Backpackit – organize your travel information

Web applications can get as addictive as computer games. I’m giving you a little heads up at the begining so that you can decide if you want to read this post or you are already assuming what’s going to happen and you want to stop before it does.

Backpackit is a web application that allows you to organize your information in many useful ways. Since my blog is about travel, I’ll give you an example on how to use it to organize your travel info, but you can use it for whatever you want, too. This application allows you to create your own webpages about your trip. You can add notes, to-do lists, files and photos. That is great to plan your trip. You can make a page about it, include your hotel info, transportation, departure and arrival dates, list of places you want to visit with notes, links and pictures, include interesting stories you found out about, add some ideas and wish  lists… you will have all your trip information in one place in no time and the great thing about that is that you can share your pages with your friends, family or colleagues; with people you are travelling with. Or you can keep it all private. It’s not a social network, but because it’s on the web, you are able to share it.

Another great thing about Backpackit is group communication. That’s a virtual place where you write a note, your oppinion or a suggestion and other people, with whom you share it, can leave comments. That’s another great way to plan your trip, you don’t have to send a bunch of emails back and forth.

You can create calendar entries, alone or share a calendar with others in your “group”, that are colour-marked by types of events or people that use it. This means that you can plan every day you are spending travelling and set remainders, for you or others, that will be sent by email or sms.

If you do decide to share your pages and other information with your friends and collegues, and you can decide which ones and what exactly are you sharing, you can monitor the changes in a so-called newsroom. Every change and new entry will pop in your newsroom where you can see what your friends are doing at the moment or what they did through the day. That way you won’t do something that has already been done to organize your trip. It looks like Facebook feed.

It’s really easy to get addicted to it once you start creating pages, but it’s also a very useful tool. The best thing is that you can use it for whatever you need. If you are running a business, especially online, it’s a great way to keep your group organized and productive and to be able to monitor the progress. It’s a great application for students, school projects, running a charity organization…anything you can imagine!

…I told you so!

Stella – European Travelling Advisor

P.S. Try it out and let me know what you think of it.

City maps

Every time you start preparing your trip, you probably head to the book store to search for some guides and maps because you get more engaged and you want to get a better idea of where you’re going. Sometimes it means getting a little bit further from that dreamy outlook that you had when you decided to travel to that destination. You start planning more specific things, finding sights, restaurants, museums on the map, trying to figure out transportation etc. Some of us buy a guide and ignore the bad map in the guide saying “We won’t get lost, we have travelled before and we were just fine…” or “Why would we need a map? We don’t plan, we like to wander around more…” That’s all great, and you definitely won’t get lost, you can wander all you want but you start changing your opinion when you are at your destination or when you come back home and realize you haven’t seen anything or done much.

It’s about time management. What does that mean??

Some of you may have bought a city map. One of those pretty, colourfull, rainproof paper maps with some information on the side that at first looks  “cool”, but later you find it to be just an attraction factor, nothing useful. The thing is, it’s not easy to know what you should be looking for if you are not an experienced traveller; or if you don’t know much about the place you’re going to. These maps start to loose their charm once you search for a street that is not marked, once you are having trouble folding and unfolding that huge map, or when you really wish you knew where your stations and stops were or how to get to where you want to go.

If you’re like me, you probably thought of downloading and printing out public transportation maps from the net. That might be a good idea if you already bought your guides and maps. The tricky part comes when you’re on the spot, trying to find the map you need Just kidding… but if you don’t like a million papers, go for National Geographic Maps of cities. Except the city map, they include:

- regional map

- points of interest

- airport diagram

- public transportation map

There are things you should find by yourself and mark them on your map such as stores, restaurants, bars, hotels, museums and sites you want to visit. And things that you should get marked like public transportation information, all sights, legend, time maps and useful phone numbers.

Stella – European Travelling Advisor

DOPPLR – share your travel plans

While writing my blog, I want to tell you about things that are related to travel, like travel gadgets, services, sources and books, besides travel destinations, plans and stories.

With the web changing every day and rapidly becoming the main source of, now, quality information and services, it’s time to start using it the way it is imagined. These changes are making a huge impact on the travel industry and very soon that will show as a big difference.

Dopplr is an online service for frequent travellers. When you become a member, you can add your trips which will be shown on a map, and enter details of your itinerary; even your multi-stop trips. Once you’ve done that, you can find what other people suggest. It’s based on coincidence; the people you might meet, and most of the data is generated by your travel destination. Since you can keep your profile private or public, it can be used in many ways. You can share your travel plans only with people you trust. What I like about Dopplr is that it’s serious about member’s privacy which shows that they are a service first and a social network second.

How to use Dopplr? Invite your friends and plan trips together by leaving them your information to see, find out where you can meet your friends and colleges next, read or add tips about different places, share your trips with people who might not be a part of your Dopplr network yet through Groups and stay informed. You can even use something they call “guest passes” to send specific trip information to someone who is not a member yet, and they will receive it in the way you  see it in your profile. But you are not restricted in information by the place you are planning to visit; search through City Profiles to answer questions, give/find tips and search for people who live or are travelling there.

As a social network, everything is pretty much familiar. You can add a Dopplr box on your Facebook profile and upload your Flickr images for every trip on Dopplr.

Check out Dopplr, you might like it. They started in December 2007 and looking at the way they are developing, there is a lot more to come I’m sure. Who knows, you might bump into me, say Hi and I’ll be happy to share my travel plans with you…

Stella – European Travelling Advosor

*all images from Dopplr’s blog

Travel gadgets – international sim card

Yesterday, a girl that is planning to spend quite some time travelling around Europe asked for advice concerning roaming and best solutions for keeping in touch with her family and friends.  Using the internet on your cell phone, buying a foreign sim card, going to internet cafes…those were all ideas that came up. But they weren’t good enough.

So, it got me thinking. And researching. Let’s say that you’re visiting a few different countries, roaming is too expensive for the time you want to use it, it would be great if you didn’t need to search for internet cafes wherever you go and you don’t want to depend on payphone’s…

This is what I came up with… SIM4travel is a service that provides you with an nternational sim card that you can use worldwide (they cover the whole Europe). What you get is a sim card that you insert into your cell phone and a phone number that stay the same for every trip you take. You just buy more credits. The prices are low and a lot of countries (mostly European) are free to receive calls. Which is great! On their site you can check and calculate the rates.

The flip side is that you can only call and send text messages. No MMS message or web service. For now as they say.

examples

The question that stays unanswered for me is how to brigde the fact that you can’t and won’t notify all your friends that you are going to be using a different number at certain time in the future. Of course, not everybody needs to know where you are every day but let’s say that’s the case. What pops in my mind is to redirect your cell phone number to this number though I’m not sure it would work.

Since I’m not the user of SIM4travel, I can’t guarantee for their service. This is just an idea. It would be great if anybody has any experience or if somebody’s friend had used it to give us some insight, some recommendations…

Stella – European Travelling Advisor