Adventure Travel World Summit - South America
by Scott Rock - 9/2/08 8:10 AMGeovative 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!
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TomTom and Garmin Route Downloads!
by Scott Rock - 4/8/08 8:29 PMWe'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!
Labels: garmin routes, garmin tourguide, gps devices, gps tours, nuvi, streetpilot, tomtom, zumo
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Sell GPS Tours with GeoTours Premium
by Scott Rock -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!
Labels: geotours premium, sell tours
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Refer Users and Get Cash!
by Scott Rock - 2/5/08 9:10 PMNeed 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.
Sign up for the Geovative Affiliate Program and start earning today!
Labels: affiliate program, earn money, geotours, geovative
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Introducing GeoTours Premium
by Scott Rock - 11/25/07 5:29 PMWe'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.
Labels: destination marketing organization, dmo, garmin tourguide, gps tourguide, gps tourism, gps tours
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Taking GPS Tours to New Heights
by Scott Rock - 10/19/07 9:22 PM
Scott Rock, Mark Rowlands, and Randy WaldmanMark 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!
Labels: california, garmin tourguide, geotours, geovative, gps tours, helicopter, hollywood sign, los angeles, robinson r44
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Location Proximity
by Scott Rock - 10/17/07 1:35 PMIn 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.
Labels: garmin tourguide, geotours, geotours web, gps tourguide, gps tours, proximity
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Enhanced TourGuide Support
by Scott Rock - 8/2/07 10:38 PMWe'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!
Labels: garmin, garmin communicator, garmin poi loader, geotours, geotours web, tourguide
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New Tour Features
by Scott Rock -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.
Labels: geotours, geotours web, geovative, gps tours, new features
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