mTrip is an augmented reality browser specifically developed with tourism in mind. It is without doubt the most compressive travel guide out there and regardless of your views on augmented reality, an essential application for the traveller.

Not only does mTrip enable you to navigate and find useful things in a city, the application downloads all the POIs to your phone and thereby eliminates all the roaming fees associated with travelling.

Like with the iPhone (sorry) the application sports an augmented reality view that enables you to see POIs in the camera window. Perfect for trying to identify those famous landmarks.

Features include:

• Automated Trip Planning -- Create your personalized travel itinerary with mTrip’s exclusive technology.
• Navigation & Augmented Reality -- Get directions and view the city through augmented reality
• Get expert content with ratings updated daily on your Android, iPhone or iPod Touch
• Trip Sharing -- Share postcards with family and friends on Facebook & email

mTrip in action

www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1P4ptyOwR4

Europe

• Amsterdam
• Barcelona
• Berlin
• Dublin
• Istanbul
• London
• Madrid
• Moscow
• Munich
• Paris
• Rome
• Venice
• Vienna

North America

• Chicago
• Los Angeles
• New York
• San Francisco
• Washington DC

Asia

• Beijing
• Shanghai
• Singapore
• Tokyo

It’s not just an effort to make travellers lives easier but an excellent idea to be kinder to the environment as the standard includes a 50% standby energy reduction over current chargers.

I wonder if this is paving the way for phones to eventually be shipped without a power lead? Think about it, if all our devices use the same charger would it be necessary to have yet another charger in the box?

Would you by a phone without a charger?

Now if laptop manufactures can just agree on a standard as well we could really travel light.

I went out last night, cool restaurant, very nice. After dinner did the usual pub crawl thing, and as you do in Tallinn sooner or later you end up in Hollywood. Generally speaking Tallinn is really cheap, less than £5 for a couple of G&Ts, this morning I am scratching my head wondering how I managed to spend nearly £80. I didn’t drink that much.

After making my way home from Hollywood I got lost, kind of hard to do in the centre of Tallinn but I still managed it. Tallinn is set around a square with my hotel just off it. Could I find it? Could I hell. I walked around for about 45 minutes looking for the dam place. At some point I cut though a grave yard and jumped over a wall. Looking down it looked like a 2 foot drop. Beer binoculars are wonderful things, after leaping over the wall it was more like 15. That hurt.

After that I staggered around a bit and fell down a bloody man hole. Either someone stole the cover or there just wasn’t one, either way I had my very own Mr Bean moment as I fell into the thing. I don’t know how deep it was, but the only thing stopping me from finding out was my elbows. It would have been funny except I managed to cut myself up pretty bad in the process. I ended up having to sleep wrapped up in a towel just so I didn’t bleed over the hotel sheets.

This morning I ache from all my aches and pains, the fun part is tonight I get to do it all over again, though hopefully minus the blood loss.

You can’t see it, and neither did I until I was climbing out it. But thats a man hole.

I have been lucky enough to travel to a good number of places, even luckier that in most cases someone else has picked up the bill. The trick is to get a business trip to a part of the world you want to visit.

I got thinking about what was my favourite place in the world I have visited. It’s actually difficult to decide. What make’s a trip special is the people you travel with or the people you visit. You can be in the most exciting place in the world and have a crap time because you are on your own, or because all you see is the airport, taxi, hotel and a conference centre.

I have had some good times travelling, always with friends doing work tours around Europe. Athens I will always remember as being one of the most expensive nights of my life. I spent some great times in Copenhagen sampling the Christmas beer and hot spice Christmas wine. I remember sitting in a hotel room in France in nothing but my boxer shorts when the maid burst in completely unannounced with a bucket of dirty water, looked at me, then walking into my bathroom to empty her bucket while I sat there stunned wondering what was going on. Funny enough 2 minutes later I was still sitting there wonder what happened when the door burst open yet again. Yeap same maid with another bucket of water to empty down my toilet. After that I locked the door. (yes she did try to come back) . In Helsinki I remember being with a few work colleagues and we asked the barman what drink he recommended. He brought us a platter of vodkas. In the morning I had the worst hangover of my life. I don’t want another one of those, ever! We went for a walk to clear our heads and found the sea completely frozen over, so we walked across the harbour on the frozen ice.

Las Vegas was and is always good fun, I got my one and only speeding ticket. 105mph in a 70 zone. I was lucky when the car hit 110 the limiter kicked in and cut power until you hit 90. That only cost me $50. I went out with a girl from Vegas for a year and travelled over every 2 months for a few weeks. I had my one and only Thanks Giving meal during that time. Las Vegas is still high on my lists of places I like.

Brazil is great. I love Brazil. If I could just get past the crime part I would like to live there, a house by the beach, a few coconut and banana trees and a swimming pool would be perfect. Sydney was ok, we had trouble finding beer there. Nothing seemed to be open at night time. Friends assure me that there are loads of bars open and we were just unlucky enough not to find them.

If I have to come up with a favourite then based on how people have looked after me during my stay. Egypt was great; our representatives took us to see the Pyramids, Sphinx, museums and shopping to a local bizarre. I did feel sad when I saw the Sphinx. For thousands of years the Sphinx has gazed out over the banks of the river Nile basking in its glory, these days it over looks a Pizza hut. That’s progress for you. In 50 years it probably will be a Pizza hut.

The 2 places I always wanted to visit were the USA and Taiwan. USA because when I was growing up all the TV programs came from there. Streets of San Francisco, Hill Street Blues, Rockford files etc so it always seemed like a great place to visit. All the cars looked bigger. Taiwan because chances are when you look at a piece of electrical it will have made in Taiwan on it somewhere, and being a gadget person, even at an early age it sounded exotic.

Having just got back from Taiwan I can say it rates very highly on my list, probably as my all time favourite place, purely because of the people I met. My work colleagues would take me out drinking every night, even though they didn’t drink themselves. And in a sadistic sort of way, its fun watching non drinks polish off 4 gin and tonics.

The only downside about Taipei was the food. I struggle with prawns at the best of times, I think last week I ate more prawns than I have done in the last 35 years. I remember calling home one night and the wife asked me what I had for dinner, I said frogs legs to which she started shouting at me telling me what an animal I am. It took 5 minutes for her to calm down, turns out she heard DOGS legs. But the whole point of travelling is to try different food, so experimenting with authentic Chinese food is still better than cheese burger.

So that’s my trips up to date. Next week off to Tallinn again, I hear its snowing there and freezing cold.

Normally you think okay, fleece me and give him some extra cash, however he asked “would you like TB 700 of beer to take away”.

Bonus, 2 bottles of Taiwan beer back to the hotel.

As I turned around a guy came up to me and said “you want taxi? No problem I give you taxi, you pay at hotel”. Getting into a strangers car is never a good idea but he gave me a limousine hire card and look legit. Besides in my wallet all I had was: 3,000 Japanese Yen, 50 Czech whatever’s, £6.21 and 5 Tesco’s computers for schools vouchers. I was hardly a robbers dream. He took me to the taxi rank and indeed he called a limo over, no boring taxi for me. I expected the guy not to speak English, that’s why I printed out the address of the hotel. The only trouble was the driver didn’t read English, but at least we got to the hotel, somehow. At that point I was too tired to really care. I would have quiet happy slept the night in the back of the car.

Not seen anything of the city yet, the guys at PChome are taking me out to shops in a few hours. Perhaps having problems with the cash machine will turn out to be a blessing.