In Your Pocket at Euro 2012

We have been very busy these past few months putting together a whole load of brand new content specially for the European football championships, which begin this Friday in Poland and Ukraine.

With over 20 years of experience in writing guides to the rapidly changing central European region we have all the most important information you might need to plan your trip.

More importantly, we have all the information you need as to what to do when you get here. We have produced special guides – designed with football fans in mind – to Warsaw, Gdansk, Poznan and Wroclaw.

What’s more, we have also produced content to all of these cities in the languages of the competing countries.

Warsaw In Your Pocket Euro 2012 is available in Russian and Greek, Wroclaw In Your Pocket Euro 2012 is available in Russian, Greek and Czech, Gdansk In Your Pocket Euro 2012 is in Croatian, Italian, German and Spanish, Poznan In Your Pocket Euro 2012 is available in Croatian and Italian.

Although no games will be played in Krakow, we have even put together a special guide to the city for fottball fans, as the England team – and many supporters – are likely to be based there.

For all cities, in all languages, there is a PDF to download, for free!

We even put together a video for fans in Warsaw

Over in Ukraine, we have unrivalled guides to both Kiev and Lviv. Both are available as PDFs, which you can download for free.

Our iPhone app, which includes six of the host cities (and Krakow) can be downloaded for free here. They all have special Euro 2012 content.

You should also make sure you follow us on Twitter. Each day throughout the tournament we will be available to answer all sorts of questions, as well as sharing news and information from our people on the ground.

The In Your Pocket Twitter accounts to follow are:

@PoznanIYP

@GdanskIYP

@WroclawIYP

@WarsawIYP

@KrakowIYP

@UkraineIYP

The tournament promises to be a landmark event in the history of both nations while the visiting fan is promised a fascinating experience quite different from those you may have had at previous tournaments. In Your Pocket knows these countries like no other travel guide publisher. We really hope that our guides will make your visit as simple to organise and as enjoyable as possible.

maps.inyourpocket.com

It’s been all go these past few months at In Your Pocket offices across Europe, as researchers and editors have been feverishly plotting GPS coordinates for the more than 50,000 hotels, restaurants, bars, clubs, cafes, embassies and such like that we have in our database.

The result was made available to the public at large today: maps.inyourpocket.com

Every city we cover (and the list is growing all the time) is now available as a map-led guide, with seamless links to our main website inyourpocket.com (which, recently named by the Guardian as one of the world’s best 50 travel websites, has been upgraded and given a bit of a facelift to incorporate the maps) and back again.

To all intents and purposes you can now choose how you want your In Your Pocket online city guide: text-led or map-led.

We hope you like it.

When villains get lost in layout

Any of our readers who happen to be in Poland this week and who have a habit of watching the evening news might have seen us hauled over the proverbial coals on Wednesday night, where you could have seen us all but accused of having Nazi sympathies.

The problem arose from this article published in the latest issue of Poznan In Your Pocket, which appeared under the headline Local Heroes instead of Local Heroes & Villains.

Here is the (offending) article:

Local Heroes & Villains

Now, call us biased, but we think that even if the headline was Local Heroes there is no suggestion of us liking Nazis.

No, what happened was a mistake. An error. When taking a title from one place and transferring it to another, part was lost. It happens. That really ought to be the end of it.

Besides, do we really need to point to the other features we have written about Poznan over the years?

For those who fell
The Great Escape
World War II Poznan

Or what about our extensive report on the role of Poles in cracking the Enigma code?

We leave readers to make up their own minds as to whether we have Nazi sympathies or not.

In Your Pocket in Finanz und Wirtschaft

The Editor-in-chief was in Switzerland’s top financial publication Finanz und Wirtschaft on Saturday, talking all things In Your Pocket.

Click on the image for the full page/article:

We’re hiring

In Your Pocket is looking for two writers to fill vacancies in Poland. The jobs are full-time, with one writer based in Warsaw, the other in Krakow.

You will be writing for a number of In Your Pocket guides in Poland, as well as the inyourpocket.com website and our new iPhone apps. A highly competitive local salary is offered in exchange.

Candidates must be native English speakers, and would ideally already be living in Poland, or at least be familiar with the country. Speaking Polish is a bonus but not obligatory; nor is it an advantage.

All that matters to us is how you write in English.

If you are interested and want to take our editorial assessment, please contact the Editor-in-chief, Craig Turp, at editor@inyourpocket.com.

