I recently took the new free mobile iPad app from Discover Ohio for a test spin and found that I liked it.
Tim and I each downloaded the tour guide app to our iPads and found that it took less than five minutes to download it to our devices.
Looking at the app on my full-sized iPad screen was a lot like seeing the usual magazine-sized paper guide, but the pages looked great on Tim's iPad mini as well.
"I like it!" were the first words out of Tim's mouth within minutes of downloading the app to his device and beginning to move through the book.
I've downloaded a number of tourism guides for various Midwestern destinations to my computer and usually found them clunky because they are often difficult to manipulate, slow-moving and lack the truly interactive features that make moving from site to site an easy and pleasurable experience.
Marblehead lighthouse
Our experience with Discover Ohio's app was definitely a smoother experience, especially as the app allowed us to swipe across the screen to move from page to page rather than having to stop and push a "next" button and wait for the next page or two to load as do many other tour guides' online versions I've used. I was able to swipe from page to page and scroll down or touch icons for maps or more information on individual pages.
While I do like to consume a lot of travel information via iPhone apps because of their extreme portability, I think apps like the Discover Ohio tour guide work better in the larger format and space availability of the iPad. It wouldn't hurt my feelings to eventually see a mobile phone version of the app, although I would assume it would have to be a scaled-down version of the iPad app. (The Cleveland Museum of Art's mobile phone app I recently reviewed is another case in point. The mobile phone version of this app works well, but between the space it takes up on my phone and squinting at the tiny screen as I'm looking at the artworks, this is another app I think may work best on an iPad).
We found the Discover Ohio iPad tour guide app to be very responsive when clicking on links that took us to the external pages for specific attractions and other destination marketing organizations, and easily moving back to the main tour book site when we finished looking at the external links.
The events calendars in the iPad app run through August at this point, with plans to update the app later this summer to include events happening later in the year.
The sound and video are so good with the app that when I checked out the Ohio Symbols page to learn about things like the Ohio state bird, Tim said it sounded like there was a bird in the house as I sat across the room from him and clicked on the cardinal picture, which played a short clip of the bird's song!
We quickly got used to moving through the book and using the controls that led to specific sections of the book, calling up Ohio Tourism's various social media channels and viewing extra features like short videos.
I used to travel more frequently with a laptop computer, but I'm traveling more these days with my iPad instead of my laptop, so carrying my tour guides and brochures with me as iPad apps makes a lot of sense and seems mighty convenient.
You can order the conventional 164-page paper guide, which comes with a separate booklet for the most recent calendar of events in the state, or you can view the Ohio eTravel Guide online, which reads like the more conventional requiring users to push an arrow to change pages and use their mouse to navigate around individual pages.
But go ahead and live large--download the free iPad app to enjoy a more interactive version of the guide that includes additional photos and video.
The app debuted on February 13, 2014.
© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved