The current economic crisis effects everybody one way or another, and travelers are especially not exempt from the money pinch. The cost of airline tickets, hotels, rental cars, and other associated costs pile high, and with savings accounts dwindling, nobody wants to spend their precious dough on costly travel books. The library is one money-saving alternative, but your local branch may carry an out of date copy of the location you are visiting, or perhaps no copy at all. Another cheap alternative is using sites like Wikipedia or Wikitravel and the likes, but who has the time to compile all that information?

Enter OffBeatGuides

OffBeatGuides.com is a newer website that is still currently in Beta status, but, assuming it transitions into “gold” status, is bound to be a great and relatively cheap travel resource (as low as $9.99 per guide, see below for more pricing details).

The main idea behind OBG is that there is a TON of free information floating around the net but the average person doesn’t want to spend the time hunting through various webpages printing page after page to bring with them. Instead, when a traveler inputs their travel information (to include locations, and dates), OBG scours various websites and arranges the findings into an easy to read, personalized travel guide.

Start Building Your Guide

This couldn’t be easier, which is just the way I like it. First, input your destination. As you type, OBG lists several destinations to choose from, and it’s likely that yours is on the list. If not, that could be an issue, but we will get to that later. Next, OBG will ask where you are traveling from. Supposedly OBG will customize the guide more to “you likings” based off of where you are from, but I’m not sure I buy that… yet. Enter the dates you are traveling, and OBG will create a list of events based around your travel dates. The last step is optional, entering the name or location of where you are staying (e.g. your hotel) so that OBG can pull customized Google Maps for your exact area.

That Wasn’t Too Hard, Was It?

After you are done inputing your information, OBG will take a moment to assemble your new guide and organize a preview. Within the preview you can view exactly what will be in your guide, and edit out the parts that you don’t want included, however this won’t reduce the price, only the size of the printed guide.

Within the guide you are going to find all the information you would expect to find in a travel guide, such as general information about the area, climate, customs and courtesies of the culture, where to eat, where to stay, what to do, how to get around, maps of the general area and neighborhoods (handy for first time visitors to a place like NYC, San Francisco or Seattle), Google Maps, and broken down information about nearby areas.

Obviously, not every guide is going to be a huge in-depth guide telling you everything you need to know about your chosen location. The OBG FAQ’s estimate that the travel guides will be an average of 100-150 pages. If the location you have entered doesn’t produce enough results to form a good size publication, OBG will inform you that they are sorry but they won’t sell you a piece of crap, and to check back at a later time. One example I tried of a guide for San Francisco ran 290 pages! Another for Seattle ran about 110, and Hong Kong was around 165. Smaller locations such as

Once you polish up the information that you need, it’s time to plunge in and purchase. For $9.95, a PDF version of the guide will be available for you to download. For $24.95, not only can you download the PDF version, but OBG will mail you a printed booklet sized version (there is also a $24.95 option for just the printed guide, but why not take the PDF version for free?)

Pros

OBG has some really strong selling points.
- With travel guides costing $30+, $9.95 is a bargain. Many travelers bring their laptops with them nowadays, so there could be little to no need for the printed version. Perhaps only printing one or two pages at a time along the way is more your style?
- The information is instant, and accessible anytime, anywhere. Perhaps you are in Venice and on a whim decide to travel to Slovenia instead of Hungary. You could hunt desperately for a bookstore that sells english printed guides (or be super adventurous and just go for it!), or you could log on, enter a few details, and have a travel guide in minutes!
- The information is up to date. With pages like Wikipedia and Wikitravel becoming more popular, and users constantly updating the information, you get the most current details available. You could purchase a travel guide that was printed 18 months before your trip, but then how would you know that the hostel you were headed to burned down 6 months ago?

Cons

With every new program, comes a few hitches.
- Yes, the information is free, but not everybody wants to spend the time organizing the information themselves. OBG also produces more information than Wikipedia and Wikitravel alone.
- Although $9.95 is a great price, $24.95 is about what you would pay at Borders for a travel guide.
- OBG gets their information from other social sites, and as we all know, they aren’t always the most accurate.

