Geovative Solutions

Catch the Wave of Summer Tourism

noreply@blogger.com (Lane Roney) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 04:14:00 +0000

Summer is coming and so are the tourists. As the weather heats up in the northern hemisphere, more and more travelers are online planning their well-deserved vacations and anxiously-awaited trips. No better way to grab their attention than with web-based multimedia presentations of your area attractions. Flaunt your travel destination using our special promotion: For the next two weeks only, Geovative Solutions is providing a lifetime 50% discount off a GeoTour Pro or Premier membership for brand new subscribers. That's $199/mo or $1,990/yr for GeoTour Premier (usually $399/mo) and $49/mo or $490/yr for GeoTour Pro (usually $99/mo) for signups from now through Wednesday, May 18, 2011. Sign up here with promo code SUMMERPREMIER (Premier membership) or SUMMERPRO (Pro membership) and bring the masses your way.

GeoTour App for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, Now Live on the App Store!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 02:22:00 +0000

The long-awaited GeoTour app for Apple devices is live on the App Store. This GeoTour mobile app turns any iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch into a personal GPS tour guide by enabling users to search, download, and display GPS tours, called GeoTours. Along the way, users can navigate the tour locations on a map, obtain directions to tour locations using Google Maps, and view multimedia -- video, audio, images, and text -- associated with each location.

The GeoTour app functions as a player of tours, aka GeoTours, rather than as a tour in itself. This app plays any GeoTour on the Geovative website, which includes over 20,000 GeoTours and is growing daily. The GeoTour app enables users to search by keywords or find GeoTours near their current location. GeoTours can be easily downloaded and saved to an Apple device. Multimedia content can either be streamed or downloaded to users' devices, the latter of which is great for use in areas with limited network access.

GeoTourists can view all location on a map, as well their current location. GeoTourists can click on any point of interest to preview its multimedia content. When the GeoTourist is close to any point of interest on the tour they are experiencing, the app automatically triggers the multimedia content for that point of interest.

To create GeoTours to play on this GeoTour app, go to Geovative.com and create a user account. To download the GeoTour app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, go to GeoTour on the App Store. From the GeoTour app, you can then search and download tours.

Social Marketing Tips for Travel Businesses

noreply@blogger.com (Jackson Everett) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:51:00 +0000

We are always on the lookout for websites, tools, tips and videos that can help you market your destinations better. This particular video offers a brief overview of social media marketing on Twitter and other Web 2.0 sites. We hope you get an idea or two from it.

Promote your destination with full featured Premier membership

noreply@blogger.com (Jackson Everett) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:49:00 +0000

Encourage tourism to your destination by creating GPS tour guides with the newly enhanced Premier Membership of our GeoTour Creator. This full-featured, web-based application enables you to define points of interest using text, audio, photo and video media. Your GeoTour can be viewed online and downloaded by travelers to a GPS or mp3 device and used as a mobile travel guide.

You get full access, unlimited storage and hosting to develop tours that can be discovered on our GeoTour Xchange search engine and your own branded micro-site. You can also market each tour independently through your website, blog, email and social media campaigns. We even handle shopping cart, payment and fulfillment of each tour purchase, saving you the trouble of processing the sale. To top it off, we provide reporting tools to help you track interest, tour downloads and revenue generated.

Our Premier Membership offers the following benefits.

GEOTOUR CREATOR
Create, edit, redesign or delete your GeoTours at any time with full content control and unlimited storage and hosting.

GEOTOUR XCHANGE
Our advanced search options direct visitors to your GeoTours. Your uniquely branded micro-site displays an index of all your available tour products.

REVENUE GENERATION
Offer free or premium GeoTours from our website and websites of your choice. Sell advertising that links to local businesses. Attract visitors to your destination.

CREATIVE SERVICES
Our expert team can handle web design, integration and content development for you.

Contact us today so we can walk you through this unique tool that will help visitors explore your destination in a new and exciting way. See our GeoTour Premier page on the web to learn more.

