Now that I’m back from New York, I thought I’d talk about my experience using Trippy. You all know that I’m compensated to be on the advisory council, 
but that won’t stop me from being blunt. Overall it’s a tremendously helpful tool, but it needs a little work. I suppose that’s why it’s in beta. (And remember, if you want to try it, just go to trippy.com and use the code “cranky” to gain access.)
When I filled out my New York trip, I wasn’t sure what kind of response I’d get. Thanks to all of you, I got 82 recommendations, many with helpful comments on why you made the suggestions you did. Of those, I ended up using four of them, and I probably never would have found any of them without Trippy.
So, thanks to Jake for suggesting lunch at Katz’s Delicatessen, Luke for dinner at Kin Shop, and Lou for dessert at Sweet Revenge. They were all awesome. And thanks to John for suggesting the High Line as a way to spend the afternoon. I had no idea that place even existed, and it was 
a beautiful day to be wandering outside.
The best part of this is that each one of these recommendations came from people who I wouldn’t have reached out to directly on my own. Trippy really opened it up for me, and I’m definitely going to be using this more, even after my advisory council membership ends down the line.
But there clearly are some issues, and I’ve gone ahead and forwarded these on to the folks at Trippy, and they’ve been really enthusiastic about getting the feedback. The developer crew is working on all these things. If you have any more you’d like to add, let me know. Here are the ones that stand out so far:
- Facebook is the only way to access Trippy and that was by far the biggest complaint. A lot of people don’t use Facebook, nor do they want to allow Facebook Connect to share details. Alternate access methods will happen down the line so others can take advantage. That’s incredibly important.
- The only way to share photos with people in your trip is via an iPhone app. I don’t have an iPhone, so that’s completely unhelpful. An Android app is coming soon, so that will provide relief for many. There still needs to be more open ways to share.
- Many of the locations aren’t categorized. They just default into the “Things to Do” category if they aren’t recognized as hotels or restaurants. That will certainly get better with time.
- There doesn’t appear to be a way to order your days on your trip. I wanted to see my day in order with lunch, followed by the afternoon activity, then dinner and dessert. Doesn’t work that way for now.
- It would be nice to have a way to “not recommend” something in cases where others had previously recommended it. Even a “disagree” button would be a good idea so you can see that some may not have liked it. This would have come in handy for the Momofuku Milk Bar which was panned in the comments since there wasn’t a way to pan it elsewhere.
Those were probably the biggest issues culled from all your helpful comments publicly and privately. Yes, there were some other minor ones that are easily fixable as well, and those have been passed on too. Thanks to everyone for giving it a spin and helping plan my time in New York. Now, who wants to chime in on Sonoma?
[Please note that this post is on a Wednesday and is not taking the place of a regular post. I’m hoping to use Wednesdays for more of these types of things.]
