On my last trip to France, I brought my iPad and connected to hotel Wi-Fi to plan my days. Then I left the iPad in a hotel safe and consulted my notes on my iPhone when heading out without cellular service.
It’s how many people travel these days. Now Triposo has updated its travel guide app for iOS and Android to 2.0 and brought in some smart ideas about how travelers can make the most of their iPad and smartphone while traveling. The company, started by some ex-Googlers, first made noise last year with its downloadable guides, which provide smart algorithm-based suggestions based on the time of day, weather, local business hours and other information.
Now with 2.0, users get a new iPad interface that allows them to bookmark places that they’d like to visit, which can be synced to their iPhone or Android. Then, when a user heads out and consults their downloadable guide on their smartphone, they can see what places they’ve bookmarked. They can then weigh those plans against new suggestions from Triposo based on where they are and what might be good for that time of the day and weather. That’s something I was missing on my last trip using my combination of notes and downloadable maps.
Triposo 2.0 also includes a new travel journal feature that lets you check-in to a location, associate pictures with a place and jot down notes, all while offline. Then when you return to Wi-Fi connectivity in your hotel, you can see your daily journal on Triposo’s website and share it out to Facebook. It’s a nice way to remember where you’ve gone and what you saw there.
I chatted with Richard Osinga, one of the co-founders of Triposo about the upgrades to 2.0 and he said it was about addressing the ways that people really travel today. So many people now tote iPads when they go on the road, but they don’t like to carry them while out on the street, instead relying on their smartphone.
“This release is about bringing together these two devices, which have different roles,” he said. “The new interface gives you a way to find the coolest things around you, which you take on your phone. Then we’ll suggest more things on your path.”
Triposo, which launched last year, has been on a roll and now has 3 million downloads. The company was started by Osinga, along with his brother Douwe and Jon Tirsen, who were part of the Google Wave team in Australia until the project was abandoned. The Berlin-based company is going up against a number of competitors, from traditional guides like LonelyPlanet and TripAdvisor to social travel startups like Gogobot and local exploration services like Foursquare. It took on $ 3.5 million in funding from InterWest in July. Chris Sacca, Google Wave co-founder Lars Rasmussen and Crunchfund put in $ 800,000 into Triposo’s seed round.
Richard Osinga said Triposo is trying to make its mark by building a product made for real-world travelers, taking into account the limitations and behavior patterns of users. Ultimately, he said Triposo is trying to make a travel guide that’s as smart as the devices running them.