New GeoTour Memberships

noreply@blogger.com (Jackson Everett) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 22:30:00 +0000

We recently did a review of our membership packages and made some changes based on consumer demand and the increasing popularity of our GeoTour Creator. We found that GeoTour is used in two different ways; Sharing and Promotion.

We discovered that some members just built a tour or two to share with friends and family or to try the product out. These members also downloaded tours to their GPS device for their own enjoyment. So we classified this group of people as enthusiasts, users who love the cool concept of GPS tour creation.

We also found that we have some members who use GeoTour to promote a destination by selling a GPS tour or offering it as a free value to an existing product or offer. We called these people experts since they are more focused on a business model for marketing their tours.

So we were faced with accommodating two different groups with a functional product that would suit specific purposes. We did not want to create two separate products so we decided to categorize features of the product based on a tiered membership.

The new memberships allow an inexpensive point of entry for enthusiasts with the Lite and Plus memberships. And the Pro and Premier memberships provide a bridge into a more profitable business model to be used by entrepreneurs and destination marketing experts.
Here is a quick breakdown of the new memberships along with links to more details

Lite: This is our Friends and Family Fun Edition that is a free membership level open to all GPS enthusiasts who want to create a few tours to use and share. Tours can be shared with anyone across the world through GeoTours Xchange.
Compare GeoTour Lite features with all GeoTour Memberships

Plus: GeoTour Plus is our Social Edition that offers you an inexpensive solution for developing your own GPS tours to share or sell to friends, family and fans. Tours can be shared or sold to anyone across the world through GeoTours Xchange or through our Facebook Application.
View more information on GeoTours Plus

Pro: GeoTour Pro is our Professional Edition and is designed for any travel agency, micro-business, pro-blogger or independent professional wishing to market their destination using the newest technology available in tourism! Tours can be shared or sold to anyone across the world through GeoTours Xchange, on your web site, blog, or through our Facebook Application.
View more information on GeoTours Pro

Premier: GeoTour Premier is our full-featured Enterprise Edition designed for any organization wishing to market their destination using the newest technology available in tourism. With GeoTour Premier, you can create personalized Micro-Sites, add tours to your own web page using Tour Widgets, and view detailed statistics and graphs about your tours. Plus, GeoTour Premier is ad-free and you get UNLIMITED media storage space!
View more information on GeoTours Premier

Tweet me! 10 steps to promote your GeoTour on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Jackson Everett) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:48:00 +0000

All the rage online is Twitter. The big question is if it is a fad or a new communication tool that will last the test of time?

Time will tell, but for now, the debate is if the medium is about communication or promotion. Any good marketer will tell you that promotion is communication and communication is promotion. However, Twitter and social media in general is best when the focus is on communication that educates and informs others about the value of something you have to offer or promote. Think of it as a conversation with friends rather than a commercial for your business.

If you don't know by now, Twitter is a micro-blog. An ultra simplistic social website that allows you to set up a brief profile, link to or "follow" other's profiles and have them link to or "follow" yours. Then you are able to post or "tweet" a message no longer than 140 characters for all of your followers to see. Simple as that.

Twitter can be a place for an individual to tell all of their "followers" what they are doing at any point in the day (eg. "Just got home from work and heading to see the new Transformers movie" or "looks like we are having pizza tonight with the kids").

Twitter can also be used to inform your followers about important news (eg. "traffic is bad heading home on I-95, better take the backroads" or "Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died today, I'm in shock!!"

Now you are asking, what does this have to do with Geovative and my GeoTours? It's simple. Use Twitter to let people know about your tours, your travel, your insights on destinations, etc. Especially Tweet on GeoTours you have just completed or updated.

Here are the 10 steps you need to put in place to promote your tours on Twitter:

1. Set up a Twitter profile for your GeoTours and link to your blog or GeoTours Microsite
2. Do a Twitter search to find related "Tweets" on your GeoTour destinations
3. Check out the Twitter profiles of the people who Tweeted and "follow" them
4. Then follow all of their followers
5. Try to follow about 20 new people a day or 100 a week
6. They will be notified and many will follow you in return
7. Now invite everyone on your email contact list to follow you on your new Twitter link
8. Put a Twitter link or feed on your blog so people can easy follow you
9. Over time, stop following some people. Ideal to have more people following you. 2/3 ratio.
10. Now Tweet. At least once a day.

