Did you know? Internet facts and figures

Description

Covering every continent, including Antarctica, Lonely Planet publishes an ever-increasing list of guides, atlases, phrase books and travel literature. Lonely Planet on-line provides a comprehensive travel guide for Internet users and other Internet sites, such as Yahoo.

The colourful home page is quick to appear and displays a column of subject headings and icons as well as more descriptive subject information to tempt the visitor to look beyond this initial page. The list of subjects, of which some are obvious and others a little obscure, includes destinations, the thorn tree, the scoop, eKno, on the road, postcards, propaganda, health, subWWWay and frequently asked questions.

The presence of navigation menus made the site’s wealth of information easy to find. Even where the content was provided by third parties, it was always easy to backtrack, to make sideways leaps and still find the way around comfortably.

Finding information is made very easy with a couple of main ways of reaching your destination. Firstly there is a search tool where a keyword(s) or phrase can be entered to find the chosen destination or subject.

For example, looking for ‘safari’ produced 59 results and these can be sorted by relevance or by date. And as with some search engines, when you find the right sort of result you can then ask to find more similar ones. Click the relevant topic and detailed information is given on the selected destination.

The destinations link from the home page is the other key way of finding information on a destination.

Once again things are kept simple giving the user every option of finding a destination – use interactive maps, select from a list, or if you’re really just not sure where this off-the-beaten-track destination is in the world, type it in the search box.

There’s great information everywhere on this site – just beware of sections which are actually written by the traveller and not verified or endorsed by Lonely Planet.

A wealth of information is contained on each destination country and is neatly broken down into 18 key subject areas plus a map.

The most helpful topics include: facts at a glance, facts for the traveller, money and costs (a currency converter for non-US users would be useful here), when to go, getting around and attractions.

And, of course, there is also succinct interesting information on subjects such as the history and economy of the country.

The health section is very informative, offering advice on pre-departure planning, keeping healthy when abroad, women’s health and diseases and ailments.

And to find out what is going on around the world, the scoop section provides up to date news articles on destinations.

Further sections on the site, such as postcards, get travellers involved in the site – but remember this is one of those sections where advice and tips are not verified by Lonely Planet.

For those with a bit more time on their hands check out the ‘on the road’ section which features travel writing extracts.

The whole site has character with its subject icons, simple graphics and friendly approach.

And as you would expect from people that write for a living, the site has clear, punchy, humourous writing throughout.

The lack of destination pictures, even thumbnail images, is a little disappointing, but then perhaps that’s why people buy books!

The site is exceptionally easy to use.

Pages are quick to download and navigation is very user-friendly with the same icons and subject headings used throughout the site. The search tool also makes it quick to find the information you need.

For those in a hurry a text-only option allows the user to download pages without any graphics to get to the beef even faster.

Yes – although US focused and aimed at the independent traveller there is a lot of useful information for the holidaymaker to research as well as for the travel agent to offer advice to clients.

In particular the destinations and health sections provide some good, concise, up-to-date information which is quick and easy to find.

In the UK today, consumers with access to the Internet are visiting an average of 10 Web sites a month and travel is becoming one of the most popular on-line purchases. However, there is still some concern regarding the safety of making purchases on-line, but there are ways to tell if the Internet connections are secure. Many transactional sites support Secure Sockets Layer technology to encrypt credit or debit-card numbers, name, address and other personal information that you send over the Internet. Encryption software converts your message into code so that it is transmitted securely over the Internet and can be read only by the person to whom it is being sent. To confirm the site is secure, you may be presented with a dialogue box which advises that you are being taken to a secure server, or you can look for the secure transaction symbol which will look like a padlock on the bottom of your browser screen. Another method is to click in View on your menu bar and select Page Info from the drop-down menu this will show whether the site is secure.