Schmap Review, June 1, 2006
(View Italian language original)

Schmap: A Collaborative Travel Guide

By Pietro Izzo

Take quality maps, classic tourist itineraries, the experience of travelers, and their vacation photos: a new killer app for travel is born.

There are many developments still waiting to happen in the Web 2.0 revolution, which embodies the possibility of sharing and managing knowledge at the collaborative and collective level. One of these is the travel sector, especially in its editorial aspects. What's the first step in planning a trip if not to learn about the chosen destination and the possibilities it offers in terms of lodging, dining, and various places of interest? The intrepid traveler usually arms himself in advance with a good travel guide: for example, a Lonely Planet or a Routard, that is, a reputable guide with an interesting and easily accessible website. However, you can only interact with books like these by writing in the margins, attaching post-its, or at the very least folding down the corners to remind yourself of interesting spots, and on the corresponding websites there are just excerpts from the actual guides (even if there is the opportunity to discuss the news in specialized forums). This is where Schmap comes in to fill a niche: that of interactive travel information and (although right now just in part) open-source tools.

The basic idea behind Schmap is to take maps and content, currently provided by two qualified partners (Wcities and Tele Atlas), and put them into a downloadable player that functions independently on the user's PC (we have to wait until November for the Mac version). Schmap definitely has something in common with Google Earth: the graphic interface and the means of navigating within the application are quite similar. In contrast with Google's global coverage, however, it concentrates on a single city and uses street maps instead of satellite photos. The unusual thing, which will intrigue people who are interested in social networks is that, for illustrations, Schmap uses creative-commons licensed photographs shared by Flickr users.

Downloading the Schmap Player with one city guide (or many) gives the user access to a flexible and easy-to-learn application, which counts on the familiarity of its users with services like Google Earth but occupies less space on the user's PC. The guides usually take up between four and six megabytes and are recognized as an associated file type by the player. It opens with a brief introduction to the city and its history, a small overview map of the city, and a panel with detailed information alongside the photos taken from Flickr. Clicking on any link transforms the center part of the screen into a detailed street map (exactly the same as those in Tom Tom's navigator) which has detailed labels for all conceivable points of interest. Another exciting aspect is that the mapping technology employed compresses street maps of big cities into very small vector files, which allows for a great increase in interactivity.

What makes Schmap unique, then, is how it offers virtual, interactive visits to a city: just specify the kind of tour you'd like (gastronomic, artistic, outdoors), the neighborhood that interests you, and how long the player should pause at each spot. At this point the player will display an overview of the selected points with short descriptions and related images, links to the official sites and basic information (telephone numbers, opening hours, etc.). Experimenting with the software (which, we must remember, is only a beta version), it's natural to think of its future potential. Schmap is still very young (it launched in March 2006), but it could become a really killer application, depending on where its creators decide to take it. An application that organizes content derived from very diverse sources and presents it in a navigable interface, especially in the tourist sphere, could have great success on portable devices.

Moreover, the interaction with social networks becomes interesting: if, now, the photographic content comes from Flickr, why not make the jump to Web 2.0 with the textual content and real tourist information as well, for an experience like that of Wikitravel? The wikitraveler—in contrast with his encyclopedia-writing colleagues—subscribes to the project of creating a global travel guide that could be destined for publication. By the way, in contrast with Wikipedia, which applies a GDFL license to its content, Wikitravel uses a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license, just like the Flickr photos that Schmap also uses. Since this is a multilingual project (although sadly the Italian content is just starting to appear), it enhances the possibility of finding diverse content regardless of the reader's language.

Alexandra Moss, the managing editor of Schmap, told us that "our primary focus is the development of Schmap Player 2.0, to be released later this year. Schmap Player 2.0 will allow users to create and share their own travel guides, or collections of favorite local places, complete with reviews, photos and links." In terms of portability, the player as developed is not intended for PDAs or 3G cell phones (because the screens are too small), but a partnership with a provider specializing in the production of content for these devices is being considered. The only thing we have to do is pack our bags and wait: very soon, this new piece in the Web 2.0 puzzle will not only allow us to plan our trips, but also to share them online with other travelers.