Author: byron

Announcing Tripline for iPhone & iPad

I’m very happy to announce that we’ve just released Tripline for iPhone / iPad.  It’s available for free in the app store.

If you don’t have an iPhone/iPad, you can use our mobile site instead. More info here: https://help.tripline.net/mobile  (stay tuned for an Android app soon)

Our mobile apps are built with usefulness in mind, so I thought I’d share with you a few ways that I use Tripline Mobile to make life easier.
  1. To access and update plans while traveling. Not only is it super-easy to get to your flight/hotel/restaurant information, but it’s also a great way to record places you visit (by checking in) so when you get home, you already have a story ready to share with friends. If you’re concerned about privacy, just set your trip to “Private” and nobody will see your updates until you decide to share.
  2. To create a simple list of places for a day.  For example, If Vivien and I are headed out for a busy Saturday, I’ll quickly create a trip in the morning using local search on the mobile app and add all of the places we’re planning to go. It’s really helpful to have a simple bullet list of places with links to directions, phone numbers etc., and it helps me make more efficient plans with less backtracking.  Give it a try on your next busy day and see if it makes life easier.
  3. To make lists of local restaurants I want to try like “LA Sandwiches”, “LA Burgers” etc.  That way, when I’m hungry (and impatient), I have lists of places to pick from.  And If someone else has already created a good list in your area, you can bookmark it on the site and get to it on your phone that way. ( If you live in LA or are planning a trip here, check out https://www.tripline.net/bestofla )
Anyone else have a “Here’s How I Use Tripline” story to share?  Go to http://blog.tripline.net/contact-us/ and send us a note.  We’ll be happy to blog about your adventures.

That’s all for now.  If you have an iPhone or iPad, install the Tripline app!  Oh, and tell your friends too.

– Byron

Update on latest release

Hey folks…

We just deployed a few fixes to our latest release that we thought you should know about:

  • We’re now correctly setting the centerpoint location for newly created trips.  This means new trips should show up in the correct place on the map on your profile page.  You can always override this in the editor if you want (Main Location), but defaults are nice.
  • We’re also now generating thumbnails correctly for single-waypoint trips and trips that you create on Tripline Mobile (https://mobile.tripline.net)

That’s it for now. Have a good one!

– Byron

Late January Release: Improved Tripit Import & Bug Fixes

We released an update last night with some improvements and bug fixes.

Improved Tripit Import

  • Our Tripit import process now extracts much more data from your itineraries and orders correctly by date and time.  We’re also pulling items without location data so you can add locations during the import process.
  • We’re also pulling the title of your trip and giving you the option to set visibility before creating your trip.  These changes apply not just to Tripit, but also Foursquare, Twitter and Gowalla based trips.
  • Finally, we used to open the trip editor at the end of the import process, but we’re now just loading the trip page.  We think it’s a better experience this way.  Just click [Open Editor] to add/delete places, change the soundtrack etc.
  • NOTE:  Our Tripit import process ignores map and directions objects since these items don’t fit into the Tripline structure.
  • NOTE:  If you had been seeing an “Error creating trip” message for imports of more than 25 items, that problem is also fixed.

Bug Fixes

  • We fixed a problem with our thumbnail generator that was causing thumbnails to break for trips with between 18 and 25 points.  If you currently have a broken thumbnail, open your trip in the editor and save it.  The thumbnail should re-generate correctly.
  • We added some more stringent data checks in the [Save Trip] function to completely prevent trips from breaking due to  invisible & special characters in text fields.
  • We updated the trip player to resize correctly when posted to Facebook.  Due to Facebook’s caching mechanisms, it may take a bit of time for this change to propagate.

