Happy New Year – may 2009 be a little less stressful than 2008!

It’s just approaching weekend time, so I’ll try to post some specific updates next week. But in the meantime, I did want to call attention to Google’s new wicked cool maps feature called Streetview. Rather than trying to describe it, it’s best if you check it out yourself – take an interactive walking tour of San Francisco’s Chinatown on www.visitsanfrancisco.cn. Just use the arrows to move up and down each street, and use your mouse to look all around. It really is an immersive and time-consuming experience!

I did it, got in this final post before the end of 2008! Earlier this month, launched visitMalaysia.in and visitMalaysia.cn, both of which are now sporting snazzy new templates.

Overall, it’s been a pretty good year for visitEarth, with steady traffic and revenue growth, hopefully providing a good springboard for the new year. Unfortunately, the stock markets have been far less kind, but here’s to a far more prosperous and stable 2009.

Happy New Year!
Bryan

Okay, did it! I’ve now changed the design, layout and structure for both the Indian and Chinese site templates. Examples can be found at Galapagos.in and Galapagos.cn. In additional to being a more open design and calling greater attention to the image representing each country, there’s also additional information for local times and a welcome message – all while taking up less important vertical space.

On a more technical note, I’ve condensed multiple different function calls for things like weather, photo links, currency exchange and related links into one single function, which has seemed to speed up the rendering time. Also made a few minor formatting and navigational touch-ups here and there. I still have work to do to deploy this template across other common pages like landing pages, contact pages and TravelPhotos.in and TravelPhotos.cn – but that will all happen likely in the new year.

I’ll try to post a final message tomorrow, the last day of 2008. Just in case I don’t, here’s to a healthy and hopefully more prosperous 2009…

Cheers!
Bryan

Okay, reworked a new template design as a test, and will sit on it for a day or so before applying it site-wide. The first iteration is on TravelVideos.in and TravelVideos.cn

Ironically, they are inspired by a mistake I made a few weeks ago, when I had the wrong style sheet reference, so had what seemed to be garbage appear – but I thought the end result looked really cool! I’ll stare at them for maybe another day or two in action, and make sure I’m happy with them before I make changes to all of visitEarth.asia

I’ll also have more geeky-oriented thoughts in a few days regarding how I’m handling multiple travel sites on the same server, and trying to be efficient with my php function calls

Cheers!
Bryan

Well, it now seems like once every two months is becoming my frequency here! The last couple months have been a real roller coaster in the financial markets, but it seems that people are still traveling, which means that life developing travel sites never stops…

Things have been very busy since I designed and developed the Everlast Tours web site, with a few other travel related websites coming soon. In the meantime, I have launched two new sites for both Finland (www.visitfinland.in & www.visitfinland.cn) and Brazil (www.visitbrazil.in and www.visitbrazil.cn). As always, each of these sites has some static travel tips and general tourist information (language, geography, maps, etc.), as well as videos. And there are some great Finnish and Brazilian photos, I’ll post some new links shortly.

I’m interested to see how the Brazil site fares; what with the market and currency exchange all over the map, I hope that Brazil and Carnaval can remain strong attractions for Latin America…

Out for now!
Bryan

Back again! Although this month has been slow in posting, it’s actually been due to a rather busy time.

In addition to visitEarth’s network of travel web sites, I’ve now launched a website design service element to support small, boutique tourism companies and tour operators. In additional to strategic consulting, site design, technical implementation, hosting and online marketing, visitEarth will provide free promotion and advertising on select sites. The services site is at www.visitearth.asia/services or www.visitearth.ca/services

As part of this launch, behind the scenes I’ve been working on a site for a new travel company based in East Africa and the US, called Everlast Tours & Safaris. They provide land and water adventures for Zanzibar, and guided safari tours to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater, as well as expeditions up Mt. Kilimanjaro. Initial marketing support is on Zanzibar.cn.

To view the Everlast Tours site, please check out www.everlasttours.com …

Cheers!
Bryan

Yes indeed, it’s been over 2 months since I last posted here! I’ve been a bit lazy with updates, but now getting back into the swing of things for the second half of the year. All of my active sites have now been moved to my new host, Hostgator – the primary server is now visitEarth.asia and all other sites reside within it. Also, just recently launched visitItaly.in and visitItaly.cn as well as photos from Venice, Italy located on TravelPhotos.in and TravelPhotos.cn

Finally, completed another video from our trip to Belize. This video is from our stay in Lamanai and is of the Mayan ruins just half a mile from where we were staying at Lamanai Outpost Lodge. While these aren’t the largest of the Maya civilization, they are some of the most important due to how long this particular culture lasted (almost 3500 years). I found the ruins compelling, I visited them 4 times – twice in the mornings and twice in the evenings.

Here’s the direct link: visitBelize.in

I’ve finally managed to get my Spain sites live! They are: visitSpain.cn and visitSpain.in. Both sites are in their early stage and have some general information about Spain, and I also posted the first video clip – an interactive video of Barcelona. You can select from a number of videos such as restaurants, markets and using public transportation, but by far my favourite is the video of common and helpful Spanish phrases.

Also, yesterday I added some photos of Spanish architecture and structures – there are some really amazing designs and buildings. The direct link is www.travelphotos.in/europe_and_uk/spain_-_architecture

Have a good weekend!
Bryan

Back again after taking a few days rest. Started the process of moving servers, but in the meantime I’ve posted some photos from Spain. It’s really remarkable the history, depth and variety of Spanish architecture both ancient and modern. I originally was just going to do a section on buildings but was overwhelmed so have broken it down – this first section is just churches, cathedrals, mosques, etc.

Have a look at, the direct link is www.travelphotos.in/europe_and_uk/spain_-_spanish_churches

Cheers!
Bryan