The Purple Passport launches chic urban guide for New York City

by Jessica Marati on

For the hip, worldly, and discerning traveler, there’s a new guide on the block: The Purple Passport, which just added New York to its roster of web-based city guides.

The Purple Passport offers handpicked hotel, restaurant, spa, nightlife, shopping, and activity recommendations from its team of travel tastemakers, with an easy interface that allows users to add items to personal “passports” that can then be printed or emailed to travel companions. Their listings are candid, comprehensive, and current, with categories like “Well Coiffed” for nightlife spots with a door policy and “Chic & Design” for trendy minimalist hotels. Picks in the New York City guide include home decor emporium ABC Carpet & Home, the Ace Hotel in up-and-coming NoMad, and the swanky Rose Bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel.

Founded by friends and travel companions Emily Brands and Jennifer Garcia-Alonso, The Purple Passport aims to provide a one-stop-shop for urban travelers seeking carefully curated information on the world’s most stylish cities. Guides are also available for London, Paris, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, and Beijing, with Abu Dhabi, Taipei, Chicago, Miami, and Washington DC next on tap.

[image via The Purple Passport]

HipGeo iPhone app makes sharing travel easy

by Chris Owen on

HipGeo is a Los Angeles based development team with a passion for creating the most convenient way for people to keep track of what they saw, where they saw it, share it, and use what other people share to enhance their own travel experiences. Now, HipGeo has a new, free iPhone and iPad app that passively records your location as you travel. It can then mash your pics and comments into an animated map and travel diary for sharing.

“If Tumblr and Foursquare had a baby, it would look like the new HipGeo,” HipGeo’s chief product guy, Rich Rygg told cnet.

HipGeo automatically groups photos, comments, places, tags, likes, and dates together, allowing users to search and follow real travelers who go interesting places.

As users go about their normal posting, HipGeo creates place blogs with user generated content. In addition to seeing what friends and family are doing while traveling, we can also access this user generated information to help plan a trip or discover something interesting.

“HipGeo is attractive in that it seamlessly combines tools that are already popular on other platforms and redefines the social aspect of travel, ” says HipGeo on their website.

The app tags photos, adds captions, and pinpoints its location on a map but if you don’t want it tracking your every move, settings can be changed to record just certain locations.

The app is free but using it has a price. HipGeo warns that tracking GPS in the background “can dramatically decrease battery life.”

Photo: HipGeo


Gogobot iPhone app taps Facebook timeline

by Chris Owen on

Gogobot is a trip-planning travel site with a social element that allows users to get advice from people they trust, not from anonymous strangers on the internet. Now, Gogobot has a new iPhone travel app that integrates with a user’s Facebook Timeline

“Our travels serve as bookmarks in our lives that evoke memories and feelings of friends, family and experiences. The places we go and the things we see say a lot about who we are as individuals. By integrating with Facebook’s Timeline, Gogobot makes it possible to integrate the stories of your travels into the greater context of your life,” said Travis Katz, CEO of Gogobot.

The new Gogobot app lets friends turn to one another for travel advice and share trip plans, photos, recommendations and personal travel guides on their Facebook Timeline. Simplifying the Timeline process, users can add their travel content to their Facebook Timeline from within Gogobot.

“Gogobot is proud to be one of the first travel companies featured in Facebook’s launch: this highlights how travel has become a core social behavior and how Gogobot is leading the category,”said Katz.
All popular features on Gogobot are now a part of Timeline, making it easy for Gogobot members to harness the power of the social graph to create travel experiences and memories.

Right now, from their Gogobot profile, users can opt-in to add Gogobot to their Timeline on Facebook, allowing you to share and feature all of your travel activity, including:

  • An interactive map of all of the places you’ve visited
  • Upcoming trip plans and questions
  • Your favorite destinations
  • Your Travel Expertise score and badges
  • Customized postcards taken with Gogobot’s iPhone application
  • Links to your Gogobot reviews
  • Places you want to visit
  • About Gogobot
  • Gogobot is the world’s largest social travel site.

Gogobot has helped millions of consumers to create, share and enjoy extraordinary travel experiences. As a result, Gogobot has attracted global partners – including Expedia, Hotels.com, Kayak and Priceline – that enable users to book their travel directly from the site. Gogobot is available on the web, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

If you don’t like the Facebook Timeline feature, you’re REALLY not going to like this but heavy Timeline users love it.

Photo: Gogobot


National Geographic and AllTrails.com partner on map website

by Kraig Becker on

National Geographic Maps and AllTrails.com have announced that they are joining forces to create a new online resource for adventure travelers and outdoor enthusiasts alike. The new venture will provide a wealth of information on hiking trails from across the United States, while mixing in elements of social networking and member generated content.

