trippy Archives

When it comes to travel planning, your friends are the best source of information. Such is the motto of just-launched social networking site for travel planning, Trippy.

Using a simple integration with Facebook, members can create trip planning templates with the click of a button. Fill in just a few details and the site will auto-populate suggestions for hotels, activities, and restaurants, plus provide a comprehensive list of your Facebook friends who are from, live or lived in, have visited or went to school in the destination. Then, using a personalized trip link, you can privately message friends to ask for suggestions about your upcoming trip.

As you piece together parts of your vacation, Trippy helps organize the information into an itinerary that can be sent via iPhone app or email. While you’re traveling, you can easily snap a photo with your smartphone and send pictures to the friends who helped you plan. The itinerary is also easily saved, so other friends who use the site can copy your travel plans at a later date.If you don’t have friends in a certain spot, the site’s handy auto-complete feature pulls in data from Factual.com, Google Places and the site’s own internal database. More features will be added soon.

Entrepreneur J.R. Johnson is behind the site. Once the brains behind VirtualTourist and OneTime.com (sold in 2008 to Expedia), Johnson aims to develop a new kind of traveling model. “There’s too much user generated content out there now,” Johnson said. Trippy is based on the principle that the best information is “friendsourced” rather than “crowdsourced.”

It’s becoming more and more difficult to rely on sites that don’t vet reviews, Johnson said. One never knows if the reviews are posted by paid travelers or the properties themselves. With Trippy, travelers will know that the information they’re getting is from a trustworthy source – their friends.

Trips can be planned for real, upcoming stays, or for a “dream” vacation. This process, Johnson says, helps travelers make the leap from dream to reality – the site soon showcase easy booking integration with sites like Expedia, where users can check rates and book right within Trippy.

We played with the site for an upcoming visit to Chicago and found it easy to use. We were able to reach out to several friends we didn’t even know were in or from the area and added a few great suggestions to our upcoming itinerary. A few kinks are still being worked out, as in any beta version, and integration with sites like Twitter and Foursquare is soon coming. We look forward to testing the iPhone integration in a few weeks, but the free app is available for download now.

Gadling readers get early access to the beta site with code GADLING.

Nearly two years ago, I bought my first smartphone: the T-Mobile Android MyTouch*. I’m only occasionally jealous of my iPhone-carrying friends, as I find few travel guide apps for Android. Even after a move to Istanbul, I still use and rely upon it daily; Android‘s interface is fast and easy-to-use, and seamless use of Google applications like Gmail and Google Maps is part of the reason I bought it in the first place. Living in a foreign country means English-language books and magazines are expensive and hard-to-find, and like many travelers, I don’t want to carry bulky books around when I’m on the road. This leaves a perfect opportunity for mobile developers to provide real travel guide content and not just travel-booking apps, especially apps produced by reliable media sources with professional editorial. These days, every guidebook and travel magazine publisher is coming out with apps for the iPhone and now iPad, supplying users with content and directions on the go, but there are hardly any for Android.

So what’s available for mobile travelers from the top travel book and print sources? Better hope you’re running Apple OS…Guidebooks:

Fodor’s: Happy 75th Birthday Mr. Fodor, but we wish you had more than just five city guides for purchase (in London, New York, Paris, Rome, and San Francisco) and only for Apple.
Frommer’s: iPhone guides are available for ten major cities in the US, Europe and Asia, but nada for Android.
Lonely Planet: iPhone users are spoiled for choice: dozens of city guides, language phrasebooks, audio walking tours, and eBooks optimized for the iPad. Android users in 32 countries including the US are in luck: there’s a free Trippy app to organize itinerary items, as well as 25 “augmented reality” Compass city guides and 14 phrasebooks. NOTE: This article originally mentioned that the Compass guides were unavailable in the Android Market store, but they should work for most US users. I happen to be in a country where paid apps are not available and not shown in the Market.
LUXE City Guides: 20 cheeky city guides work for a variety of mobile phones, including iPhone and Blackberry, but none are compatible with my Android. Bonus: the apps come with free regular updates and maps that the paper guides don’t have.
Rick Steves: If you are headed to Europe, you can get audio guides for many big attractions and historic walks for iPhone, plus maps for the iPad. You can also download the audio files free for your computer, and props to Rick for mentioning that Android apps are at least in development.
Rough Guides: Here’s a new one: the Rough Guides app works for many phones but NOT the iPhone OR Android! It’s not as slick as some of the other guides (it’s a Java app) and you will use data to use it on the road, but it provides lots of info for many cities in Europe. You can also find a Rough Guides photo app on iTunes to view pictures from around the world with Google Maps and captions from Rough Guides.
Time Out: City travelers and residents might want to look at the apps from Time Out for 5 European cities and Buenos Aires, with Manchester and New York on the way. More cities are available for free on iTunes, search for Time Out on iTunes to see what’s available. iPhone only.
Wallpaper* City Guides: 10 of the design mag’s 80 city guides are for sale for iPhone for Europe, Tokyo, New York and Los Angeles.

Print media:

Conde Nast Traveler: It makes sense for magazines to embrace the iPad, and CNT has free Apple apps specifically for Italy, cruises, and their annual Gold List of hotels and resorts. Blackberry users can download an etiquette guide, but Android users are snubbed.
National Geographic: As befitting any explorer, Nat Geo has a world atlas, national parks maps, and games featuring their amazing photography, all for iPhone. A special interactive edition of National Geographic Traveler is for sale on the iPad; you can also read it on your computer. Androids can download a quiz game and various wallpapers; and all mobile users can access a mobile-friendly version of their website at natgeomobile.com.
Outside: Adventure travelers can purchase and read full issues on the iPad, but no subscription option yet.
Travel + Leisure: The other big travel glossy also has an iPad app for special issues. Four issues have been released so far with one available now on iTunes (romantic getaways) but future editions will follow to be read on the app. Just in time for spring break and summer, they’ve also released a Travel + Leisure Family app with advice and articles specifically geared towards travel and families. The apps are both free but you’ll need an iPad – these are designed for tablets, not phones. You can also read full issues of T+L and their foodie cousin Food & Wine on Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Color ereader; you can save per issue if you subscribe to the e-reader version.
USA Today Travel: Most major newspapers have mobile readers for all types of phones, but USA Today is the only one with their own travel-specific app. AutoPilot combines an array of cool travel booking capabilities and information with articles and blog post from the newspaper. Only iPhone users can enjoy free.

Two of our favorite magazines, Budget Travel and Afar, have no mobile apps yet but great online communities to tap into their extensive knowledge.

All in all, other than Lonely Planet’s Compass guides, a pretty weak showing for Android travelers. While iPhone has been around longer as a mobile platform that Android, they’ve lost the market share of users to the little green robot. As Android is available on a variety of phone manufacturers and providers, expect that number to continue to grow, along with the variety and depth of content for mobile and tablet users. Will the developers ever catch up or will travelers have to choose?

*Android has not endorsed this or paid me anything to write about them. But to show I’m not biased – Apple, feel free to send me a sample phone and I’ll test out the apps!

Photo courtesy Flickr user closari. Special thanks to Sean O’Neill, who blogs on Budget Travel and the new BBC Travel blog.