Category: Travel

Best Travel books / guides / sites

After I threw away about “two feet of books” (in other words, I don’t know how many) and an hour’s hard work, I have made my travel bookshelf back in shape. After this “shake-up”, now I have “only” 200 travel books, about half of them are in English, and others in Chinese. Compare to my other IT / photography / web design / usability reference books, business books, comic books and novels, it is still quite a lot.

My travel book library

The reason I bought so many travel books is because, believe it or not, I like to “study” travel books … in other words, understand how they were written, how the information is categorized, presented, cross-referenced etc. etc. In Internet’s term, I like to study the information arhitecture of travel books. However, seriously, after studied so many travel books, I still have not found my ideal book.

All along I believe the best way to plan a trip is not to go to Internet to research, as there are too many information in the Internet and you have no way to tell which one is correct and which one is useful for your style of travel. Searching thru travel books and guides are not necessary the better way as well, mainly because it’s hard to search the details in the physical book. In addition, most books are just a long list of attractions but doesn’t tell you how to connect the attractions together.

Out of the 200 books from that mini-library, the best ones so far are the Daytrips series from Hastings House. All these books let you plan your trip day by day with all the attractions, transportation and dining details.

Therefore I think … will it be great if I can go to one single website and plan my all trips, with all the information I need in a day by day fashion (just like the Daytrips series) ? That idea has been planted in my mind for almost 10 years now, and about 3 and a half year ago I wrote this blog post to illustrate the possible database design …

Not sure you have the same trouble / idea like this or not but if you believe you cannot buy the best travel book from bookstores or Amazon, and you think you have to make your own travel guides – let me know. May be it is about time to develop the best travel site on earth.

Shanghai, Shanghai

Not the first time to visit Shanghai and certainly will not be the last. Like many famous cities around the world, Shanghai is a photographer’s paradise. This huge city’s  landscape practically changes every few months, but there are still lots of traditional buildings scatter around. If you want to see what an awakened dragon look alike, then go to Shanghai to check it out … seeing is believing.

Some recent photos of the great city – Shanghai. Photos shot by Olympus E-P1, with lens Lumix 20 mm or Olympus M.Zuiko 9-18 mm.

3 years, 2 cameras, 1 new photobook

It’s hard to explain … I have big hard disks to store all the photos, and of course good software to manipulate / view / backup the photos. However, I still like to print the photos out, and then look at them, touch them, smell them … So here is it, my second photo book – Mirror with memory (this link works for iPad as well).

This photo book is a collection of my travel photos in the past 3 years with Olympus E-510 and E-P1.

Enjoy some samples below (for non-iPad browser only) !!

User experience of purchasing a subway ticket

No, I am not talking about purchasing a ticket of the subway in Hong Kong, as you know the system and the vending machines here are really among the best in the world. Instead, I would like to share with you from the experience I had in the Washington DC trip last month.

In fact, I am not the only one get frustrated by the subway ticketing system (they call it “Metro”), there is even a presentation prepared on why there is a need to redesign the Metro ticket vending machine. Following is a picture of the vending machine and according to the official site of Metro, you need to follow these steps to purchase a ticket (they call it farecard):

To buy farecard, you need to:

  1. Select B (single farecard) or C (multiple farecards). If buying more than one, select the quantity you want.
  2. Use the (+) or (-) button to choose the value.
  3. Press C to view your selection.
  4. Press C again to confirm your selection.
  5. Insert money and/or farecard.

Please note that the buttons “A”, “B”, “C” are the tiny buttons next to the big orange color circle labeled “1”. In fact before step 1, you need to search around the ticketing lobby to find the up-to-date map / poster for the correct fare, also check the time as the fare is based on the time of day (!!) and destination.

And for step 2, instead of key in the fare amount (the vending machine is not that smart …), you have to use the (+) and (-) buttons to choose the dollars AND the cents – yes there are two (+) buttons and two (-) buttons underneath the tiny screen in the middle, one for the dollar amount and one for cent amount.

And can you see how confusing of step 5 ? In summary, very very poor user interface and therefore user experience of just buying a cheap subway ticket !!

And talking about User Experience, how can you miss the UX Conference in Hong Kong (UXHK) early next year ? Check out the office site – www.uxhongkong.com for details and register now. Great stuff !!

[flickrvideo]http://www.flickr.com/photos/szuc/4726544193/[/flickrvideo]