We are very excited to announce the launch of Tripline 2.0! This is a major update to our functionality and we think you’re going to love it. Head over to the site and check out the new stuff: http://www.tripline.net
Here’s a breakdown of what’s new (it’s a lot):
Questions & Answers
We’ve added an entirely new set of features on the site that you can use to ask and answer questions related to places and/or topics. We think this is going to be a great help for all of you in planning your trips and we also hope it’s fun. Now you have a reason for you to come back to Tripline every day to see what people are asking about your favorite places and topics.
When you ask a question, you associate it with a location and/or a topic. We’ve provided some guidelines on the Ask page to help you. We’re very aware that many of you are experienced travelers that probably have more answers than questions, but we encourage you to ask questions anyway. As early members of the Tripline community, we hope that you ask great questions that will set the tone on the site.
Now the fun part: answering questions. This is the area that we’re most excited about. Of course you can answer questions with just plain text. In many cases, that’s the right way to go. But, when you see a question where a list of places on a map is the answer, you can easily attach one of your existing maps or create a new map using the Tripline Editor. When you attach a map to your answer, it will display below your answer text with all of the detail that you’ve added. People can then easily copy the places from your attached map and add them to their own maps. This type of structured answer capability is unique to Tripline and we hope you have a lot of fun with it.
Your will also be able to upvote good answers and downvote answers that you feel miss the mark. The answers with the highest aggregate score will be displayed at the top of the answer list on the question page. Votes are anonymous, so all you’ll see is a score. We hope this is a nice, easy way for the best information to rise to the top.
If you need clarification on a question, use the comment link under the question text. The person who asked the question will be notified. And, if someone provides a good answer, definitely upvote and also add a quick comment to the answer thanking them.
Above all, have fun and participate!
Place Pages
You’ll notice significant enhancements to our place pages. We’re now aggregating popular places in regions and also providing the ability for you to follow your favorite places. When you follow a place, your activity feed will display questions about that place from the community so you can jump in and share your local knowledge. Also, the map on your profile page will display the places you’re following.
Topics
Topics are now an integral part of the site. You can follow topics (like Surfing, History etc.) and you’ll see questions on those topics in your activity feed. When you see a question that you know the answer to, jump in and participate! Also, topics you’re following will be displayed under the map on your profile page. Note: We’ve converted existing Characters to topics.
Trips = Maps
To be as flexible as possible we’ve decided to change the term “trip” to “map”, so what used to be “My Trips” is now “My Maps”. Contextually we felt that “trips” created a certain expectation of how the site should be used, and we want you to feel free to create maps for anything, not just trips 😉 Don’t worry, Tripline is still Tripline.
Your Activity Feed
You’ll notice that your activity feed is now front and center on your home page when you sign in. This gives you immediate access to activity from your friends and on all the things that you’re following. You may notice some duplicate items if your friends are asking questions about places and topics that you’re also following. We’re generating multiple records for performance reasons and we’ll continue to clean up the feed over time.
Typeahead Search
You’ll notice a new search box in the header. It’s a typeahead search that you can use to quickly find what you’re looking for. Give it a try. Right now the minimum query length is 4 characters, and we’ll be shortening that in the next couple of days. We’re also in the process of removing duplicate results from search.
Other Notes
- All existing site and mobile functionality is still available
- Map thumbnails will now launch a player in a popup window
- When you create a new map, we’ll zoom you to your start location, but we won’t add an initial waypoint. We felt that was a better experience.
- We’ve moved the Lines/No Lines selector in the editor onto the map controls.
- Our Facebook app is temporarily unavailable while we add all of this new stuff. You can still sign in with Facebook on the main site and share into your feed. The Facebook app itself will be back online in a few days.
- Over the next few days, we’re going to be cleaning up a lot of duplicate waypoints in the database. For the time being, you may see quite a few duplicates. Bear with us as we get this done.
Whew! That’s it for now. We really hope you enjoy this release. If you have questions, you can now use Tripline to ask questions about Tripline itself: http://www.tripline.net/topic/Tripline We’ll be sure to answer those as quickly as we can.
Have fun,
Byron & The Tripline Team
