Traveling with our ebook: what guide do I take?

Guide? But for what? What is this crazy woman trying to talk about in this article? I know I haven't said it before, but besides reading and messing with the reader, traveling is one of my great hobbies and for that it is necessary (most of the time) to carry a good travel guide (or several) to help us move and discover our destination.

We already have Easter next here and surely a few of you have decided to take advantage of those days to make the rest envious take a whirlwind trip and get to know a city that you wanted. At least that's what I do when time and my wallet allow me to get away. And precisely in one of those little getaways, a couple of years ago, I tried carry a "travel guide" in my little reader, a Sony PRS-505. A complete success.

For this we have the opciónundoubtedly of buy a travel guide in digital format. For that we can go to Amazon or Casa del Libro, for example, where we can find guides in digital format, such as the Ecos Guides, also for example, which have a fairly affordable price and are very comfortable to plan a short trip. .

However, I I see a problem that is not exactly small (well, it depends on tastes): most of the guides that we can buy in digital format are created in pdf, thus, they retain their structure and appearance, but are awkward to handle with most small readers. Although not as much as a document created to be viewed in A4, they are still limited by the capabilities of each reader when it comes to managing pdf.

However, our reader, a bit of skill and a little time spent fiddling with Sigil or Jutoh (or the program that we like the most) will allow us to create a personalized guide, adjusted to our trip and our reader. It is not particularly difficult and can have many advantages when organizing ourselves.

Today, and knowing how our readers are, I always carry a paper guide as my "main guide", of the traditional ones (I especially like the visual guides of El País-Aguilar); I find it more convenient for a quick glance, to locate an explanation at a glance, a detail that catches my attention, but I find that the potential of digital guides is enormous.

But why does that potential seem enormous to me if with 16 levels of gray there is not much room for maneuver? Precisely because of what I was saying before: the customization capacity. If we want to take 10 traditional paper guides with us, it will be a bit complicated, if not impossible, but we can take everything we think we may need from 10-20-40 guides on a simple memory card.

Combining the information offered by the guides that we have in the public library of our city, Wikipedia, some travel blogs, the transport companies' website ... with Sigil and a little patience, we can take our trip perfectly organized , with all the information we need at our fingertips at any time.

Well, if you like to travel a bit on an adventure, maybe so much information seems superfluous, but I like to leave home with all possible contingencies covered, so in my reader I can keep a list with telephones and addresses of interest ( details of my hotel, emergencies, embassies, etc.), I can take each day organized with its "optimal" itinerary, indicating lines and public transport stops that I need to use, restaurants organized according to the opinions I have read, additional maps, main points that I want to visit with the information that I need to have, everything you can think of and everything "layout" according to my needs.

Have you already switched to digital travel guides? Do you still think that nothing like paper ones? Have you chosen the middle way and combine both possibilities? Tell us a little bit.

More information - How to create an e-book with Jutoh

Source - Echo Guides