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The city of New York has decided to set up THE tourism office of the future.

This project, called NYCGo , is made of a partnership with Travelocity, which is the booking search engine. It aims to create exclusive offers for NYCGo.com. The one with Time Out New York will able to get next events RSS flowing.

This new tourism office, located on the 7th Avenue, will prevent from getting lost in New York.

Actually, inside, there are big touch sensitive tables connected to Google Maps and Google Earth. You can go sightseeing in New York by touching screens.
With the function “You are here” It is even possible to plan an itinerary in saving interest points, to print it, to send it via email or to save it in your mobile phone.
You, also, can project the image of where you have decided to go on the walls, in order to get an idea of what you are going to visit, still sitting on a chair.

For those who have got a Smartphone, you can get all touristic events by SMS, with a link to Google Map Mobile application, in order to get there easily and quickly.

Don’t forget to go on the website called Dealomatic. It gathers all special offers and discounts for New-York city events and attractions.

In crisis time a touristic strategy is welcome. It will, maybe, attract more people. Here is a video introducing THE tourism office of the future.

Youtube

Thailand had to face up to many things these past years. It had been destroyed by the Tsunami in 2004, there were various politics problems, and the country was pointed out as a paradise for sexual tourism.

To attract tourists, the tourism authority has just announced that a new cocktail has been created, the Siam Sunrays. Cuba has its Caipirinya; Guadeloupe, its Ti-Punch, Thailand will get its Siam Sunrays.

@ alpha du centaure

Travelers will need time before they accepted the Siam Sunrays as an authentic and traditional drink.
Actually, a lot of traditional products were created only for tourists (such as in Québec where they invented the whisky with maple).

This cocktail will be soon available in all hotels and shops of Thailand.

Just to give you a little idea, here are the ingredients: Vodka, coconut liqueur, a piece of hot red pepper, sugar, lime juice, lemon slices and ginger.
All of this served with crushed ice and sparkling water.

Will this latest drink boost tourism in Thailand? Will it attract holidaymakers? We’ll see…

@ BastieN [M]

@ sweet lil’ bunny

Urban cyclists are a special specie. This specie is growing since they put in place bicycles in self-service in metropolis.
Couriers belong to this group. These cyclists try, everyday to stay alive where as they are just doing their job, in Manhattan, a motorist jungle.

This video mixes virtual bike couriers with real images in New York City.
It shows perfectly the daily life of these people, fast (more they deliver, better money they get), well build but vulnerable (even with a good stamina and athletic calves, getting a door in your face can happen), zigzagging between skyscrapers, hundreds of taxis and millions of pedestrians.

Youtube

The New York Times has published a list of 44 places to go in 2009. The selection is already given, but the list is interactive and you can vote for your favorite one, in order to advise other travelers.

From this selection, made by the North American newspaper, classical places are, obviously highlighted, such as Las Vegas, Berlin, Rome, but also others interesting destinations to discover such as Kazakhstan, Beirut,The Philippines or Bhutan.
Oddly, Cuba is in this list where as Americans are not allowed to go to this island: none planes take off from the US to Cuba. Actually, if they wish to see Havana and Cuban beaches, they must catch a plane from another country (Canada, Mexico…) and ask to not get a stamp on their passport.
Destinations are also classified by categories: luxury, family, ecology, culture, etc.

And you, where would you go this year?

Can you imagine giving some coins for going to the bathroom in a plane? This is the latest Ryanair’s measure. They are considering the fact of charging passengers 1 pound to have a wee.

@ Drewski2112

According to Michael O’leary, CEO of the Irish company, everyone will be able to go the bathroom since no one travels without any coins in their wallet. Did it happen to you already to have only your credit card with you and no coins in the wallet? Did they think about people having some problem?

All of that is supposed to be for the reason of the crisis. Ryanair, like all other airlines, has suffered of the increase of fuel where as they had planned to bring more clients with prices even more attractive.

What will be the next measure they will find in order to save some pounds and to make us thinking their flights tickets are cheap. The only possibility would be charging us according the amount of air breathed in their planes!

@ Ti.mo

We could say that safety in airports is more and more demanding. We are all aware technology moves forward quickly and safety cannot stay in the background. All of that brings us to a drawback situation caused by people or organizations looking for harm.
But city dwellers end to pay for this safety and the process of boarding became a difficult and humiliating experience.

The 11th of September 2001 dredged up a psychotic truth about airports. This highlighted safety weaknesses of a country that runs the biggest amount of movements in its airports.