Tip: Go to BudURL to learn how to create short links to your GeoTour pages or specific blog posts. The BudURL not only allows you to shrink the number of characters but also allows you to track the number of people that use that link. Great for promotional tracking results.

Here are some example Tweets to model:

"Just created a GPS Tour on Yellowstone National Park. 50 points of interest that I hand selected. You can find it at http://budurl.com/YSNP"

"I just updated the New York City GeoTour with restaurants on the top 100 list this year. Tweet back the ones you tried. http://budurl.com/NYC"

"Read article today on San Fran and recent tourism boom. Article link http://budURL.com/SFA and San Fran GeoTour link http://budURL.com/SF"

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and we will be happy to follow you as you promote your GeoTours on Geovative.com. Our Twitter link is twitter.com/geovative

Marketing with the GeoTour Facebook App

noreply@blogger.com (Jackson Everett) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:21:00 +0000

Facebook currently has over 250 million active users with 120 million accessing their account everyday. If you want to promote your GeoTours, this is the place to do it and we just completed developing our Facebook App to make it easy for you to get your tours in front of those users and allow you to directly share your tours with your own Facebook network.

We also set up a Geovative Solutions business page on Facebook and really want you to become a fan to help in promoting our GeoTour creator and all of the tours available through GeoTour Xchange. You dont have to be Geovative member to be a fan of Geovative on Favebook so invite your Facebook network to our pages.

So how can you use Facebook to attract visitors and encourage downloads of your GeoTours? There are 3 ways you can promote your tours on Facebook and it is so easy you will wonder why you have not done it already.

1. Status Update: Your Facebook status update allows you to insert a URL link. Simply write a few words about the GeoTour you want to share with your Facebook network and include the full URL in the text. You can find the URL for your tour on your GeoTour page at the bottom of the header description of your tour. If you are a Pro or Premier member with Geovative, then you can also share the link to your Micro-Site which can be found on your Micro-Site Setup page in Geovative.

2. GeoTour Facebook App: Add our new Facebook App and share with your friends. By activating the application, your tours will be visible from inside Facebook. You can even select which tours you want to share through the app. We also made it possible for all tours that are shared through GeoTours Xchange to show on the Browse Tours section of the app which means your tours could be shared and downloaded by other Facebook users that are not in your network. This gives you more exposure and opportunity to promote your GeoTours.

3. Facebook Avertise: Pay per click advertising on Facebook allows you to target people that will have the most interest in your GeoTour. You can select people who live in a particular area or have certain demographics. Your ad will use a photo you select along with brief text and a link to your GeoTour or Micro-Site. You can see how other Facebook ads appear by looking to the right column of your own Facebook page. The best thing about Facebook Ads is it allows you to set a budget for clickthroughs which means you will never spend more than you can afford.

Give the new Facebook features a try and let us know how it works for you or if you have any questions or suggestions. Here are the links to our Facebook Page and App. Enjoy!!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Become a Fan of our Facebook Page and invite your friends to share in the fun
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Geovative-Solutions/11322243316

Activate the GeoTour Facebook App and share your tour creations with all your friends on Facebook.
http://apps.facebook.com/geotours/

New Features Announced

noreply@blogger.com (Jackson Everett) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:21:00 +0000

Over the past 6 months we have been working on a variety of upgrades and enhancements to the Geovative website and our GeoTour Creator (a.k.a. Tour Builder). Many of these new features have been implemented at the request of various Geovative members. Over the next few weeks we will be posting details of our new features and enhancements as well as some ideas for using the features to promote, sell and share your GeoTours more effectively.

