The most important social network worldwide has announce that from tomorrow on, there will be an alliance with Spotify. Last week there was a similar agreement between Facebook and Pandora. Now the Premium users of the music program will be able to share their music with their Facebook friends and friends will have the option to rate and comment about it.

Some time ago we talked about the iPad, the new gadget that apple presented to the world as the solution to everything. The apple device that may revolutionise travel guides and inflight enterteinment will not be available in UK until the end of the month.

Although this weekend it will be on sale in the US, new technology lovers in the UK will have to wait until the end of April to discover the applications and how useful this device is. It is still uncertain how much we will have to pay to be one of the firsts to have the iPad at home, however we hope to hear opinions from our readers: Is it the solution to everything? Is it as useful as we thought travelling-wise? Unless we travel to the US we will have to wait yet another month to find out!

The experience of travelling, either abroad or inside the country, has changed dramatically in very small amount of time, nobody can deny it. Gone are the days of packing tour guides and there is space for something else where we use to have big road maps (the car’s back seat). You don’t need to have a special device to listen to your favourite songs and your music will not occupy any space, no CDs or Walkman or Discman: new mobile phones have it all!

There are so many applications for this new generation of phones that you can do an astonishing variety of things: from listening to the last hits or a classic you love ( Pandora app), to knowing exactly where you are and how to go to that museum your best friend recommended (poynt). You can even have a tourist information guide with audio in your iphone with just one click (London or York pocket) or book a restaurant through Internet.

Some of us still prefer the old ways, the rest of us have already adapted to this new method of travelling with a great deal of advantages: technology saves you money, space and time when travelling.

From the 15th to the 18th of February, the beautiful city of Barcelona, in Spain, becomes the place for mobile leaders to collaborate and gather as well as exhibiting their advances in mobile phones.

In 2009, Mobile World Congress hosted approximately 47,000 mobile professionals from 182 countries. In addition, more than 2,400 members of the press reported from the event, representing more than 1,500 media groups from 76 countries. This year, even with the crisis, the numbers will be quite similar. Although some handset makers (such as one of the leaders in the market, NOKIA) have skipped this year’s congress, there is still plenty of mobile industry news about cell phones, carriers, services, and software applications.

Some of the highlights of the event this years are the cheapest mobile phone in the world, a mobile phone that turns into a projector, phones for aged people… and the Windows Phone 7, the phone that Microsoft will launch at the end of the year. If you want to know more about this congress visit www.mobileworldcongress.com.

Steve Job, Apple’s Chief Executive Officer unveiled his company’s last gadget on Wednesday: the iPad. It is, as he defined it, a mixture between an iphone and a laptop, it is a tablet device the size of a book, a centimetre thick but what can this device do for us?

As travellers, we will focus on the characteristics that will change travelling costumes: for example, to refer to how long the battery lasted, Steve Job said you could watch movies in a flight from San Francisco to Tokio non stop, that is ten hours! Another program the ipad includes is a map application, which of course is something we have already seen in the iTouch or other smartphones but what about travel guides?

As the iPad is also an e-book but with GPS and internet technology, will we have normal travel guides in it? Or will they be more than just e-travel guides, more interactive? Pictures, how to get there from where you are, the distance between where you are and where the place is… Could this be a whole new life for travel guides? What do you think?

Some time ago, we talked about some applications on Google that were very useful to plan a holiday or just to get an idea of what a city or a country looks like when we don’t have the time to travel. Today, we have discovered something else: webcams.travel. It is still a beta version but the idea couldn’t be better: webcams situated in strategic places all over the world so you can see exactly what it would be like to be there in real time.

Are you going somewhere soon and would like to know whether it is dark at 5 or not? Try it! Or are you just tired of working and want to daydream about where you could be if you were rich enough and didn’t have to work? Go for it! At the moment, images are updated every five minutes in some places, every hour in others but as we have said, it is only a beta version…

However, as good and entertaining as this webpage can be… Nothing is better than a real holiday and getting to know your destination by walking around.

According to a study carried out, it is estimated that over 14 million SMS were sent on Christmas Eve between 9:00pm and midnight and the same amount were sent again for the 31st of December 2009.
The total could reach 30 million SMS in two days or rather…. in only 6 hours!! Can you imagine the profits for the 3 main mobile phone companies? But it’s probably better not to focus our topic on that aspect, right?
Everyone sends and receives lots of SMS around this time of year. It’s easy, fast and efficient, but it always so nice to receive a traditional, hand-written Christmas card.
Did you receive more SMS this year than last year?
Which did you use more: social networks or your mobile phone?
Which was the clever text message you liked the best?
Happy 2010!

A few months ago in Blogtelopia we discussed how full body scanners work and the debate being raised about the limits on people’s privacy. These scanners are installed in some airports in Europe and the United States. The debate on this topic has hit the headlines again, after the failed terrorist attack by Al Qaeda on 25 December in Detroit. The United Kingdom and Holland have announced their intention to make widespread use of this technology. In contrast, while we await news as to the Spanish government’s position on the subject, the Spanish Association of Air Transport Users and Professionals (ASETRA) has already declared to be against using full body scanners in Spanish airports, stating that they do not guarantee passengers’ fundamental rights. For now this system is voluntary and therefore travellers may decline to go through it.
Do you think that using these scanners is justified to strengthen airport security?

Jon Rawlinson is a filmmaker who specialises in documentaries. His career has taken him all over the world to capture his adventures on video in countless different destinations such as Tahiti, Bora Bora and Jordan. The videos on his blog are spectacular to watch and they also serve as a source of inspiration for planning a future trip. Instead of dealing with all the stress involved with the festivities going on at this time of year, why not sit back and relax with the images that Jon filmed at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan. Its main tank features the world’s second largest acrylic glass panel and it holds whale sharks and manta rays.

We can get ourselves lost, but not our mobiles. Every day more programmes are being developed (the majority of which are based on GPS technology) that allow travellers to move around more freely in the cities they visit, thanks to their mobile phones. They detect our location. Not only do they know where we are, but they also tell us where to find nearby restaurants, ATM’s or the closest tube station. Just like in the movie “Minority Report,” in the not too distant future, we will be able to personalise our mobile phone so that it only shows us the information we want it to. Many telephone and videogame companies are currently investing heavily in this direction. The Iphone 3GS is one of these devices with the most applications of this type. It has a built-in GPS and compass. iTacitus is the name of a European Union project that aims to apply these technologies to provide the reconstructed images of the buildings that we visit that are in ruins . With the help of your mobile, not only can you walk in between the ruins in Rome (some of which require the traveller to have a very vivid imagination), but you can also get an idea of what the ground that you are standing on actually looked like originally. Did you know that the Parthenon in Greece used to be blue and red? Are we perhaps facing the beginning of the end of tourist guidebooks?