Do You use a Travel Diary - mobile App?

egans88

Hi,

I have an idea for an iOS app for and would love some feedback/ideas that any of you have?

So first of all do you like to keep a travel diary? If yes do you use an app to do this already or a pen & paper? Why do you use what you use?

My app idea is for people who like to keep personal travel diaries of their travels so their entire will be tracked and whenever they add a photo, video or diary entry this will be signified by a point in the map. The unique thing about my app will be the playback function when you get home so you can watch a short video of your entire trip?

Is this something you would use? Or what are your opinions on it?

All feedback is appreciated:)

Thanks a million

Whatsisname

Sounds like a pretty cool idea, not sure if its been done already but don't forget someone might steal your idea now that you've put it publicly online

Gatica

Only keep a travel diary for longer or for pleasure trips. Most of my travel involves visiting family
Uploading photos and tagging to a location sounds like a good idea and being able to play back a long trip sounds great. My travel diary is usually quite personal though, so I'm not sure how I'd feel about some software logging it. Also, I've come across sites that try to take your copyrights when it comes to content and images, so I'd be a little more paranoid about publishing data I want to keep ownership or control of.

Thoie

If I was using something like this (and I think I would as long as it wasn't too awkward), there's a few features I'd like:

• Each trip should have a title
• Would have to operate in offline mode, so that I could write an entry, take or attach a photo, have it timestamped, but then upload it at a time of my choosing. If I'm travelling, I don't want to be hit by unexpected roaming charges, or have it use wifi when I'm not expecting it.
• There would have to be multiple ways of geotagging - in offline mode I could enter a name/reference (10 Jalan Telok Pulai, Kuala Lumpur), or coordinates (3.11428,101.682724), or use GPS to tag. In online mode, location tagging could come from either mobile phone masts or wifi, or I could zoom in on google maps. Allow the user to go back and add more precise location details later if they want.
• Have a few button symbols for common tags - e.g. drinks, adventure, wildlife, scenery, shopping, sight seeing, dining.
• Each entry should have a title and a body. Some text formatting should be allowed. E.g. *Bold* or _italics_
• When taking or attaching a photo, allow the user to add a caption
• On Android, use the multi-app Share feature to share an entry, or an entire trip, or the trip summary to the usual places (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Email, Text).
• Have a "packing list" area (not shared with others) where users can enter their packing list, and during the trip tick off the things they actually used or add things they should have brought (to help plan packing the next time)
• If the user is online while making an entry, allow them to add the current weather conditions to their post (from somewhere like accuweather, or whatever), or if they're offline have a space to type it in.

So, yeah, great idea, let me know if you want me to keep writing demands

miamee

I recently (Sep 2013) used something similar that TripAdvisor have - you could check in to various locations in the city, add places to your favourites to visit the next day - this included restaurants, bars, hotels, etc, as well as tourist attractions. There were obviously reviews from other Trip Advisor users and the option to post your own reviews.

I think it was this Offline City Guide - http://www.tripadvisor.ie/apps-icityguides-candroid

The only thing missing (or else I just didn't use it) was the option to keep your own notes/diary aside from check ins or reviews.

Thoie

Did a little search, and I think someone may have beaten you to it:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shopzeus.android.majorforms_1002&hl=en

Gatica

Personally I would keep the recommendations based on where you are separate from an app to log a travel journal.
If I want an app to tell me nearest restaurants, ATMs, etc... I can get one that does that. It doesn't need to be part of my travel logs, IMO. Having it as an add-on feature could be an idea though, as it may be something that other people may want.

No biggie if similar app exists, unless you thought you were gonna be raking it in with your original idea. There's plenty of apps that do the same things, but some do it better than others. Choice is good.

egans88

Guys thanks a million for all your detailed feedback. I kinda knew it was never going to be a worlds first travel diary app which is why I decided to post up here for some feedback.... I just want my app to be unique enough that it stands out from this competition.

So I really really appreciate the thought you guys put into your responses, definitely great to get this sort of feedback early on:)

I have some follow up questions if you guys wouldn't mind having a quick think about??

1. This app was going to be just for personal journeys...Would you like to have it connected to your social media accounts to share some of the stuff (photo's/videos) to friends there?
2. The Playback function I was talking about earlier - would you like to be able to personalise these by adding text/audio to them? Would you like to be able to export a small video of your trip once its finished?

Again anything else you'd like to mention would be much appreciated?

