Some of the funniest and interesting signs photographed by MapVivo travelers all over the world, hand picked. Enjoy!

You can find more funny signs and other great travel photos on our Facebook Page.

If you found those funny, check out also some links we dugg up elsewhere on the web featuring some hillarious sign photos:

• Funny Signs at Geek Army
• Couple of funny signs from Australia
• Even more signs from StrangeFunnyWorld
• ..and some more from Gadling

Have a great week and keep smiling!

UPDATE (12:45 GMT): we’ve resolved the issues and MapVivo is back online. We’ll be watching the performance closely to make sure that it keeps running smoothly and no future malign attempts can slow down any of your journeys. Happy travels!

We’re really sorry, but today at 11:00 GMT we had to temporarily close MapVivo due to a possible attempt of an attack on our service.

You might have experienced MapVivo reacting reeeaaaaally slowly during last couple of hours, and we’d like to apologize for that. We’re doing our best to resolve those issues. All of your personal data and travel journals are absolutely safe.

A brief explanation of the problem: lately we’ve noticed an increasing number of automated search (and other) requests made to our service and apparently those are originating from China and Russia. Our engineers are working on blocking out all those automated queries that are seriously slowing down the whole service for all of MapVivo travelers.

You won’t be able to use your account while we take precautionary actions, but don’t worry, your account data and travel journals are safe. Please try accessing MapVivo again later today. Again – sorry for the inconvenience.

MapVivo Mobile app for Symbian S60 devices is almost ready! We need your help to make it 100% travel ready! Sharing your travels live with friends and family has never been easier!

We’ve been working very hard on the MapVivo Mobile app for Symbian S60 devices for the last couple of months. Now you can map your journey on the go and save it directly to MapVivo.com! We’ve done some testing ourselves but now we need your help. Before making the application public and available on MapVivo.com to all travelers we’d like to ask for your help to test it and help us track any bugs or issues that might have slipped past our testing regime.

To check out our brand new MapVivo Mobile app before everyone else gets to use it all you need is:

• A mobile phone with GPS
• Symbian as your the operating system on your mobile

Just contact us at feedback@mapvivo.com sending your IMEI number (in most cases type *#06# into your mobile phone),  device make and type. We need this information in order to make you a personal testing version.

With MapVivo mobile application you’ll be able to:

• Track your journey live and post photos and text descriptions from places you visit straight to http://mapvivo.com. Sharing your travels with friends and family has never been easier!
• See a map of nearby interesting places with entries submitted both by the fantastic and adventurous MapVivo travelers as well as pulled in from Wikipedia so you don’t miss any attractions or historical places worth your interest.

Here’s a list of the mobile phones we’ve tested MapVivo Mobile on so far:

Nokia 5320, Nokia E75, Nokia E55, Nokia E63, Nokia E66, Nokia E71, Nokia E71x, Nokia E72, Nokia N78 ,Nokia N79, Nokia N82, Nokia N85, Nokia N86 8MP, Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N96 , Nokia 6220classic, Nokia 6270 classic, Nokia 6210s, Nokia 5530 , Nokia 5800, Nokia N97.

If you own any of these you’ll sure have fun using MapVivo Mobile. If you own any other GPS enabled Symbian mobile phone then we also encourage to have a go!
Future development plan includes support for the iPhone and Android mobile platforms.

Happy Travels!

MapVivo Team.

Contest to win a $1000 travel voucher from MapVivo.com and Roundtheworldflights for the most inspirational travel journal has closed and the panel of judges have picked the winner.

Dmitry Yuskovets published an astonishing MapVivo journal detailing a 14 month long round the world journey that almost made us pack our bags and go. His mapvivo journal entitled “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe 2008-2009″ won the hearts and lit up travel fantasies of our judges. We’re really happy to send him the $1000 travel voucher from roundtheworldflights.com for his next trip.

As Dmitry himself wrote in the summary of his journey: “14 months have passed. 5 continents, countless towns, myriad amazing encounters, dozens of friends for life are now in my luggage. And - as it usually happens, a totally different person has returned from the journey.” We hope his next round the world journey will be as fascinating and life changing as this one!

The runner up prize winners have been also notified and received Bradt Travel Guides of their choice.

• Tom Vanthienen for his Australia mapvivo journal.
• Alex McNicol for his Jay and Alex do the world journal.
• Lee Moore for his Nepal in a Nutshell, Oriental Express and India in a week and a half travel journals.
• Bram Druckman for his Short Trip to Death Valley.

Thanks to everyone for the entries and if you would like to get inspired by great travel experiences check out mapvivo.com for more.

