Tourfolio

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration that is gaining some major popularity with tech savvy individuals. The tool gives an interface for users to discuss and work together using formatted text, photos, videos, maps and so much more! I was recently given an invitation by a friend who posted a status on Facebook letting his friends know that he had a few invites left. Within a few minutes I stumbled upon a very useful extension - Trippy (by Lonely Planet) – which I wanted to review for all of you fellow travelers and how it can help you plan your next trip.

Trying to plan your next vacation trip with friends and family can quickly become a headache with input from all those involves – famous landmarks they want to see, well known restaurants to enjoy local food, quaint cafes for morning coffee and places to get tango lessons. You get the idea – so much to do but not enough time. This could be further compounded by the fact that everyone who is going on the trip might be living in other cities, states or countries. This is just one of the many practical uses of Trippy by Lonely Planet for Google Wave.

As an overview, I’ve attached a rather decent live demo of the extension so you can see how it visually works – instead of looking at hundreds of screen shots.
Note: If you are having trouble watching the above video – due to the small size – please click on the “Full Screen” option.

In a summary of the above live demo, the Trippy application can help you collaborate with others by;

• Finding places to eat, sleep and explore in your favorite cities,
• See Lonely Planet recommended places of interest,
• Create an itinerary in real-time with your friends,
• Vote and comment on places to go and things to see and do,
• Print your trip or share it via Google My Maps or email.

Based on our review of the exploring Lonely Planet’s Trippy extension for Google Wave – these are the features we loved and the features we would like to see fixed;

Trippy’s Positives

• The search function for recommendations (e.g., restaurants and hotels) works by querying website databases (e.g., Lonely Planet, Trip Advisor, Frommers, etc…) and does it’s job pretty well.
• Very easy to add items to your itinerary after searching for them – all you need to do is click on the link and select what day during your trip that you want to visit it. The address will be pre-populated as well as contact information making it very efficient for creating a great itinerary.
• Only members invited to your ‘wave’ that has the Trippy extension added to it can see your itinerary – so your trips won’t be made public.
• While more associate to the Google Wave framework, you can easily invite others to your ‘wave’ that contains the Trippy extension to help them collaborate on a vacation.

Trippy’s Negatives

• The application does not install onto your desktop so if you don’t have access to the Internet you won’t be able to collaborate (but one must remember this is an online collaboration tool).
• There needs to be an easier function to find famous landmarks and such as you can only perform a search. I tried broad keywords such as ‘landmarks’ and ’sights’ in Rome, Italy and basic places such as the Roman Colosseum and the Trevi Fountain didn’t even appear.
• The voting function would be better as a finite amount of votes by members of the “wave” instead of continuous voting which only shows up in the Recent Activity. Thus one person can constantly click on “yes” to keep voting even if they previously voted “no”.

The tool is currently in a preview beta phase so you will need an invite to join but hopefully it won’t be a problem for you much longer. As an added bonus – I’ll send Google Wave invites to the first five (5) individuals that perform the following three easy steps;

1. Follow us on Twitter (@tourfolio),
2. Tweet your favorite Tourfolio article that we’ve published,
3. Lastly, leave a comment below with your Twitter username so we can verify the above.