Parting Thoughts

Overall I think that OffBeatGuides.com has some great potential. Since it’s in Beta, there may be bugs here and there but I haven’t found any yet. Right now it is GREAT for some of the bigger cities, but you may be hard pressed to find a great guide on smaller cities. OBG may not be for everyone, especially the super penny pinchers, but for someone willing to spend $30+ for a printed guide may as well save themselves $20 and help out what is bound to be a great site.

I know I haven’t been posting in a little over four months, but check back soon to see that change… (soon, as in probably later today, but no guarantees).

They say that the Nintendo Wii is the most innovative game console since the original NES system, and there isn’t too much room for dispute. If you think about it, every console since the NES has essentially been the same, but slightly updated over time - controller that has a directional pad and a few buttons. Sure, somewhere along the lines they have added in vibration, joysticks and made the whole thing wireless, but its all the same idea. Then the Wii came around, and suddenly developers are using the other side of their brain, and beginning to “think outside the box”.

Over the last year and a half that the Wii has been available, we have seen all sorts of sports games. The Wii even comes with its own free versions of Bowling, Baseball, Tennis and even Boxing. Another game lets you play darts and another skee-ball. Well, now a developer has created something that I’m sure will sell at least a couple of copies… Beer Pong. If you are unfamiliar with Beer Pong, the short story is a player tries to throw a ping-pong ball into a plastic Dixie cup containing a couple ounces of beer. If you make it, the opponent drinks (visit BeerPong.com for details).

Of course, a game like this doesn’t come around without its fair share of controversy, since the Wii is hailed as a family machine. Whatever, if people don’t want their 10 year old kids playing it, don’t buy it for them. Pretty simple.

Pong Toss (as it is now titled, thanks to closed minded politicians) will be available for download on the Wii at the end of July from JV Games.

Something has yet to occur to me about the upcoming Batman flick until today. Why not see it at the IMAX? Come to think about it, why am I not seeing more movies at the IMAX? For me, the closest IMAX theater is about 45 minutes away in Seattle. Thats not too bad of a drive, and I’m sure I could come up with some other things to do in the city as driving there just for a movie might be a little crazy with todays obscene gas prices and my 17 miles per gallon.

The Dark Knight- July 18th

If you have never seen a feature movie in an IMAX theater, you could probably bet that The Dark Knight would be a good show to start with. The first feature film I saw (and the only one I can remember seeing) was The Matrix: Revolutions and I remember being blown away. The clarity was amazing, and it was before stadium seating had become more mainstream (where your row of seats is much higher than the one in front of you, eliminating the chances of having a persons head right in your viewing area).

The price of an IMAX movie isn’t much more than a normal priced movie, at least here in the Seattle area. A normal (say, 6pm) movie is priced at $8.75, and an IMAX movie is $10.25. True, it’s no cheap date, but as long as you aren’t seeing ALL of the summers movies on IMAX, then its somewhat reasonable.

Check out Film School Rejects for a list of IMAX theaters near you, and then start booking now if you want to see it opening day (July 18th). Tickets here are already sold out for the “normal” times, but there are still tickets available for 3AM and 6AM (/end sarcasm).

It’s about time that these came out, i’ve been waiting. Now YOU can be just like Marty McFly in Back to the Future II, sporting a pair of futuristic, baby blue shoes. I hate Koby Bryant and think they could have found SOMEBODY else to promote them, but whatever, at least Gizmodo has a funny headline.

Now if only the hover boards would come out, I would be good to go.

I LOVE watching previews for movies, but when I see one I want to see I usually try to watch too many for that movie, in fear that it will ruin the movie when I actually get to seeing it.

But with The Dark Knight, I’m just too excited and can’t seem to get enough. So, click away to Trailer Addict and check out The Dark Knight Trailer #5. If it ruins the movie for you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.