The scanner that strips

Within other extends, such as forbidding liquids and aerosols, intensification demands to enter in the country, the body scanner enables to see directly under clothes, exposing people to X-rays.
While we travel a lot, it is restrictive and worrying. There is not only privacy violation, as they need to see people stripped, but it can be noxious for our health as well.
Moreover, waiting lines will be even longer as one person at a time can be seen, and as the entire process lasts some minutes.

Even if some other countries, such as Germany, refused it radically, Schiphol’s airport (Holland), and some airports in U.S, have already adopted this new system.

By publik16

Other law projects in airports

On the other side, G8’s countries and E.U, could establish a new aerial anti-piracy law that would permit to seize electronic equipments (laptops, MP3…) for copyright reasons.
In summary, they undermine travelers instead of searching solutions more efficient, but at a higher cost.
Is it possible to reach a point where they will have the right to confiscate our MP3 if they find a downloaded song while we are passing the control? Another privacy violation!

What is the safety limit?

It is quite difficult for a mother, traveling with a baby, taking only 100ml of liquid, or that someone using a spray gives it to the security guard. Nowadays, chemical explosives with less than 100ml of liquid can cause huge damages, but our technology doesn’t able us to analyze instantaneously what passengers are caring; the only solution is, then, to seize.
Even if most travelers would pay a certain price for this safety, preventive laws could stop abuses. If airports don’t have enough frameworks or enough technologies to offer an efficient safety without affecting passengers rights, the solution would be investment.

Which drives us to the point: Are we facing normal safety or abuse of power? Going on board is a pleasure, or it became something stressful?

Bushnell

Bushnelll has perfected a new technology: the Backtrack, a compass with a GPS technology, is able to memorize 3 places and to indicate the distance left to reach your final point. This tool is a mix between the latest GPS technologies and a digital compass with automatic calibration. It has an exactness of 10-16,4 feet in rural area and about 33 feet in urban area.
It resists to bad weather and works with two batteries for about 120h and puts itself on standby after 10 minutes.
It is light and compact. It will fit easily in your pocket.
An example: You are on holiday, in your hotel, and you want to take a look around, you just have to push the bottom and put your Backtrack in your pocket; you will never have to worry anymore about getting lost. As well as if you park your car in a huge car park, you will get your car easily once your will be done with your shopping.
This advanced technology compass can be useful for a lot of people: sportive people, adventurers, and also everyone who doesn’t have the quality to angle (and we are a lot )
It will cost you between 60 and 70 Euros to be able to find your way without any problem.

glittery salty plains in Uyuni (Bolivia) by Michael Martin

The magazine Geo has published a range of the best desert’s pictures, which offer us to travel around the world through arid landscapes.
Deserts give us a strange and mystical reaction in view of a huge vastness, but it holds contrasts and colors hard to remake in others environments. Desert is a freak of nature in all continents but it holds different landscapes each time; it goes from lunar landscapes in Atacama (Chile) or glittery salty plains in Ayuni (Bolivia), to rose-pink dunes in Gobi (Mongolia), or to sacred mysteries in the Australian desert.

Storm in the desert of Nambi (Namibia) by Michael Martin

Camels in Archei’s gorges, Chad by Michael Martin

Tassili’s plateau, Algeria de Michael Martin

@The printed blog

The Printed Blog is a free news paper which was born in Chicago and in San Fransisco. Its biggest particularity is not its publication itself, but more the fact that it contains, on paper, contents generated on internet.
Even if we have already seen something similar before, it is the first time a newspaper, made entirely of blogs, is published.
It will be financed by local commercials and profits will be shared into bloggers. The Printed Blog has 300 bloggers as information source, and will be given out weekly and for free.
Even if, for now, it will be published only in these two cities, this newspaper yearns for being published daily and projects to launch an edition with specific contents about the most relevant cities in United States.
Interaction between lectors
On the website of this newspaper, which will be in use online theprintedblog.com, lectors will be also able to recommend blogs in order to incorporate them in syndication. Of course, the newspaper itself has a blog.

Deep studies about how important worksites are and how it can affect employees were done.
Sensible hypothesis result from it, but there is nothing better than images to prove it is true.
The theory says that a great environment enables a free employees’ creativity, stimulates new ideas to find out an exit from our subconscious and influence inspirations.
Leo in Smashing Magazine has got, on Flickr, a bunch of real inspiring worksites.  Have a look at these pictures and say what you think about.

Clean lines and a colorful touch which inspire Apple’s creators

In Pixar’s studios, employees can design their own worksite

And of course, the famous Google’s offices which look like a fantastic dream

You can find other images on Office Design Gallery.

You have other images about this topic to suggest?
Nothing beats a bench in park or a hamock at the seaside… That’s real holiday!!