Exercise? What exercise?

Posted by Annie on Nov 14, 2008 in General, Mapping, Technology | 4 comments

Summer is pretty much here (well, in Brisbane summer actually never really wasn’t here), and the thought of being able to cruise on up to the beach with our new car (wooohooo!) has got me thinking about just how little exercise I get on a day to day basis.  I sometimes walk to work, but let’s face it – when you have a fairly regular train service, multiple buses, and now car at your disposal… you know where I’m going with this.

TravelStash is LIVE!

Posted by Annie on Aug 18, 2008 in General, Mapping, Technology, Travel | 0 comments

About a week ago, Chris and I “launched” TravelStash.  By “launched” I mean we have now opened it up for general consumption.  Anyone can join TravelStash and use it just like Rheanna and Sanjay did on their recent South Africa trip, Margaret and Alan have on their trip around the South Island of New Zealand and of course, how Chris and I have consistently used it to keep our friends and family updated on all our travels over the past couple of years.

New features on TravelStash

Posted by Annie on Apr 7, 2008 in Mapping, Technology, Travel | 0 comments

As some of you may by now know, Chris and I have written a website called ‘TravelStash’. It’s essentially a blogging site intended for travelers. It integrates things normally associated with blogging (i.e. writing blog posts, uploading photos, comments) with a map. The structure behind TravelStash is a bit complex but it does make sense. Basically when you join up, you get your own membership. Once you’re a member, you can create a group for yourself and invite others to join your group. Each member can belong to many groups. Someone in the group creates a trip and then all the members of that group are able to log in and post an article about that trip.

We used TravelStash for our ‘Camp Europe’ holiday and more recently for our ‘Exploring the East’ holiday (even though we haven’t quite finished blogging about that one yet… lazy!). Although we’ve almost finished writing all the code necessary to allow others to join, create their own groups, blog about their trips and upload photos from their holidays, we haven’t quite opened it up to the general public. We’re hoping to do that real soon though so keep posted on that one :)

In the mean time however, I thought I might add a couple of new features to TravelStash. First is the ability to view an entire group’s photos. Until now, photos were only shown on the article with which they were associated. I figured it might be nice to view all of a group’s photos on one page rather than having to individually click on all the articles to see all their photos. You can see an example of that here. Neat eh?

The other feature I added only last night were ‘Travel Tips’. I had lunch with a good friend the other day who told me that it would be neat if we had travel tips posted on TravelStash. He’s right, Chris and I had thought of doing that anyway so I figured I might as well get onto it and just do it. So a few code changes later and we’ve got ‘Travel Tips’ on TravelStash! As you can see, not many travel tips just yet but I’ll make sure to add some more and hopefully when we open TravelStash up to the general public and people flock to it, they’ll add their amazing travel tips too. I was thinking it might be cool to allow comments on travel tips too in case others have something to say about it. Ahh, so many ideas.

Anyway, that’s about it for new features on TravelStash. Chris and I have heaps of ideas for new features, however, so with a bit of luck there may be some cool new stuff on there soon. And obviously we’re really excited about ‘launching’ it to the general public. I’m sure we’ll both learn lots from that experience. :)