Venice_tour Travelers are starting to leave behind heavy, dog-eared guidebooks and instead are cramming their much lighter mobile devices with all the necessary tips they’ll need to discover new parts of the world.

Airlines, tour operators, entrepreneurs and even old-fashioned travel book publishers have been unleashing a wave of information accessible with MP3 players and mobile phones that is easier to tote while on vacation and is delivering increasingly personal recommendations.

Featured projects:

  • History Unwired, a walking tour in Venice, Italy, over location-aware multimedia phones and PDAs
  • Soundwalk, New York City neighborhood tours blended with music, sound effects and interviews
  • Talkingstreet, celebrities lend their voices to their hometown tours
  • Thomson podcasts, a British tour operator’s podcasts to accompany travelers to Corsica, Cuba or the Cote D’Azur
  • Virgin podcasts, for destinations ranging from Shanghai to Las Vegas
  • Lonely Planet podcasts, free podcast downloads to supplement the printed materials

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