Tripline Blog

Hi folks. We just deployed a new Tripline release with a bunch of new features.  Lots of your early feedback has been related to photos, so we made some big improvements in that area.  Here’s the list:

• Drag and Drop Photo Arrangement – We know how much photos matter to your stories. Now you can easily rearrange photos and even drag them to other places. Once you’ve added photos, just click the [rearrange photos] link to open up the reordering pane and then drag and drop thumbnails anywhere. More info here: http://help.tripline.net/?p=427

• Photo Captions – Pictures are worth 1,000 words, but sometimes you need more. Now you can easily add captions of up to 250 characters to individual photos. Click on a photo thumbnail to open the viewer and then click [edit caption]. More info here: http://help.tripline.net/?p=429

• Automated Photo Slideshows – There’s a new “Slideshow” Animation Style for each place in your trip. When you choose this option, the player will automatically display a nice slideshow of your photos. More info here: http://help.tripline.net/?p=431

• 5 MB Photo Uploads – We’ve upped the size of images you can upload from your computer to 5MB (previously 4MB) More info here: http://help.tripline.net/?p=447

• Maps With No Lines – You can now create a map that doesn’t display lines between places. This is particularly useful for the food bloggers and travel guide creators out there who create Top 10 lists etc. Look for this option in the Editor. It’s called “Display Style” More info here: http://help.tripline.net/?p=433

• Updated Player Experience – We’ve made some big updates to the player, making the play button more visible and greatly improving the display of photos. Slideshow mode is awesome.

• Photo Bug Fixes – We fixed several bugs related to photos. Most noticeably you’ll be able to open newly added images without refreshing the page and new images/captions will immediately show up in the player.

• Static Map Images – You can now access a static image of your Tripline map by clicking on [map image] in the stats section of the trip page below the trip description.

A reminder to 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.  For now, the workaround is to add “tripline.net” to the Excluded Sites list in Ad Block options.

Thanks again for all the great suggestions, there’s even more cool stuff on the way soon. As always, if you need to get in touch with us, send an email to support@tripline.net

– Byron

See the clip below from the Chuck Season 4 Premier on Monday and thanks @jon_almanza for the tip. It’s not actually Tripline, but it looks very, very similar.

It’s been another busy week at Tripline HQ. About an hour ago, we released an update to the site that includes the following:

• Import from Gowalla – You can now connect your Tripline account to Gowalla and import your checkins and trips. It’s another great way to tell your stories. More information here: http://help.tripline.net/gowalla

• Import photos from Picasa – You can now import photos from Picasa!   Lots of people were asking for this so we’re happy we were able to get it done quickly.  Just click the camera icon on the trip page and Picasa is the second tab, right in between Flickr and Facebook.  Note that Picasa provides access to very large images, so some of your pics may fill the screen.  We’re thinking about limiting the displayed size, so let us know what you think:  http://help.tripline.net/contact-support

• Improved photo upload – We were seeing some issues with our photo upload process that were causing incomplete uploads in certain cases and broken trips in other cases.  We’ve fixed the problems and improved the upload process a bit.  Note, you’ll still need to refresh the page before newly uploaded photos will play in a slideshow.

• Bio and links on profile pages – You can now add a short bio and links to your user profile.  Go to http://www.tripline.net/myaccount to enter a bio.  You can add links right on your profile page.  Perfect place for links to your blog, or your profile on other social networks.

• Links in text fields – Now when you enter links in trip descriptions, place descriptions comments and reviews, they will be automatically turned into clickable links.

Have fun people, we’re back to work on more stuff now 🙂

As I’ve talked about in earlier posts, when we were designing the site, we spent a lot of time considering the uses people might have for Tripline other than just planning vacations. We always considered those things whenever we made design decisions and it’s great to see people actually using Tripline the way we envisioned. Three examples from this week really stand out.

First off, author Julian Smith created a trip describing the story in his upcoming novel “Crossing the Heart of Africa”, set to be released in December (more here www.juliansmith.com). The trip is a story of Julian’s journey from South Africa to Cairo, following in the footsteps of British adventurer Ewart Grogan, who made the same journey on foot in 1898. Check it out:

And finally, Paul Lewin posted “Pueblo Colorado’s Best Mexican Restaurants”. This type of best-places trip is something we’ve been seeing a lot, and I think it’s a great way for locals to put together their knowledge of an area to share with friends and the Tripline community. Look forward to some new features related to this type of trip on the way soon.

Keep it up folks! We’re all part of making something special here, and we certainly couldn’t do it without you.

– Byron

We’ve been pretty busy this week. About an hour ago, we released an update to the site that includes the following:

Tripline Mobile

• Geolocation – Tripline Mobile is now configured to use location information from your phone if it’s available.
• Check in – You can now check in to the places in your trips, update your story and add new places.
• Local Search – Use local search to find places and add them to your trips.  Once you find a place, you can check in if you’re there, or just add a place to your plan and check in when you get there.
• Create new trips – No need to plan ahead, create a trip right from your phone and check in to add new places.
• More info here

Connect to Tripit

You can now connect your Tripline account to Tripit and import your trips. It’s a great way to tell your stories.  Note that some of your older trips may not have geo data, and some items don’t have dates.

Improved import from Foursquare

When we first launched, Foursquare importing was limited to your most recent 15 checkins.  Well, now you can import everything.  Just click [Create a trip from my checkins] on the create page and pick the checkins you want to import.  There’s a [+] load more link at the bottom of the page so you can find all of your past checkins.

Improved import from Twitter

You can now load all of your tweets (geo and non-geo) and add locations if you need to.  Just like importing from Foursquare, There’s a [+] load more link at the bottom of the page.

Comments & Responses

We added replies to comments and we also put comments on user pages.

Bug Fixes

We fixed a number of bugs related to broken trips and other inconsistencies around the site.

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What’s Next?

Among other things, we’re going to do some work on photos.  Stay tuned.