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Up and away! Trover travel app now in wide release

Colleen Taylor — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:30:07 +0000

Trover, the travel app aimed at sharing off-the-beaten-path discoveries, has formally launched out of limited beta. The app, which was initially available only on iPhone for users connecting through their Facebook accounts, is now also open as a web app on Trover.com and accessible to anyone with a Facebook, Twitter, or email account.

The new developments are great to see from the Seattle-based company which, as we first reported last month, initiated as a project within a startup called Travelpost. Trover rolled out as a standalone app on May 4. The company has been funded with a portion of the $9.8 million that was initially invested in Travelpost, and all the development thus far has been attributable to Trover’s six-person team led by CEO Jason Karas. The company plans to debut an Android app this fall.

Despite its relatively humble beginnings as a feature within another startup, Trover has very quickly found a distinctive voice and a dedicated audience of its own. Trover has accumulated 70,000 users across 150 countries during its limited release alone, and has garnered Expedia founder Rich Barton as its chairman. “I’ve done lots of traveling around the world looking for hidden gems, and I’ve always dreamed of having a resource that was at my fingertips with all my friends’ resources and travel recommendations,” Barton told me in a joint interview along with Karas this week. “For me, and for many others, using Trover has very quickly become a state of mind.”

Essentially, Trover allows users to take photos of things they’ve seen and places they’ve been and share them with friends and neighbors. Entries are automatically geo-tagged to the location in which its photo was snapped. Trover aims to catalog the “discoveries” people make when exploring a certain place — Barton described a prototypical Trover entry as saying “park right there, and here’s a photo of the little hidden pathway to the great surf beach.”

Trover’s investors include General Catalyst Partners, Ignition Partners and Benchmark Capital.

Here are some screenshots of Trover in action (click to enlarge):

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Must-Have iPhone Apps for Surviving Air Travel

Nancy Nally — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:59 +0000

Editor’s note: With this post we welcome Nancy Nally to the WebWorkerDaily team. Nancy is the owner of Balalaberry Media and is the editor of its online scrapbook industry trade journal Scrapbook Update, which she founded in 2004, along with working on other writing projects. She shares her home in Palm Coast, Fla., with her geek husband and young geek daughter, who has autism.

I may not be able to make a phone call on my iPhone from 30,000 feet (yet), but I’ve still found that when I’m out of my office and have to fly, having an iPhone in my pocket is a powerful sanity-saving tool. Here are the apps that help keep my air travel running smoothly.

Plan.Pack.Go: Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush

Flying means packing. Even if you have a standard “kit” you travel with, it’s still easy in the rush to get out the door to forget your toothbrush, or charging cable. The list templates in this app let you create and save your standard list, edit it if needed for a specific trip, and then check off items as you pack them. Unlike many packing apps, this one includes list items for standard pre-travel tasks, like charging batteries. A sideways shake switches between your unpacked and packed list items, and the categories are well-organized. I’ve tried several packing apps, and this is by far the most slick in design. Designed by Tangent software, and available from the App Store for $1.99.

TSAwait: Don’t Get Caught In a Surprise Security Line

If you fly out of different airports frequently, it can be hard to know how much time you need to allow for security lines. This app puts the average security wait times 24/7 for U.S. airports at your fingertips. Updates are drawn from TSA databases regularly, and airports can be located by state/city search or by airport code. I’ve found it useful in planning airport arrivals, since lately it seems I never fly out of the same place twice. TSAWait is designed by Tactical Logic, and priced at 99 cents.

FAAwait: See Trouble Coming Before It Finds You

This handy little sister app of TSAwait lets you monitor weather and FAA delays in the U.S. to provide early warning of potential flight delays. FAAwait accesses the FAA air traffic control status to display a list and map of U.S. airports that are experiencing ground stops or delays, and lists the length and reason for them. There is also an NWS weather map that displays all current weather watches or warnings in the continental U.S. For traveling control freaks like myself who want to anticipate possible delays in their connecting city or with incoming equipment, this app gives a great summary of the current status of air traffic and weather nationwide. Also by Tactical Logic, and priced at 99 cents.

Flight Update: Walk Right Past Those Crowds By the Monitors

This flight status app supports over 1,400 airlines worldwide, and packs a lot of info into one status screen for quick reference on-the-run. Enter your itinerary and see status data such as times, gate and terminal, baggage claim, delays and aircraft type. For U.S.-based flights, tracking is also available. If your flight is canceled or delayed, the “find” feature can help you find an alternative (and show you the status of those flights, too). Now I can walk past an airport status monitor without even the urge to pause or look up at it. Flight Update is by Silverware Software, and priced at $4.99. Flight Update Pro, which offers compatibility with Tripit, is $8.99.

What iPhone apps do you find invaluable when you are on the road?

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Travel Tip: Chair + Desk = Makeshift Standing Workstation

Simon Mackie — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:00:48 +0000

It can be hard to set up an ergonomic working environment when you’re on the road, which can lead to poor posture and back pain. A good way to improve posture is to work standing up. (It can also aid concentration, too.) However, while traveling it can be hard to find a convenient surface to put your laptop at the right height to make a standing desk.

A simple and quick way to make a makeshift standing desk on the road is to lift the chair up onto the desk, and then set your laptop on the chair. This usually puts my laptop at a comfortable working height, but you can adjust it by placing books underneath your computer. (If you’re in a hotel room, it will probably have a thick phone book that’s great for this job.) It’s not a particularly attractive solution, but it works pretty much anywhere, and it’s quick to take down when you’re ready to leave.

If you’d like to make a standing desk at home, check out our previous posts “How to Build a Standing Desk” and “How I Made a Standing Workstation For $19.99.”

Share your travel tips in the comments.

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Delayed: Android, aka Google Phone

Om Malik — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 05:50:28 +0000

If you are a start-up targeting the mobile industry, then you are well aware of the slow moving ways of incumbents, equipment makers and of course handset makers. You are made aware of their equally glacial ways when you come from the opposite end of the spectrum, Silicon Valley.

Google, the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine that is making a big mobile push via its Android Mobile Platform, is learning the realities of mobile business the hard way. A report in WSJ suggests that the company is experiencing delays to its so called launch which is now slated for fourth quarter 2008. (Somewhere in Cupertino, Calif., Apple’s Steve Jobs is having a good laugh!)

“This is where the pain happens,” Andy Rubin, Google’s director of mobile platforms told WSJ. “We are very, very close.” He was talking about adding features etc requested by carrier partners. I think this is why Jobs was smart in being tyrannical and ignoring carrier requests when it came to software. Google apparently can’t afford to ignore partner requests.

Here are the relevant and interesting facts from the WSJ article:

T-Mobile USA is taking up all of Google’s attention, since the company wants to launch a device in the 4th quarter. This is diverting attention away from other partners.

Executive reshuffle at Sprint is causing some delays. Sprint now wants to develop an Android phone for its 4G network instead of 3G network. Sprint as we know, is like a dancer with two left feet.

China Mobile’s equipment partner is having a tough time translating Android into Chinese characters.

Developers are finding it hard to write apps for Android because Google keeps making changes to the Android.

Again, as I said earlier – whimsical wishes of carriers, endless customization, software delays and of course, executive reshuffling – these are facts of life for mobile start-ups. Welcome to the club, Google.