or the printed book, which comes perfect-bound with your name on the cover, right to your doorstep 3-4 days before you leave on your trip. It's not for everybody. We've found that a lot of people do like making these as gifts to less internet-savvy friends, or for events, conferences, and weddings as a way to save time, or create a unique, personalized gift or guide.

And we're constantly working on improving the information in the guides - in fact, we have 2 professional travel writers employed full-time who contribute travel guide information into Wikitravel and Wikipedia as a way of us giving back to the community who have created so much. And as we continue to build out the site, you'll see additional ways that we add value in community-generated information and feedback, and also with other licensed travel information as well.

We're a really small team, and the site is in beta, so we were really pleasantly surprised by the post today in MetaFilter - but in a lot of ways we're still very early to the game, and there's stll so much to improve and fix. So I wanted to just drop you guys a note and thank you for your really great constructive feedback. It's incredibly valuable, and I appreciate you taking the time to check us out and give us your honest thoughts. BTW, we're very interested in working with travel publishers, so if you know anyone at Rough Guides or at other travel providers that you like, please point them to this message and let them know that we're very interested in working with them and together giving their customers (aka YOU) the information you want, just for the places where you're going, and with event information for the dats when you're there.

If you want to discuss any further, or even join us in this ambitious goal of remaking the world of travel guides, please don't hesitate to drop me an email at [e-mail] or give me a call at [phone], I'm always interested in getting feedback and criticism, and learning from all of you.

And we're definitely going to have a look at the London and the Baltimore guides to fix the issues. I used to live in Baltimore, so having a great gide to Charm City is obviously pretty important to me. And if you ever see something wrong in a Wikitravel article that we reference, may I suggest that you jump into the pool with us and fix it for everyone up on www.wikitravel.org :-)

Thanks again for checking out Offbeat Guides, and I'm really looking forward to more of your comments and feedback. Thanks again.
posted by dsifry at 9:27 PM on January 2, 2009 [5 favorites]

Metafilter: if this comes off as defensive or boosterish, I'm going to apologize right from the start, feel free to skip to the end.
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:49 PM on January 2, 2009 [2 favorites]

LOL!

i was just dropping by to say that it's founded by the same guy who founded Technorati, but i guess David himself beat me to it.

hi Dave!

i went in and tinkered with it when it was still in alpha. haven't made up my mind about it but only because i really haven't had the need for it yet. also, to tell you the truth, i don't think that anybody here is the target audience.

MeFites know how to search the web creatively. i mean, MetaFilter is very curatorial which to me is a kind of creative searching and aggregating. it's a honed skilled; maybe call it an art. it's definitely something that a lot of people can't wrap their heads around yet when it comes to using the web.
posted by liza at 10:41 PM on January 2, 2009

i don't think that anybody here is the target audience.

Well, I dunno. I have over a dozen Lonely Planets/ Footprints / Rough Guides around... They have plenty of faults - and everyone knows a lazy contributor - but overall they're pretty useful and the cost is marginal compared to the price of two weeks holiday.

If this was a better product, I'd happily give it a chance. But somewhere that recommends Benjys (vaguely downmarket and totally unremarkable sandwich chain) as the place to eat near oxford street won't be getting my custom anytime soon. I wish I could be more positive but a couple of random dips in don't give me much hope.

Unless it gets vastly better, I cannot see how it can begin to compete in a crowded and mature market, let alone "remake" it.
posted by rhymer at 2:00 AM on January 3, 2009

I tried it for Curaçao. Oh boy, how utterly useless.
posted by DreamerFi at 2:45 AM on January 3, 2009

i think this is a good idea, but obviously needs some work. i do see a market for weddings and meet-ups and the like. seems similar to the self-publishing options that have become popular in the past couple of years; which, though they may do little more than allow people to indulge in a bit of vanity, do allow for an economical distribution of personalized information, at a professional level of quality. it will be interesting to see if this personalized travel reference succeeds.

one aspect i'd avoid is having my name emblazoned on the front of the damn thing -- it's good that it's an optional step, but too bad there isn't an alternative, like putting it on the inside on a title page.
posted by lapolla at 4:36 AM on January 3, 2009

I wanted to try it for my home city, but then it asked me where I'm traveling from. D'oh.

So, I tried it for Reykjavík instead, where I lived for a year and spent at least a month in for an additional three years. It wins a Gold Medal in Mastering the Obvious. Points out stuff that you would have to be a total blind idiot not to notice, and then reminds you that everything in Iceland is expensive because it's an island. Where they import stuff. That last bit may have changed, but I bet you that you can still "wander around the old town" and find Hallgrímskirkja just fine.

(Not that it gives specific wandering advice. And it leaves out the best dive bar in the city with the blue-cheese & garlic burgers, a bit which I would consider to be crucial.)

If you can bear to be asked by almost every Icelander you meet “How do you like Iceland?” you’re all set for the trip.

YES. THEY EVEN ASK YOU THIS WHEN YOU'VE LIVED THERE FOR AN AN ENTIRE YEAR. It's like a whole nation with a "Well, was it good for you?" complex.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 5:09 AM on January 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

YES. THEY EVEN ASK YOU THIS WHEN YOU'VE LIVED THERE FOR AN AN ENTIRE YEAR. It's like a whole nation with a "Well, was it good for you?" complex.

This is endearingly and annoyingly true.
posted by weebil at 9:33 AM on January 3, 2009

At NileGuide (www.nileguide.com), we commend Offbeat Guides and anyone else working to revolutionize the publishing industry. It's difficult to create these things on the fly --- we know from personal experience. It's difficult to source quality content, difficult to make it relevant, difficult to organize it into a neat package, and difficult to deliver it. So we respect what Dave Sifry is doing,

We've taken a somewhat different approach in 2 primary ways: 1) we believe that a customized guidebook should be free (and thus supported by advertising and travel transactions) and 2) we believe the value of the guidebook lies in its relevancy for YOU and YOUR trip. To that end, we actually make the guide a free downloadble PDF that is entirely specific to the items in your trip plan -- you add the hotels, restaurants, bars, and activities yourself, and then we organize it for you. Our goal is simply to give you the tools to find what's interesting to you, add those items to an itinerary, book them, and then easily create a guidebook. (Soon we'll deliver this guide to your iPhone.)

As I said, it's a tricky process, but one what we continue to hone, so we'd love some honest feedback from this group about how you find the trip planning process on NileGuide.com.
posted by hauteroute at 11:46 AM on January 6, 2009