Have Ipad, Will Travel

Lonely Planet is teaming up with Apple.

After years of selling traditional travel books, the travel guide mogul is catching onto the digital trend in a big way. With the recent success of the iPad, Lonely Planet decided the device would be the perfect platform to launch their Discover series. According to an article in The Independent, Lonely Planet's digital travel guides are available to download to the iPad, where travelers can use the touch screen to navigate between pages and maps as well as bookmark key sights and make notes using the iBooks application. Travelers can also look up information on Google and Wikipedia while they're jetting off to various locations around the world. The head of Lonely Planet, Matt Goldberg, says that since the needs of today's traveler are constantly changing, why not have a device that is flexible and functional enough to change with them? With the help of Apple's e-publishing technology and Lonely Planet's expertise on travel, the two have created immersive guides that get travelers right into the action.

While I am reluctant to purchase the iPad for my own personal reasons (don't need to drop that much money right now) I believe this is a great way to use this technology. While traveling, it's not easy carrying around a heavy travel guide, flipping through the pages as you navigate through crowded streets looking for that one church or museum. This definitely opens up possibilities for other travel publishers to get in on the e-guide action. I'm looking forward to seeing more travel innovations such as this, and maybe if Let's Go or Rick Steves created travel guides for the iPad, I would seriously consider buying one.