Blue Lion Guides

mTrip is a Canadian firm based in Montreal, established in 2009. Since its inception the company has focused on developing travel guides for mobile phone, obviously smartphones. The company developed almost 30 guides translated in seven languages (English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese). Over half of the guides refer to European cities. The guides are sold at 4.99€. According to an article published by Techcrunch France in Mai, the mTrip guides had been downloaded 800.000 times since July 2010. We reviewed version 1.5 of the mTrip app on the iPhone 4. Design and ergonomics Overall design and ergonomics of mTrip is excellent. The visual organization of functionalities, the use of colors, the placement of buttons, etc. are in general well done so much that the user is able to learn how to make use of this quite complex app. All technological marvels are in place.

Today was a beautiful day. I went to see my banker at La Défense and just grabbed my camera before leaving... Here are a few shots.

Nous avons parcouru le Marais avec Françoise Gardien qui a écrit un très beau texte sur les hôtels particuliers qui ont fait l'histoire du quartier. Voici un extrait concernant l'Hôtel de Sully. L'Hôtel de Sully, hésitant entre classique et baroque J’aime aussi beaucoup visiter ce bel hôtel en pierre de taille, exemple parfait de l’hôtel particulier en ses grandes heures ! Tout d’abord son nom nous évoque une époque heureuse pour la France ; Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de Sully, fut l’un des meilleurs « premiers ministres » que la France ait jamais connu. Il a su redresser l’économie et les finances du Royaume, qui étaient au plus bas après les Guerres de Religions : tout d’abord en le transformant en vaste

Pocket Guide, a Hungarian company, offers a fresh approach to mobile city guides. The guides cover about 20 European cities with 150 tours. According to the company's web site the texts are written by professional guides and tested by their own employees. Pocket Guide claims about 50,000 monthly downloads (not clear whether these include also the free versions of the app). The guides are available on several platforms: iOS, Android and Nokia's OVI. The guides cost €2.39 per tour or €4.99 per city bundle (which include, depending on the city, from three to twelve tours). Previously the tours were offered at higher prices. We downloaded a few of their guides and share our first impressions based on the iPhone app (version 4.0). Design The design guides is straight and colorful: the guides project an image that may be entice the young and technologically curious users. An introductory screen is simple and presents the app language choice (limited to English and Hungarian).

I found this amazing engraving of the Château de Richelieu in a castle we stayed in near Moulins. Definitely the Cardinal, with, among other things, the Palais Royal (formerly Palais Cardinal) and the Académie Française left his marks in France!

Tripwolf, a company based in Vienna (Austria), offers a wide range of city guides (over 100) for the iPhone and, more recently, also for Android smartphones. I downloaded a few of them, both free and premium (4.99$ or €3.99) and here are my impressions. The company claims more than 400.000 downloads since the launch of the iPhone app (June 2011). Design Flush design of the App. Screens are well organized and are completed with large photos. Each city has its own "cover page" with a representative image and access to its content. The navigation bar includes only five (quite large) icons, with the search function (leading to a list of available guides), the "My Guides" button with the TripWolf icon, a GPS-based geolocalization service, online/offline status and a "More" button. The points below the image show the number of guides that the user has downloaded so far and are directly available with lateral scrolling of the cover page.