Thanks
Sean

Thoie

egans88 wrote: »

1. This app was going to be just for personal journeys...Would you like to have it connected to your social media accounts to share some of the stuff (photo's/videos) to friends there?
2. The Playback function I was talking about earlier - would you like to be able to personalise these by adding text/audio to them? Would you like to be able to export a small video of your trip once its finished?

Again anything else you'd like to mention would be much appreciated?

Thanks
Sean

1. I'd like to use Android's "share to" feature so that I could share a particular entry (text/photos/audio) through twitter/facebook/google+ This gets complicated, as it means that really you'd have to upload the whole entry somewhere and link to it, so it means you (the developer) might need to have server space for people to use, or else have some tricky "upload as a blog post" feature somewhere. As that's so complicated, and people will already have the photos on their phone, another possibility is to allow people share just the text from their entry to other apps, and then they can add the photos to those apps separately if they want.
2. I'd like to be able to edit the video and add audio/graphics, but I don't want to have to do that on my phone, and I don't want to have to download obscure video editing software either. So the easiest thing (for me!) is if you allowed the video to be saved in a standard video format for Windows/Mac. If I select the Windows option, I should then be able to copy the video to my PC, and edit it in Windows Live Movie Maker.

The most important thing is that all the main features should be usable offline. Because obviously you're making this just to please me personally (and by the way, you need to finish it by the end of April ), many of my holidays are in places with little/no internet/phone access, so the only thing that I'll definitely have is GPS. So when I'm making an entry, I'd like it to geotag the entry by my current coordinates, even if it can't connect to Google maps at the time. Then, next time I'm online (and I tell it to synch - don't let it synch on its own in case I'm somewhere expensive), it can add in the actual location.

egans88

miamee wrote: »

I recently (Sep 2013) used something similar that TripAdvisor have - you could check in to various locations in the city, add places to your favourites to visit the next day - this included restaurants, bars, hotels, etc, as well as tourist attractions. There were obviously reviews from other Trip Advisor users and the option to post your own reviews.

I think it was this Offline City Guide - http://www.tripadvisor.ie/apps-icityguides-candroid

The only thing missing (or else I just didn't use it) was the option to keep your own notes/diary aside from check ins or reviews.

Hi Miamee, I was wondering if you had any other problems with this app when you were using it? Did you like or use the recommendations on it or did you download it to track your trip?

egans88

Gatica wrote: »

Personally I would keep the recommendations based on where you are separate from an app to log a travel journal.
If I want an app to tell me nearest restaurants, ATMs, etc... I can get one that does that. It doesn't need to be part of my travel logs, IMO. Having it as an add-on feature could be an idea though, as it may be something that other people may want.

No biggie if similar app exists, unless you thought you were gonna be raking it in with your original idea. There's plenty of apps that do the same things, but some do it better than others. Choice is good.

Gatica, that's what I was thinking about for this app - an app to just track your own personal journey and discoveries. Would you download an app just for this purpose? Or have you used any apps that do this already?

Gatica

I've never used an app for that, but then I find writing on a phone tedious :P
I usually have a notebook and write in it in the airport between flights or spare time at the hotel. If I had a keyboard I'd type better than writing, but phone keyboards just aren't for me.
I can see myself using it to take photos and geo-tag them and put in captions for where we are and what we're doing. Just probably not for lengthy logs. I used calendar to plan events and flight times, if this feature was part of a travel app, then it could be a nice way to pre-plan a trip and then add info to it as I travel.

miamee

egans88 wrote: »

Hi Miamee, I was wondering if you had any other problems with this app when you were using it? Did you like or use the recommendations on it or did you download it to track your trip?

I don't remember any particular problems. I downloaded it to use off-line, then in the evening I could favourite all the things I wanted to see the next day and track them on the map so that I could plan out my day. I might never stick to the actual plan but at tleast this way I felt organised and like I wasn't going to accidentally miss out on something great because I didn't know it was just around the corner from something else!
I nased some of the things I visited on the TripAdvisor reviews given and could take some tips from other users into account, e.g. going up to the Piazza Michelangelo in the late afternoon/at sunset for fantastic photos and less crowds.

egans88

Hi Guys

Once again thanks a million for your feedback I'm taking it all into consideration for the app. In the meantime I have set up a very very quick survey if you guys wouldn't mind doing it?

Click here to take the survey (I promise it will take more than 2 minutes)

Also if any of you know of anyone that may be interested in travel, I would extremely grateful if you could pass it onto them. Alternatively if you know of any other travel forms I could publish to that'd be great?


Once again, thanks for all your responses
Sean

CarrieLavigne

This is a great acknowledgement as far as regular travelers concern, these days apps make life easier and interesting. Good one mate!

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