Chokti - Travel Site
Friday, January 11, 2008 at 03:19PM 
Even though summer is nearly gone, now could be the perfect time to plan a vacation. Cheap airfare and a lack of crowds can make nearly any destination appealing in the off-season. If you're planning a trip and would like to know about some must-see destinations or attractions in the area, or just want some suggestions of things to do, check out Chokti, a travel site full of user-generated information that'll make planning any trip a little easier.
Whether you're looking for a day-trip nearby or an overseas jaunt, Chokti can help you find tour information, destination suggestions, even audio and video tours that can
help you get around once you're there. For example, today's featured production at Chokti is a video tutorial for the Paris Metro system. You can find other video tours of destinations such as St. Petersburg and download audio tours of places such as the Notre Dame and Rick Steve's list of must-sees in Krakow.
If you want to check out what Chokti has to offer when it comes to a particular location, you can click the global map on the front page and drill down to the location you're traveling to. Users at Chokti add tours, destinations, and information about sights to see in their areas or places they've visited as pushpins on the map. For example, there are over 517 points of interest in the United States, and if you drill all the way down to Washington, DC, you'll see the 19 specific destinations that Chokti members suggested.
Select one of the specific destinations to see it plotted on a Google map and to bring up any associated audio and video tours with the destination, Web sites, user-submitted journals and photos, and more information about the location.
If for some reason you don't find the destination you're looking for, you can always ask for it on the Tour Requests page. Often the requester finds a Web page or RSS feed with podcasts, video, and photos of a destination and asks the site moderators to add the destination to Chokti's list. Because Chokti's content is completely user-generated, members can add pushpins all over the world for locations they think others will find interesting, submit their own travel journals and photos, and add links to more information.
It appears that Chokti scrubs other popular sites for information as well, and it links to a large number of YouTube videos and other publicly available podcasts and tour guides. Between this and allowing its members to freely update and add destinations, audio and video guides, and travel information, the service is remarkably robust. Most of the information centers around North America and Europe, but if you're planning a trip to Australia or New Zealand, you'll find information there as well. The Asia, Africa, and South America sections are a bit underdeveloped, but as the service grows and more members sign up, those sections could fill out easily.