We are excited to showcase some of the user controls you now have when setting up a tour as well as help you to drive traffic to your tours using our new Facebook app. You may have already noticed some of our new features and memberships and you will want to come back soon and see the redesign of our website. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed if you have not already and watch for updates in the coming days.

Adventure Travel World Summit - South America

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:10:00 +0000

Geovative Solutions CEO Lane Roney is on his way to Sao Paulo, Brazil for the Adventure Travel World Summit, held September 3 - 6, 2008. He is scheduled to present at a session titled "Innovation & Best Practices" from 10:30 am - 12:00 pm on Friday, September 5 . The focus of this presentation will be making the best use of digital technologies (e.g., GPS) and media to promote places and engage travelers. For details on Lane's session, view the agenda for the Summit and see Day 3, Session 3, Track 4.Planning on going and want to meet Lane in person? Send us a message through our contact form!

TomTom and Garmin Route Downloads!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:29:00 +0000

We've added two new download formats to GeoTours Web--Garmin Routes and TomTom.

Garmin Routes

Would you like to be automatically guided to each tour location when you download a tour in the Garmin TourGuide format? Now you can! Routes are currently compatible with the Garmin nuvi 7xx, 8xx, 9xx, and 5000, all zumo devices, and the StreetPilot 7200 and 7500. When you're downloading a tour to your Garmin GPS device, you'll see a link to download the route. Click this link and follow the instructions to download and install the route to your compatible Garmin device.

TomTom

Now you can download any tour to a TomTom GO or ONE device. Simply select the TomTom download format on the Download Tour page and follow the instructions provided. Unfortunately, TomTom does not have a POI format like Garmin does with the Garmin TourGuide Format, so the download won't contain any audio or images--just the location names. However, you can also download all the audio and images from the tour and load them to your TomTom device. Then, you can play them manually once you're at the tour locations.

Enjoy!

Sell GPS Tours with GeoTours Premium

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:08:00 +0000

Need a new revenue stream for your web site? Now GeoTours Premium lets you SELL the tours you've created! When you choose to sell a tour, users can view all the information (locations, images, audio, etc.) on your tour page or widget, but they must purchase the tour before they are able to download it in any of our compatible download formats (Garmin and TomTom devices, smartphones running GeoTours Mobile, iPods, Google Earth, and more!). As an added benefit, users who try to download your tour through GeoTours Xchange will also be required to purchase it.

You can choose to sell any of the tours you've created and YOU set the price. Every three months, we'll send you a payment containing your revenue from the prior quarter's sales less our commission.

If you've spent the time to create a professional tour or want to capitalize on your current tours, sign up for GeoTours Premium and begin selling tours today!

Refer Users and Get Cash!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 03:10:00 +0000

Need some cash? Read below!

We just finished putting the final touches on the Geovative Affiliate Program. With the Geovative Affiliate Program, we will pay you $17.50 for each paying user your refer to GeoTours Premium. Now that can add up fast!

Here are a few other key points about the Geovative Affiliate Program:

Membership is FREE!
After signing up, you will receive your own unique Affiliate URL that you can use to direct users to our site. Each time a user clicks on your Affiliate URL link, we'll keep track of it.
You can easily create your own image links by choosing from a group of 12 images/banners and then copying and pasting the generated HTML code to your web site.
We provide you with instantaneous reports showing your number of clicks, number of users, and all payment history.
Payments are made quarterly via PayPal.

Learn More

Introducing GeoTours Premium

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 23:29:00 +0000

We're proud to announce the latest addition to the GeoTours family -- GeoTours Premium. GeoTours Premium adds many features that can be useful in promoting and sharing your GPS tours across the web.

