Schmap Player is an incredibly cool free mapping application that you can download with or without maps. There are free downloadable maps for dozens of cities for Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

What’s It For?

It’s great for vacation planning or even for a move. In fact, I spent 20 minutes earlier planning my move to Toronto (later this year), finding a few affordable hotels I can stay at until I find a suitable work/live studio. It can also be used to publish an events schedule for a reunion or other get-together.

How Is It?

So far, I only have good things to say about Schmap. The interface is clean and easy to use. Map points of interest often have contact information such as phone numbers, email addresses, and/or links to web pages. If you have Firefox 2.0+ web browser, you can install a plugin that let’s you make phone calls via Skype by clicking on the number.

It’s a great little app with so many features that I’ve barely begun to try them all. Once nice little feature is that after you’ve selected some points of interest (one or more categories), you can “play” a sequence that steps through the information for each point.

What Else Can It Do?

Other features include recommended tours (per city), directories, photos, historical information, and details about distinct neighbourhoods. If you’ve done a tour and written your own reviews of points of interest (malls, stores, clubs, theatres, restaurants, etc.), you can publish your own “schmaplet”.

A schmaplet is a web page with a Google map showing the points reviewed and a set of photos. When you mouse over a photo of a point of interest, information about that point will be displayed. You can use schmaplets to create an events agenda for any large function such as a conference or reunion, and publish an interactive guide to schmapletts.com.

Conclusion

What’s great for travellers is that because this is a standalone app, you don’t need the Internet except for downloading maps. So you can install Schmap and a few maps beforehand on a laptop and take it with you as you travel.

I did create a screencast image, but until I can convert it into a web format and upload it, I only have the screen snapshot at top. I haven’t done justice to all the features available, so I recommend you try it for yourself. The only disappointment is that there are no maps for Asian, African, and South American countries.

Related Content

Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackback