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Amsterdam Gets First Look at Augmented Reality Guides

If you’re the kind of tech-minded traveler who rushed to replace your guidebooks with podcast tours, and erased your podcasts to make room for iPhone travel apps, then it’s time to start getting excited about the newest in travel technology: augmented reality.

Start-up company Layar is preparing to introduce the world’s first augmented reality browser—a sort of virtual guidebook that projects data onto the world in front of you. The technology is currently getting a test run in Amsterdam, where people can download a free Layar application to their smartphones. Then, holding the phone up in front of you, you’re shown information about restaurants and ATMs in your sightline, projected right onto the screen.

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Are Guidebooks Necessary?

The answer may surprise you! Well, only if you think the answer is "no, never, not under any circumstances." Memoirist Frank Wisner starts off strong, tempting us to "Throw the guidebooks away. Or burn them in protest." But what he really seems to want from us is that we talk to the locals a little. You know, the locals. The folks who supposedly always know the most darling little restaurant or the coziest little swimming hole. And who are always eager to share the tidbits of their quaint lives with inquisitive strangers.

We're still not sure why guidebooks prevent a thoughtful person from a heart-to-heart with a local or two. And as Lonely Planets head Tony Wheeler points out in his rebuttal,  you "don't want to miss the local tourist draw just because it's such a familiar part of the scenery that the locals don't even notice it any more."

Related Stories:

·   Readers of the pack [The Australian, via Written Road]
·   Honeymoon with My Brother [Wisner's Memoir]

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Maribel's Guides to Spain

If Spain's in your future, a great first stop is Maribel's Guides, advice and notes for regional trips as well as big cities. Initially just files emailed from one person to another via the Fodor's Travel Forum and elsewhere, the guides finally made it to the web last year. They have lots of common-sense advice, but also lots of quirky places that can be hard to find elsewhere. Now if only they came as iPod-ready text and not just PDFs . . . .

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Segway Dorks World Domination Plan

Do you, like our favorite blogger Mr.Calacanis, dread actually walking around a city you're vacationing in?

Then get your lazy ass to Fodor's today and check out the latest in sightseeing: Segway Tours. Yep, those annoying things are back and running into pedestrains all over cities from Austin to Vienna on official Segway sightseeing city tours.

They range from $60-$80 and include a 30-minute orientation class. Don't laugh, if you are dorky enough to ride one you are dorky enough to take an orientation class.

Related Stories:
·   Walkless Walking Tours [Fodor's TravelWire]
·   Mr.Calacanis Goes to Paris [Jaunted.com]