These new features include:

Tour Widgets - embed your GPS tours in any web page or blog of your choice. You customize exactly how your tour will look. more information
Mini-Sites - create and configure your very own Mini-Site with up to six pages to showcase your GPS tours. The page content, layout, color scheme are all fully configurable and up to you. more information
Increased File Storage Limit - GeoTours Premium offers you 250MB; that's 10 times as much as your normal GeoTours account! more information
Enhanced Tour Reporting - now you can see detailed information about how your tours are being accessed. You'll get dynamic, up-to-date charts and graphs depicting your tour statistics such as the number of views, downloads, download types, and more! more information
Personalized Branding - you choose exactly how you want your tours, Mini-Site, and Tour Widgets to appear. The branding feature allows you to choose the color of more than 10 page components and upload your own custom header image. more information
Professional Tour Creation Services - whether you need help with audio engineering, graphic design, copy editing/creation, or even if you would like someone to come to your location to create a tour for you, we can help! more information

We all know that GPS devices are the way of the future, and with GPS devices comes GPS tourism. GeoTours Premium offers you all the tools you need to create, showcase, and promote your destination through GPS tourism. Start using GeoTours Premium to begin driving traffic to your destination today!

GeoTours Premium is a paid service with a free 1-month trial available. To view more information or to sign up, click here.

Taking GPS Tours to New Heights

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 02:22:00 +0000

Scott Rock, Mark Rowlands, and Randy Waldman

Mark Rowlands is taking GPS tours to new heights. Mark uses GeoTours Web to create GPS tours that he then downloads to his Garmin nuvi. But here's the kicker--rather than taking his tour in a car or on foot like the rest of us, he takes it in his helicopter! Mark already rents his Robinson R44 helicopter for movie shoots, aerial photos, training, and more, but he hopes to find a new niche for his helicopter--GPS tours over Los Angeles and surrounding areas. During a recent trip to California, I had the opportunity to meet up with Mark and take an aerial tour.

We put a quick video together showcasing the GPS tour here:

Mark found the Geovative.com site a while back after seeking a solution that would allow him to create and give GPS tours on his Garmin iQue 3600. GeoTours iQue was a perfect fit for him. After creating a tour and trying it out on his iQue, he quickly came up wtih the idea of giving GPS tours from his helicopter.

Since then, Mark has upgraded to a Garmin nuvi 350 and uses the Garmin TourGuide feature. Along with the TourGuide feature, Mark also uses the nuvi's MP3 player. "I like being able to play background audio during the tour and have the tour location audio cut in when we pass the location," says Mark. The helicopter has an auxilary audio input which Mark plugs the nuvi into so all occupants can hear the audio.

Because the nuvi is an automotive unit, it still has its quirks when being used in the air, such as "snapping" to the nearest road or displaying "Driving South" even though you're in the air, but these issues are easily overcome by changing the nuvi's settings. The other tweak mark has to make is setting the proximity to a much larger distance than would be used for a driving tour.

We at Geovative Solutions wish to thank Mark for sharing his story with us as well as for the sample tour. We wish you luck on your endeavor, and thanks for using GeoTours!

Have your own innovative idea for using GPS tours? Let us know and we may showcase it on our blog!

Location Proximity

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:35:00 +0000

In a recent blog post, we announced the ability to set the proximity in which a Garmin TourGuide location triggers. We initially put this setting at the tour level. Since then, we've had requests for a more granular approach to setting location proximity. A simple example is if you have a tour that includes a mountain peak in the distance and a restaurant. You don't want to use the same proximity for each location. Instead, you'd want to use a smaller proximity for the restaurant and a larger proximity for the mountain peak.

Thus, we have recently added support to set the proximity on a location-by-location basis. You'll still see the same proximity field when creating a new tour. However, the meaning of this field has changed. It now serves as the "default" proximity distance for all locations in the tour. When you add a new location to a tour, the default proximity distance will be auto-populated in the Proximity field on the Add Location form (you'll have to click "More Options" first). If you wish to make that location's distance different than the default value, go ahead! Only that specific location will be affected.

If you want to change a location's proximity in the future, simply click the Edit Location button and you can easily change the location. Want to change the default tour-level proximity? Then simply click the "Edit Tour Settings" option in the Tour Options drop-down menu.

