Search Engine Watch has a guide to London.
London offers wonderful opportunities for rambling exploration but it’s also easy to lose your bearings if you’re not careful. Fortunately, the web offers some terrific navigation tools and maps to help you find your way.Search Engine Strategies London opens tomorrow, and we have attendees and exhibitors at the conference from all over the world. This got me thinking why not put together an article about search tools, navigation aids and maps for attendees to use while they’re enjoying the city away from the conference.
London is a huge, sprawling city, and good maps are a necessity. Three good mapping services for London include:
I think London one of the best cities in the world for taking endless walks, exploring neighborhoods that can date back hundreds of years. Fortunately, London’s public transportation system makes it easy to get back to your starting point when the point of exhaustion takes hold.
Transport for London is the official page for information on just about every type of transportation available in London.
The excellent interactive journey planner suggests various alternatives for getting to and from one location to another. This can be a Station or stop, post code, address or place of interest. Once you’e entered your start and stop points, enter the time you want to go and you’ll get several alternatives to consider.
Click on a result, and you’ll get a figurative map showing details of your journey, with options to get more detailed maps in PDF format. You can also check out ticket options and fare prices.
London’s Underground (aka the Tube) is one of my favorite forms of transit in London, especially for random exploration. Get a day pass and you can pop on and off trains at will. Even though all Tube stations and trains have maps of the system, you’ll want to spend some time with Transport for London’s tubes maps. Here you’ll find standard maps, accessible maps, large print maps, and versions of tube maps in a dozen non-English languages.
The Tube Guru is a cool Flash application that helps you get around on the Underground and find things once you’ve arrived at your chosen station. Drag the map around until you find the station you’re looking for and then click on it; you’ll get a menu with links to information about the station, and restaurants, pubs and bars, shopping and other nearby attractions.
The Search Engine Watch article lists many other virtual guides.
This weekend your intrepid editor Sam took a Local Innovations Bicycle Ride and also found out about PedalPalooza. There are dozens of bike events around my fair city this June. And let’s not forget the World Naked Bike Ride, June 11th in some 50 cities around the world.
Why not an MP-3 self-guided tour, 24/7? Tune to FM 88 on your radio…and follow the map.
An MP-3 player with built-in FM transmitter ($100) coupled to a $40 solar panel stashed in a bird house might supply the narration. Maps show “talkspots”.
A self-guided cultural tour could be about anything. Everyone’s got an FM radio. The free service might be sponsored by local businesses who get 15 second “spots”.
Virtual City Guides are becoming more common. Portland has self-guided tours on the web. So does Portland Walking Tours. So does your town.
The King County Library System (KCLS) is now offering digital audio books in Microsoft Windows Media Audio format. Seattle’s Underground Tour might be GPS synched.
The YellowArrow.org concept puts a phone number on a yellow arrow sign. Call for local history. Put audiobooks on an answering machine. Paste 1,000 Yellow Arrow stickers with the phone number all over town. A cell phone activates the phone machine. Choose from 999 selections and hear a 2 minute narrative about that location. Search A-9, Local Google and Google Scholar for backgrounders. Powell’s Books gets a 15 second plug.
Amos Latteier designed an urban wildlife tour, Call of the Wild, which he guides by cell phone. Just call.
Handy for virtual journeys with Lewis and Clark. You name it.
A $20 FM adapter could continously broadcast audio within 10-30 feet from a $50 MP3 player. Seal it in Tuperware and slip them in a WiFi Birdhouse. Stories First. Rivers That Were.
A Mobile Hitchhiker’s Guide might also be available for mobile phones and PDAs. With the added benefit of photos and animation.
Need inspiration? How about the incredibly wonderful DC Metro Blog Map!
.gif)
