Screenshot: Dump your Lonely Planet travel guide

OK, not quite yet since the site I’m gonna talk about is still in Beta and needs some serious improvement, but at least it’s going in the very right direction.

Every single time I travel with a book I am frustrated by my travel guide because:
a/ It’s super heavy and I won’t read one fifth of the content so I tear pages apart, city after city, to only carry with me what I really need that day,
b/ It is not really adapted to what I am looking for, since it’s the same guide for every single person who buys it.

I guess that the guy who founded Technorati agrees, since he launched Offbeat Guides. A site that allows you to make some very personalized travel books. Tell them where you live (so that they can give you contextual info like timezone differences, embassies and consulates for your home country, language guides, exchange rates, electrical adapters needed…), where you’re going to (among 30,000 city destinations), when (include information about local festivals, events, club meetings, sports teams, concerts, and other timely information) and where you’re staying (so that your hotel is highlighted on the maps).

Their system then pulls information from various sites, using both freely available information as well as licensed information from partners like Wikitravel, Wikipedia, Flickr, Eventful, Upcoming, Meetup, the World Factbook, and many other local sources.

Next step: customize it (delete sections that you don’t need, add some pages here and there…) and when you’re done, you can get your guide in multiple formats:

- As a full-color book,
- As a PDF suitable for printing on your home printer, or downloading onto your mobile phone or reading device, or
- On the web so you can read through the book on-line, and update information before and during your trip.

Sweet. But plug this is with some kind of recommendation engine that would take into account what friends/people like you enjoyed during their trip, and you have the perfect, tailor-made travel guide. Offbeat team, I would really appreciate if you could pull that up before my next trip, sometimes in March! One can dream…