In adding this new feature, we set the proximity for each location to it's current tour proximity distance, so you should see no change in your tour's performance.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

Enhanced TourGuide Support

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 03:38:00 +0000

We've just finished upgrading and enhancing the Garmin TourGuide download feature. Now, when you download a tour as a Garmin TourGuide file, you'll see the page shown below. From this page, you'll be able to choose from three ways to download the TourGuide file.

Option 3 is our original method of downloading TourGuide files to your PC to load using POI Loader. Option 2 is the new method of dynamically creating a GPI file that you can then transfer to your Garmin GPS device (more info).

Our newest feature, Option 1, provides a one-step process to transfer the TourGuide file to your Garmin device. This method uses the Garmin Communicator Plugin (which is also used to create tours using saved locations on your Garmin device - more info) to connect your device to the GeoTours application. Once Garmin Communicator detects your device, the TourGuide file will be automatically created and transferred to your device. Once the transfer is complete, you're ready to go take your tour!

New Tour Features

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 02:46:00 +0000

We've been hard at work to make GeoTours Web even more user-friendly and have incorporated some suggestions received from our users. We believe these features will be a tremendous help in creating and administering your tours. Check out the new features below!

If you haven't already noticed, the tour menu has been improved and turned into a drop-down menu. The left side gives tour options that allow you to perform various tasks on the tour, and the right side allows you to quickly download the tour into a format of your choice.

Within the new Tour Options drop-down menu, you'll now see a new option called Edit Tour Order. This option allows you to quickly and easily modify the order of your tour locations. Simply move them up or down, then click Update and your tour order is now in the order you specified.

You'll also notice two new options on the Edit Tour page. The first, Proximity, allows you to specify, in feet, the distance you need to be from the tour location when the associated multimedia is displayed. Once set, the distance will carry through in the various download formats. The second, Show Route, allows you to specify whether you want the driving route automatically displayed (or not displayed) on your tour.

Another update we've made is the ability to be automatically notified via e-mail whenever someone posts a comment to a tour you've created. Now you'll know the moment you have a new comment posted on any of your tours.

Enjoy these new features, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them to our forum or contact us.

Improved Downloads!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:30:00 +0000

Downloading a tour just got even easier! We've made a few key improvements to the way tours are downloaded which should make it even easier and quicker to take your tour offline and into the "real" world.

The improvements include:

Garmin TourGuide Files - no longer must you download the files necessary to load using Garmin POI Loader. Instead, you can directly download the tour's Garmin TourGuide POI file in .GPI format. Simply save it to your GPS device's Garmin\POI directory, and off you go! If you'd rather download the GPS Exchange (GPX) file and media files to use POI Loader, that feature is still available.

Quick Downloads From Tour Page - now, you can go to a tour's download page with one click by clicking the "Download As..." dropdown box at the top of any tour web page. From this dropdown, select the type or format that you want to download the tour in. If you'd rather choose your download type by looking at a list of compatible devices, then choose the "Choose by Device" option.

GPX Only and Media Only Download Options - if you want to download the GPX file or media files separately, now you can. Just choose the appropriate option in the "Download As..." dropdown box.

Easily Import Tour Locations

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 03:27:00 +0000

We just finished developing two new methods to add locations to your tours:

Import from a Garmin GPS Device - using the new Garmin Communicator Plugin, you can upload any saved point on your compatible Garmin device to your tour. This makes it extremely simple to log locations and create tours! Garmin Communicator Plugin is compatible with any Garmin device that connects to your computer via a USB cable.

Upload a GPS Exchange (GPX) File - already have GPS information stored in a GPX file? Now you can simply upload the file to GeoTours Web and it will be automatically detect the locations and allow you to add them to your tour. For more information on the GPX format, click here.

For both methods, after the tour locations are detected, you will be presented with a list of them. From this list, you can select one or multiple locations, then click "Import" and the locations will be automatically added to your tour.

You will see these two new options on the Add Tour Location section on your tour's page (see below).

As always, if you have any questions or problems with these new features, contact us.