AllTrails.com already sports an impressive database of more than 40,000 trails and a membership that tops more than 200,000 users. Those members rate the trails on a scale of one to five stars, while also sharing their personal experiences and tips from their favorite routes as well. The site includes detailed information on the hikes, such as overall length of the trail, change in elevation, allowed activities (hiking, mountain biking, etc.) and a measure of how potentially crowded it could be. In short, it’s a one-stop shop for anyone looking for new hikes in their area or for suggestions for other places to trek throughout the country.

Visitors to AllTrails.com are encouraged to create a member profile, or simply sign-in using their Facebook account, and contribute to the growing community of hikers, backpackers, and other outdoor enthusiasts there. The site automatically recommends trails close to home, and allows users to save routes to your “favorites” lists, while also making it incredibly easy to share those same hikes with others. The site also includes a reputation system that allows members to follow other users whose interests match theirs, while also building a following of their own.

In the weeks ahead, AllTrails will expand their site and introduce a new premium service that will offer exclusive online access to National Geographic‘s iconic line of maps, including their Trails Illustrated and Topo! Series. These maps are incredibly detailed and are a fantastic resource for hikers and backpackers everywhere. Perhaps best of all however, is the fact that this deal extends to the AllTrails mobile app, granting access to those Nat Geo maps while on the go as well.

There is no word yet on how much the new premium service will cost, or when it will officially launch, but it is likely to be a popular one with outdoor enthusiasts. Nat Geo’s topographic data is second to none, and having access to it in a digital format will certainly be a major feather in the cap for the AllTrails website.

More Istanbul shopping and dining secrets from Daily Secret

by Meg Nesterov on

Last week, Gadling included Istanbul in our picks for 2012 luxury travel, and introduced you to Daily Secret, a web-based “guide service” offering insider intel to 12 cities, including Istanbul. We got so many more great Istanbul secrets from editor Laura Wells (many with special discounts and exclusive access), we’re posting them for Gadling readers to add to their itineraries. Happy shopping (and tasting)!

Local designer fashion: To buy designer clothing for men & women from multiple up-and-coming Turkish designers, this is a really cool, brand-new co-op: Fashion Tunnel in Galata

Turkish wine: Turkey has amazing wine, but it’s difficult to export as it’s heavily taxed. To try the best Turkish wines (even local sour cherry wine wine, which is delicious) and get ideas for what to buy at duty free, check out Rouge in Taksim. They have free tasting every Saturday, but you can try anything by the glass in the restaurant above, which also serves amazing rare Turkish cheeses and cure meats.

Waterside dining: For a gourmet, organic meal that few know about with a view of the Bosphorus, head to Fark-et-mez in Sariyer. The chef & sous-chef are both Turkish, and Daily Secret members get 15% off their meal. They also have live jazz on certain nights.Travel magazine: One of the most interesting and beautiful magazines (the kind you save) that I’ve ever seen is ‘Cornucopia‘. Written by world-class authors and journalists, the articles cover the history of the former empires of Central Asia, as well as modern figures trying to preserve national treasures. Our members get 10% off the price and they ship worldwide for free!

Rare books: For rare books about Istanbul and the former empires, this bookshop in Kadikoy on the Asian side has any hard-to-find edition, old or new, or they’ll find it, and they ship worldwide.

Artistic home decor: Grand, hand-painted panels & wallpaper that you see in palaces & hotels all over the world is actually made by a company now based in Istanbul. You can visit their trade-only showroom & atelier if you tell them you’re a Daily Secret member when you make an appointment. They’ll ship worldwide without a problem: Iksel in Bebek.

Turkish rugs: Here is the best Turkish antique rug dealer I’ve ever come across with the best prices in the world (I’m a collector and my cousin is an antiques rug dealer, and she agreed)! He is usually only open to ‘trade’, but welcomes our members. You can either leave with a rug, or he ships worldwide at reasonable rates.

Interior design: For handprinted, hand-loomed fabrics and unique handmade furniture, Philadelphia-transplant & textiles expert Elizabeth Hewitt counts Oscar de la Renta and President Obama’s interior designer among her customers. They have everything from scarves to draperies, bed linens, table cloths, and more; all really gorgeous and uniquely central Asian. Her husband & brother-in-law are rug & suzani dealers, and his shop is on the top floor of this store – best place in terms of selection to get tulu rugs (sheepskin rugs, which are very ‘in’ now) and antique suzanis, at literally the best prices in any emerging country.

Subscribe to Daily Secret for more tips in Istanbul and other cities around the world.