In Your Pocket comes to the iPhone

In Your Pocket city guides are now on your iPhone. The first cities: Athens, Berlin, Bucharest and Dublin have just been released into the iTunes store, with many more to follow over the next few days. They cost just £3.49 each, and – like the print guides – will be updated every two months.

All updates will be free!

In Your Pocket’s iPhone apps have been exclusively developed by Meta4Labs, a Geneva-based start-up specialising in bespoke apps for publishers.

Our apps preserve the best features of In Your Pocket city guides, from reliability and accuracy of information to our witty writing style, while incorporating the latest technology offered by the iPhone.

In Your Pocket apps include thorough hotel, restaurant, bar, club, transport and directory listings, as well as video and location data. They are all fully searchable.

We think they are the best travel apps available on the market right now. Buy one now and see, or take advantage of our introductory offer: you can download the Berlin app for free for a limited time.

In Your Pocket Goes Dutch

With all of the many interesting cities that the Netherlands has to offer, you might be puzzled why we chose ’s-Hertogenbosch (the city also known as Den Bosch) as the first Dutch city to add to the growing In Your Pocket European publishing empire.

We’re certain that once you see ’s-Hertogenbosch you’ll understand why we selected this little jewel, that the Dutch visit in droves and that foreigners are only now discovering.

We have our usual full guide to the city – updated every three months – which you can pick up locally in Den Bosch, or download for free here.

We have video over at our You Tube channel, including a tour of the city’s canals: the canal tour Dutch people (who would not be seen dead on Amsterdam’s canals) take.

We have a chapter devoted to Coffeeshops, as well as a rundown of the dos and don’ts when it comes to high times in Den Bosch.

There is a word form the mayor, a bit about the city’s most famous son, and everything else you have come to expect from Europe’s leading publisher of locally produced city guides.

No wonder they call us essential.

Sunday Times Travel Magazine

Article on local alternatives to hefty guidebooks in April’s Sunday Times Travel Magazine.

In Your Pocket present and correct, of course. Click on the image to download the full article as a PDF.

In Your Pocket Readership Survey: Preliminary Results

We recently carried out a pretty major survey of our readership here at In Your Pocket. We thank those people who took part, and we will be announcing the winner of the draw (23 great prizes will be heading somebody’s way) right here, very soon.

A team of well-trained monkeys is currently hunkered down scanning, analyzing and deciphering all your answers, but in anticipation of the full findings, we thought we would share a few nuggets we have mined from the result so far…

- More than 52 per cent of our readers chose In Your Pocket because it is more up to date than the competition

- 95 per cent of our readers would recommend In Your Pocket guides to friends

- The restaurant chapter is the most popular; sightseeing is a close second

- An incredible 98 per cent of readers said that In Your Pocket guides had helped them make a decision about spending money in a city

We also note with glee that a large number of readers find the adverts in In Your Pocket guides to be ‘a useful addition to the editorial content.’

Stand by for more details. In the spirit of transparency we intend making the full results open to our readership.

Eastern Europeans should strive to present a more modern face to visitors

There is an excellent Europe.view column by Edward Lucas on The Economist’s website this week, imploring the countries of Eastern Europe to present a more modern face to visitors:

‘Visitors to eastern Europe expect beautiful old buildings (Hanseatic, Art Nouveau, Baroque, Ottoman or Levantine) and miserable history, plus fiery drinks, unhealthy food, peasant handicrafts and folk-dancing. All the more reason, therefore, to offer them something that shakes their stereotypes, emphasising modernity, innovation, creativity, optimism and other notions not normally associated with the ex-communist world.’

You can read the full article here.

It’s all thought provoking stuff. In Your Pocket likes to think that ever since we began publishing our city guides, back in Vilnius in 1992, we have always striven to do just that, to present a more modern face to visitors. The current cover of our Vilnius guide features a Lithuanian ski resort: who even knew you could ski in Lithuania?

Or the Forest Opera near Sopot in Poland? Currently being turned into one of Europe’s most modern outdoor opera venues.

And we would add that the need to look forward and not back is not limited to eastern Europe. What about Belfast, Northern Ireland? Take a look at the political murals left over from the Troubles by all means, but enjoy the other contemporary public art too.

Lithuanian ski resorts, modern Polish opera houses and Belfast’s contemporary public art are not in your average guide book that dwells on the historical and little else.

But they are In Your Pocket.