The esteemed jury members were Stuart Lodge – Director at roundtheworldflights.com, Adrian Phillips – Editorial Director at Bradt Travel Guides and your humble Tom Sieroń of MapVivo.

We also wanted to let you know that Bradt Travel Guides - one of the competition sponsors – are currently offering a 20% discount on their guides when ordered via website bradtguides.com: just quote DISCOUNT20 in the coupon code box. Looks like a great deal!

By the end of June entries for MapVivo & roundtheworldflights $1000 competition have closed. Check out the list of top 10 most inspiring Mapvivo journals submitted!

From the 10 runner up journeys our judges will award a $1,000 travel voucher to the author of the journey that most makes us want to pack our bags and go! Congratulations to all the participants – MapVivo journals submitted were amazing and captured the pure experience of travel!

In the next couple of days we will announce the grand prize winner and top 5 runner ups to receive Bradt Travel Guides of their choice. The announcement will be made on the mapvivo.com website, here on the blog and via Twitter, we’ll also contact the winners directly so you can’t miss it.

Did you miss the contest? More will follow! Just subscribe to our newsletter if you haven’t already (at mapvivo.com) or follow this blog and we’ll keep you posted!

In need of travel inspiration? We’ve recently happened across a great blog at opentravel.com which is full of travel ideas an inspiration, particularly this post:

Unreal landscapes on our very much real Earth are like gates to different worlds. These places blow our minds and cross the limits of our imagination.

Click to see some amazing images

So much to see on this earth – and so much to share (with MapVivo!)

MapVivo is now available in Italiano & Español (in additional to English, Polish and German) as a continuation of our efforts to span the globe with travel experiences.

As before, MapVivo will automatically show you content in your chosen language, plus any languages that you speak with our smart language filtering.

(dont forget to update your MapVivo profile with you language preferences)

Would you like to see MapVivo in your language? We’d be over the moon if you would like to translate it for us – drop me an email at mark [at] mapvivo [dot] com

Safe travels!

Want to know what it would be like to walk across China?

Last month we blogged about Christoph Rehage and his incredible journey across China – 4,600 kilometres on foot.

As well as creating a video of the trip, which according to The Times may be the best travel video of 2009, Chris has blogged the whole trip on his The Longest Way website, and as of today you can follow the journey on MapVivo too.

We currently have 237 days of his trip available for you to browse (it’s a fascinating story) and over the coming weeks  we’ll be adding a few new points every day so that you can continue to follow the full year of the adventure.

Link summary:

MapVivo Trip, Chris’s Blog (The Longest Way), Video

Since launching our Inspiring Travel Journals Competition with our friends at Roundtheworldflights we’ve had some exciting bids for the $1,000 prize.

We’re looking for journals which capture the raw, unplugged essence of the travel experience rather than lucid prose. So far we’ve not been disappointed - many of the entrants pass our critical test - does it make us want to just pack and go?

Here we present some of the most popular entries so far, along with some of our favourite moments from each journal which capture the pure experience of travel. – Got experiences to share? Sign-up (free of charge) for our competition now!

Nepal in a Nutshell

Dramatic scenery on this offbeat adventure, where the images do most of the talking.

Our favourite quote:

This was the crappiest part of Nepal, but still nice.

Make sure you check out the journey to see the best parts of Nepal also!

Follow this journal and vote for it now!

Australia

A great journey around the East and West coasts of Australia. We couldn’t stop clicking..

Our favourite quotes which sum up the highs and lows of travel:

Crappiest hostel ever. Even the woolshed couldn’t raise my spirits. I’ve almost come to the end of the line.

and

Getting back from an amazing adventure! I’d like to refer to it as the best time of my life!

Follow this journal and vote for it now!

One and a half weeks in India

India never fails to disappoint in the travel experience department.

The best description of the Taj Mahal so far (and so true):

The name conjures up beauty and romance. The grandest tomb ever built its the essense of India.
Although the town is total crap, the Taj is every thing that you have heard.
I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

Follow this journal and vote for it now!

St Helena and the Ascension Islands

Cast in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, the Ascension Islands are not an obvious travel destination – which is one of the reasons we enjoyed following this trip:

Our favourite description:

Our flight was stunning, the safety instructions bizarre. This is the door handle, it opens like this. This is a vomit bag. Here are some ear plugs it gets quite loud.

Follow this journal and vote for it now!

We like being inspired by tales of travel, and this morning I was pleasantly inspired by a MapVivo trip in an unusual way:

Your Travel life doesn’t end when you have Children

MapVivo user Hannah takes Matthew (7) and Jamie (4) on an 11 week world adventure to India, Mauritius, Thailand, Vietnam, and South Africa.

We think that’s pretty cool!