Offbeat Guides = booktailor v2

I just read about and then created an offbeat guide to Boston for a trip I'm going to take this weekend. The steps to create it are simple, the ui is great, and I've always been a fan of .pdfs and web to print products. (I'm eagerly awaiting my new MOO cards) Did I pull the trigger and purchase it, well no, but  I did spend a lot of time reading up on Boston neighborhoods, and I could see buying one in the future. In the meantime ads and links for leads could be baked in for utility. I could see reserving a restaurant, etc.They seem to have covered an enormous number of places already. The idea is great, in many ways a breakthrough but in other ways an older idea whose time is right. A few years ago I was a big fan of a company called Booktailor which was a Bertlesmann funded startup which unfortunately shut during the downturn in 2001. They licensed editorial from publishers and then printed a Filofax like custom guide for you to take on your trip. A lot of time has passed and made this more viable, OffbeatGuides can gather wikipedia, localeze, and eventful info, they can license content and add more and more interesting things. Things have changed - web to print has advanced (we are in a new era of web to print - MOO, JPG, and many others doing beautiful stuff - not publishers oddly but others) APIs didn't really exist, a .pdf isn't something to explain or provide a link to Adobe for, and the e-commerce is a no-brainer. So the timing is right.  I'd like to see them add great local blogs, or do something to pull in local news as an optional chapter. One of the things I loved about booktailor was the related literature which they might be able to do with google book search. I like the fact that Offbeat Guides lets you make custom chapters and paste in info so that is one way to accomodate this. And of course I love tours so pulling that in would be good too. As for biz dev they could power the awful AAA TripTik program, come with car rentals, hotel reservations etc. and the partnerships ops with places like trip advisor are ample.  There are really smart people behind this so it will be exciting to see where it goes. I've always loved this idea and it is great to see it live again.