GeoTours Mobile

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 05:43:00 +0000

Please join us in welcoming the latest addition to the GeoTours family--GeoTours Mobile!! GeoTours Mobile allows you to turn your mobile device (Smartphone or PDA) into a digital GPS tour guide. With GeoTours Mobile, you can import tours created with GeoTours Web. At each tour location, the associated media (audio, image, or text) will be automatically played. You can also see how far and in which direction each tour location is from your current location.

GeoTours Mobile is compatible with any device running Windows Mobile 5.0 or Pocket PC 2003. Integrated or attached GPS receivers are supported. However, a GPS receiver is not required since tour locations can be "previewed" without a valid GPS signal.

GeoTours Mobile is shareware. To download a free trial, click here. To purchase a full version for $29.99, click here.

Click here for much more information on GeoTours Mobile.

Driving Directions and Routes

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 01:42:00 +0000

Ever wonder if the tour route you've designed is the most efficient? Want to provide your users (or yourself) with written driving directions throughout your tour? Wait no longer--the answer is here! You will now see two new menu options on your tour pages, Show/Hide Route and Get Directions (see above).

Show/Hide Route will display a route beginning at your first tour location and ending at your last tour location, with stops at every intermediate location along the way. See the screenshot below for an example. Remember that if your tour route isn't the most efficient, you can always rearrange the order of your tour locations by clicking the Move Up or Move Down green arrow buttons on the Tour page.

If you would rather have detailed driving directions to each of the tour locations, simply click on the Get Directions link. This will bring you to a page that displays all of your tour locations on a map and detailed directions shown beneath. The page also shows the multimedia attached to each location (if any) so you can see everything in one place!

Note that driving directions and routes will not be shown if they cannot be calculated. For instance, if there's one tour location in New York City, and another location in London, directions won't be calculated (unless the US and UK decide to build an intercontinental highway sometime soon!).

We hope you enjoy these brand-new features! Be sure to give us feedback on them via our Contact page. Keep in mind that these features will work great if you're trying to share your tour with someone without a GPS receiver!

Increased Storage Space!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 02:35:00 +0000

We've just upgraded and have passed on the benefits to you! Now, instead of 10 megabytes of storage space for your GeoTours images and audio files, you now have 25 MB. That's a 250% increase! And as usual, it's all for FREE!

The Geovative Team

Google Earth Integration

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:58:00 +0000

GeoTours has been Googlized! You can now download and view your tours in Google Earth. Just select Google Earth (KML) on the Download page for your tour. Then click Open and your tour will open directly in Google Earth.

New Sharing Features

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:18:00 +0000

Some exciting features have been added to GeoTours shared on the GeoTours Xchange. Read below to find out more...

Stats Dashboard

Now you can easily see your tour's statistics by using the Stats Dashboard. Here, you can see the number of views, average and number of ratings, number of times other users have added your tour to their Favorites, and the number of comments other users have made about your tour.

Share Tours on the Web

You can now share your tours on various web sites such as Del.icio.us, Digg, and Facebook. Simply click the appropriate button underneath the Statistics Dashboard and begin sharing your tour across the web! If you'd rather link directly to your tour from a blog or web page, simply copy the URL shown in the URL text field. Click in the text field and then go to Edit - Copy to copy the URL to your clipboard and then paste it whereever you want. The URL is a permalink that will always take you directly to your shared tour.

Note that these features are only available on shared tours. If your tour isn't already shared, share it today!

Images and Text!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Rock) — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 15:11:00 +0000

We've added some exciting new features to GeoTours--images and text*! Now, each tour location can also include an image (uploaded by you), a text description, and an audio file. This lets you share your travel experiences in two new ways!

We've also made some user interface improvements including an enhanced statistics view for shared tours, a scrolling tour location box, a Flash audio player that lets you listen to audio files right from the tour page, and a URL field that displays the external URL to your tour (with this you can link to your shared tour from any web page or blog).

Log in now and check out these great new features.

*NOTE: Image and text data can be viewed on the web, but not downloaded to a GPS device. Audio, however, can still be viewed on the web or download and viewed on a supported GPS device or MP3 player.