Jetpac City Guides

Jetpac City Guides recommended travel app on Telemundo's Acceso Total Show!

Read the full length app review on He Said Magazine

... But what better way to discover hidden gems in cities across the world than by spying on the Instagram photos of local citizens?

All that hashtag searching can be really time-consuming, so we’re happy to have a better method.

Say hello to version 2.0 of Jetpac City Guides, a Webby Award-winning app that pulls from publicly posted Instagram photos to help users find great things to do within categories like “10 Places Most Popular with Men,” “10 Restaurants with a View,” and “Bars Popular with LGBT.”

Jetpac City Guides can help you find new things to do in your own city, too. Plus, because you’re seeing photos taken by everyday Instagrammers, you can get a better idea of a place’s true appeal and clientele.

And how cool that the “Happiest Places” category in every city we searched features several LGBT bars and establishments. Because we are a people that love to have a great time.

Photo by Clive Darra

This post was originally posted on Jetpac CTO Pete Warden's blog, June 9th.

I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve managed to port the Deep Belief image recognition SDK to the Raspberry Pi! I’m excited about this because it shows that even tiny, cheap devices are capable of performing sophisticated computer vision tasks. I’ve talked a lot about how object detection is going to be commoditized and ubiquitous, but this is a tangible example of what I mean, and I’ve already had folks digging into some interesting applications; detecting endangered wildlife, traffic analysis, satellites, even intelligent toys.

I can process a frame in around three seconds, largely thanks to heavy use of the embedded GPU for heavy lifting on the math side. I had to spend quite a lot of time writing custom assembler programs for the Pi’s 12 parallel ‘QPU’ processors, but I’m grateful I could get access at that low a level. Broadcom only released the technical specs for their graphics chip in the last few months, and it’s taken a community effort to turn that into a usable set of examples and compilers. I ended up heavily patching one of the available assemblers to support more instructions, and created a set of helper macros for programming the DMA controller, so I’ve released those all as open source. I wish more manufacturers would follow Broadcom’s lead and give us access to their GPUs at the assembler level, there’s a lot of power in those chips but it’s so hard to tune algorithms to make use of them without being able to see how they work.

Many of our users use the photos on Jetpac City Guides to get a new look at places in their local neighborhood, but the app is also excellent for travel planning and for discovering local gems in places you're unfamiliar with. Most other mobile guides are only covering a handful of countries, but because Jetpac has data from Instagram photos for almost every city in the world, it isn’t constrained to being a local guide only for your own city, but you can find local gems in any country you're traveling to! 

Put yourself in a travel picture - anywhere in the world Now its even easier for you to put yourself in your dream travel photo, and find great places to go using Jetpac City Guides. 

A lot has happened in the app since version 1.0. We have gone from showing only a handful curated top guides to letting you search for any place in any city – anywhere in the world. You can even search for any object we recognize in photos (like mustaches, happy people or beautiful views)  and you can find where particular types of people go (like vegetarians, dog lovers, students etc.)  We really appreciate all the feedback we have received since we released the first version, from those who discovered us first, and our most active users who have helped us improve the app to what it is today - the Webbys Award Winner for Best Mobile Guide. Big thanks to the entire Jetpac community for all your love and support!  But you might wonder what exactly is new in the new version, so here’s a mini-guide to the new Jetpac City Guides:

Curate Your Own City Guides

In this version we have made it a lot easier for you who are using Jetpac City Guides to plan your upcoming vacation. Now all your saved favorites from any city will automatically be organized in folders that work as your own personalized city guides.

Advanced Image Search, e.g. "Restaurants popular with locals"

Sometimes you’re not just looking for any restaurant, but maybe one with a beautiful view, or the type of restaurants where the locals are hanging out. In the Jetpac City Guides app you can search for very specific things like “bars with a view” or “Japanese restaurants women love” to help you find exactly what you’re looking for!

Search For A Venue

Wonder what that place you just heard someone talking about is really like? Does the food look as good as they make it sound? Now you can look up any venue and check out the Instagram photos that people have shared and see if the crowd suits your taste of company. When planning your your vacation it will of course be places you’ve already heard about that you want to find and add to your city guide, and now you can search directly for millions of venues in any city in the world and save it to your favorites.

