Comments

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  Simon & Baker Travel Review October 14, 2010 at 12:57am

  I think there's a way to block them from framejacking your site...
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  Ed Wetschler October 13, 2010 at 10:57pm

  Thanks, Josh; I hadn't looked up and noticed that. Good link you provide here for info about framejacking, and it makes me glad that I use bit.ly. The ethical issue here is not just that framejacking annoys people, but that it is, in a sense, a form of plagiarizing. I guess the funny part is that about.com has, in effect, saved $ by "borrowing" information about Seville -- but that information is wrong.

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  Ed Wetschler October 13, 2010 at 8:52pm

  This just in: "Seville, on Spain's eastern coast, offers a Mediterranean climate [with] moderating temperatures."
  
  On Spain's east coast, you say? That's news to me. Worse, this is not from some fly-by-night little blog; this is from about.com:
  http://goeurope.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=goeuro...
  
  What other goofs have you found lately?
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  Max Pesling October 12, 2010 at 7:35pm

  Good golly, just read California's just cut off people from using their welfare debit cards on cruise ships and casinos. Seems "more than $69 million targeted at helping the needy pay their rent and clothe their children was accessed by debit card use in 49 other states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam between January 2007 and May 2010."
  
  This had to be stopped, of course, but I'm concerned this kind of story will be used by a certain political party to bash welfare and justify further cuts. Of course we have to curb the abuse, but isn't there a real need to protect the neediest in our society?
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  Ed Wetschler October 11, 2010 at 10:04pm

  Yes, and they produced Lee's. I really admire the way Lee has changed with the times -- not just staying current, but ahead of the pack.
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  Dick Jordan October 11, 2010 at 10:03pm

  Thanks, Ed.
  
  Yep, Lee was one of the panelists. The other panelists were from Sutro Media which produces iPhone guidebook apps.
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  Ed Wetschler October 11, 2010 at 9:54pm

  Great post, Dick, absolutely essential.
  
  Betcha a quarter one of those Bay Area journalists was Lee Foster.
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  Dick Jordan October 11, 2010 at 8:42pm

  Here's a few thoughts on the death of print guidebooks:
  
  1) I've just returned from a trip to British Columbia. I took along a print guidebook (Lonely Planet) and an e-guidebook (Frommers). I used both, but consulted the printed guidebook more often.
  
  2) At a Bay Area Travel Writers/American Society of Media Photographers meeting in San Francisco earlier this year, two guidebook writers gave a detailed comparison of their printed guidebooks and iPhone apps. They were spending far less time updating the iPhone apps, which would potentially have greater sales and produce more income than their print versions.
  
  3) I recently wrote a three part blog post entitled "The Guidebook In Your iPhone". Here's the link to the first installment: http://bit.ly/bg8ago
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  Sam Scribe October 8, 2010 at 9:13pm

  Many travel writers resent sites whose reviews aren't written by travel writers. But here's why the public should be wary of TripAdvisor, etc., too:
  
  "Earlier this year, I uploaded a fictitious nine-bedroom guesthouse – the 111 Hotel – using the address of the Telegraph Media Group and a picture of the office canteen. I added a couple of "over-the-top" reviews (with blatant hyperbole and five-star ratings). After 10 days of my constant tinkering it was finally spotted – but it was time enough for it to be rated in London's top 70 guesthouses (out of more than 300) and time enough for an unsuspecting traveller to be potentially duped into parting with a deposit or turning up at an address to be met by someone whose intentions would be unclear."
  
  And now it looks like there'll be a class action suit against Tripadvisor because of unsubstantiated, business-killing comments.
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  Ed Wetschler October 5, 2010 at 9:11pm

  Good comments, all -- well-thought out (well, this has been on our minds) and well said. The two comments I'll make here are unrelated to each other:
  1. At a recent meeting of SATW's Editors Council, more than one panelist argued that writers will make more money creating an iPhone app than writing a guidebook.
  2. After six years living part-time in Greenwich Village, I'm still impressed by the overwhelming tendency of tourists to wander around my nabe with guidebooks in their hands. What's more, it's almost always open to the map pages.