Please contact us if you have any questions,

– Byron

Tripline on Facebook

Happy New Year! We’ve been busy over the past few weeks and we’ve just released some major updates to Tripline. Here’s the breakdown of new features and bug fixes:

Tripline on Facebook
Our long awaited Facebook app is live! Now you can do everything you can do on Tripline right inside Facebook and also easily see where your friends have traveled. So, check it out and get your friends to sign up: https://apps.facebook.com/tripline

Adding People To Trips
You can now add your Facebook friends to your trips or invite people by email in the [+] add friends dialog on the trip page. When they sign up or connect to Tripline, they’ll have an invitation waiting for them in their inbox so they can join the trip in a single step.

One thing to note is that due to Facebook limitations, when you add Facebook friends, there’s a second step to notify them in Facebook.  We did our best to make the process as simple as possible, but you will have to enter their names twice.  Hopefully Facebook will enable more streamlined notification mechanisms soon so we can eliminate the two-step process.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed date sorting functionality in Editor
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing more than 10 people from being added to a trip
  • Eliminated an issue that was causing trips to break when text with invisible special characters was pasted into waypoint descriptions
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing links with apostrophes from opening correctly on the trip page

I hope you guys enjoy the Facebook App, and stay tuned for some more exciting updates coming soon.  As always, if you have any questions or comments, contact us here.

– Byron

More new features! Automatic trips from photos, bookmarks, embedded videos, text formatting, page translation etc.

Hi folks. We launched some exciting new features on Tripline today.  Here’s the list:

  • Automatically create trips from geotagged (and non-geotagged) photos – Many of you have asked about this, so we’re excited to announce that you can now create trips just by uploading a collection of photos! We’ll use the date/time and geotags on your uploaded photos to automatically create the locations in your trip. It’s incredibly easy and lots of fun. If you don’t have geotagged photos, we’ll create groups based on date/time and you can easily add the location info manually. Go to Tripline and click [Create] in the header to check it out.
  • Bookmark your favorite trips – We’ve added a [+ Bookmark] button to the trip page so you can easily save your favorite trips. Bookmarks give you quick access to someone else’s trip you’re following as well as trips that you might want to use as a guide while traveling. Bookmarks will show up on your Home Page, on your My Trips page and are also available on Tripline Mobile: http://mobile.tripline.net
  • Videos on the trip page – You can now add videos from YouTube and Vimeo to your trips. All you have to do is paste a YouTube/Vimeo link into a place description and the embedded video will display when you reload the page. Note that embedded videos won’t yet display in the player…that’s something we’ll add in a future release. Oh, and if you add a link to another Tripline trip, it will show up as an embedded player as well. Great for creating trips within trips!
  • Line breaks in trip and place descriptions – Many of you have asked for this. You can now add line/paragraph breaks to your trip/place descriptions and they’ll display correctly.
  • Page translation – You can now translate any page on Tripline into the language of your choice. Just click on the globe icon at the top right of the header and select a language (53 available). It’s page-by-page for now.
  • Other new features and bug fixes
  • We’re now displaying trip distances in kilometers as well as miles
  • We added a confirmation prompt before deleting waypoints in the editor
  • We fixed a bug that was preventing navigation to the second page of a Facebook photo album
  • We fixed a photoviewer bug that was preventing caption entry for panoramic photos
  • We fixed a photo upload bug that was causing uploads to stall when photos were added to the upload list multiple times
Google Chrome users:  If you’re using Adblock, the photoviewer on the trip page won’t get the correct image sizes and will appear a little broken.  This is a known issue with Adblock and they’re working on a fix.  Unfortunately, the Excluded Sites fix we mentioned in previous emails no longer works, so you’ll need to disable Ad Block for the photoviewer to work correctly.
 
Internet Explorer users:  If you’ve noticed that the trip player doesn’t always display updated information after saving your trip, we have a fix for you.  The problem is caused by a flaw in IE’s automatic caching mechanism.  The solution is to disable automatic caching.  This will make some  pages load more slowly, so it’s up to you.  To disable, choose Tools… Internet Options. On the General tab, under Browsing History click [Settings]. On the settings page, click the “Every time I visit the webpage” radio button.
 

Thanks again for all the great suggestions.  As always, if you need to get in touch with us, send an email to support@tripline.net

– Byron