Search Nearby

Are you on the go and looking for something in particular nearby? The nearby search will show you results within the distance of your choice. 

See Top 10 Map

An overwhelming amount of users have requested being able to see the places in the guide shown on a map to get a sense of where they are located in relation to where you are. We’re excited to announce that in version 2.0 you can now see a map on top of all guides. You can click on the location marker to go directly to this place on the list.

View Full Screen Photos

Our photo quality algorithms are working hard to find only the best Instagram photos to show you and you’ve made it clear you would love to see them in all their glory, full size in full screen. Now you can, so when you see something you like, tap on the photo to let it fill your screen! (And if you see something inappropriate or unhelpful, please do your fellow Jetpac users a favor and flag it.)

Pin to Pinterest

TOP 10 Museums & Galleries in Hong Kong

Bali Island is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Asia. There are plenty of options of beautiful places to stay and these are the Top 10 Most Popular Places in Bali on Jetpac City Guides right now:

1. Bali Mandira Beach Resort & Spa

2. The St. Regis Bali Resort

3. The Breezes Bali Resort & Spa

4. Komaneka at Bisma

5. Temple Hill Residence Villa

(Photos provided by the hotels)

Embed Content From Jetpac City Guides On Your Site

Did you know you can embed any venue found on Jetpac City Guides on your own travel blog or website? Click the SHARE button at the bottom of the page to get your sharing options, then choose Embed.

  GUIDE WIDGET

Jetpac pride ourselves with being your go-to-source for the latest in hammock news. Remember the hammock tent? Or the winter hammock or the bathtub hammock?  

The new big thing is the flat hammock. Or the hammock chair. We haven't yet decided which feature is the coolest.

The Draumr™ Hammock by AMOK equipment was created by three Norwegian students at NTNU so you could sleep comfortable regardless of which position you like to sleep. Side sleeper? Back sleeper? Stomach sleeper? The flat lying position suits everyone.  The hammock can also be adjusted at various angles from the normal lying position up to a comfortable chair. 

In the period up to May 31 we offer a special presale price for those of you who would like to be the first owners of Amok′s new and unique hammock. Order now and save NOK 500. The price for international customers is US$ 365. Estimated date of delivery in North America and Europe is July 1st. The price includes free shipping to your local post office.

Follow our travel board on Pinterest to get the TOP PINS from the Jetpac City Guide for Pakistan Pakistan is one of those few countries in the world which has every kind of geological structure. It has the sea, desert (Sindh & Punjab), green mountains (North West Province), dry mountains (Balochistan), mountains covered with ice, rivers, rich land to cultivate (Punjab & Sindh), water resources, water falls, forests etc. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan contain the mountain ranges of the Himalayas, the Karakoram, and the Hindu Kush. Pakistan's highest point is K2, at 8,611m which is the second highest peak in the world. The Punjab province is a flat, alluvial plain whose rivers eventually join the Indus River and flow south to the Arabian Sea. Sindh lies between the Thar Desert the Rann of Kutch to the east, and the Kirthar range to the west. The Balochistan Plateau is arid and surrounded by dry mountains. Pakistan experiences frequent earthquakes, occasionally severe, especially in north and west. Pakistan is a world class destination for trekking and hiking. Horse riding is also very affordable, cycling opportunities abound. You can also shop to your heart's content, in massive range of markets and bazaars without worrying about your budget. Pakistani food mainly consists of various kinds of kebabs eaten with either flatbread or rice. Food tends range from mild to spicy depending on where you are and who your cook is. So state your preference before beginning to eat. In general, most of the food that you find in the high end hotels is also available in the markets (but European-style food is generally reserved for the former). (Wikitravel)

At Jetpac we do image processing on hundreds of millions of Instagram photos to produce Jetpac City Guides - the iPhone app that shows you the most popular restaurants, the pretties cocktails, the most scenic hikes etc. in every city in the world, based on how many good photos have been shared from there.

Help us make the app better and rate the guides for places YOU know best!