I'll start with the least important detail but the first one I noticed: the main page features an image that shows mountains scenery that could have been the foothill of the divide from the south west (based on the combination of the vegetation and peaks), however, the trip planning is for somewhere in Norway which was very confusing until I checked and saw it was AI generated image.
But to the more important stuff: the main tools I use for trail/route planning are Gaia and CalTopo. These tools have a lot of route building tools and overlays for both planning and navigation and I guess you don't want to replace these tools and if you acknowledge hikers are using these tools already and see a way to complement them somehow, I think you want to let the user directly reference their tracks/routes from within Ambulate as it's unlikely they'd like to replicate their work in another tool.
jll29 1 hours ago [-]
If anyone needs a good (related) startup idea, here's one for free:
Complex trip planning for professionals, but in a different way from Ambulate - not hiking trips, but transactions across Web sites: I really hate the way how today
you cannot "properly" book a flight, hotel, train like you would do it in a SQL transaction
BEGIN TRANSACTION
book train
book flight
book hotel
COMMIT;
Only if all three are available and execute the reservation without error do I also want to execute the other ones; that's a prime use case for DB-like transactions, but across Websites. Because no point getting only the flight if I have no-where to stay etc.
danvoell 18 seconds ago [-]
Packagers do this. V2 is to throw your negotiations agent into the mix… we are going to book all 3 of these, now, but you need to give us a kickback.
dvt 58 minutes ago [-]
This is what booking.com kind of tries to do, but I think it's actually a pretty hard problem not only because of scheduling quirks, but often times stuff being delayed, bad weather, etc. will totally throw a wrench into plans.
It would be nice to book a trip with planned contingencies. So basically, no matter what happens, you'll have something to do. This seems kind of a luxury product though, so I'm not sure how many people would be interested in paying a premium.
wildrhythms 42 minutes ago [-]
I can't remember if it was booking.com or some other site like travelocity, but I booked a hotel for work in Dublin, I arrived, and they couldn't find my reservation. After about 30 minutes of the desk staff confusingly clicking around on a computer they 'found' it and I was able to check in. This was a modern hotel too. I stopped using those sites and now only book through the hotel's website, even if it costs more.
jeffreyrogers 41 minutes ago [-]
You can't really do it perfectly unless a single site handles all the booking, otherwise you have race conditions, and obviously there's no incentive for airlines, hotels, etc. to give up booking to a third party since they can upsell you on insurance, upgrades, etc.
kunley 21 minutes ago [-]
I rather think what booking.com is really trying to do is to get money from car rental and flight ticket companies for embedding links to their sales.
I mean, it's meant to bring benefit to them, not to the user.
n4r9 8 hours ago [-]
I love this idea. It's simple, effective, and the UI is great. The account creation process is such a relief. Editing and saving trips is delightfully fast. A few suggestions:
* When adding an activity (or route), I instinctively look for a button at the buttom that says "Save activity". And possibly one that says "Cancel". Right now it's immediately saved and appears on the itinerary. That might be faster, but it leaves me feeling anxious about state.
* The ability to share a Trip with others and even to allow collaboration would be a game-changer. Might require you to allow people to view/create/edit Trips with a "guest" account.
* It would be amazing if there was a way to automatically generate driving or public transport directions and have the Activity and Route both added into the itinerary.
Just a quick note on your landing page on mobile, if you add the following CSS to the slides img element it'll look a lot better across viewports:
max-width: 100%;
object-fit: contain;
6 hours ago [-]
qmarchi 8 hours ago [-]
How does this compare against something like Wanderlog?
Would be nice to see a little more detail on the individual features on the main page.
Oh and your copyright is out of date.
warkdarrior 5 hours ago [-]
Are any of these apps open source and available for self hosting? Currently I am using a combination of Google Maps, spreadsheets, Joplin notes, and email to plan my trips. An app that replaces all of that and I can self host would be ideal.
Edit: Additional feature would love to see -- merge the trip plan with photos from the trip and send draft or publish to SSG/blog of choice.
mplewis 6 hours ago [-]
I need more information on what this can do before I'm willing to create an account.
I'll save you the trouble: it's pretty barebones, but I'm guessing it reflects the needs and wants of the author and good for them
renewiltord 5 hours ago [-]
Thank you.
tonymet 1 hours ago [-]
this space has huge potential . On one end you have Google & Apple maps that are aimed at efficient commutes. On the other hand you have experiencing planning apps like Tripadvisor, All Trails, Instagram which help you brainstorm on all the adventures.
Eventually you get to a point where you need a detailed itinerary of waypoints, maps, resources etc to help guide a multi-week or multi-month trip.
Currently no app supports this space. it's almost overwhelming to juggle 3 mapping apps (google, apple, gaia), multiple adventure apps , google docs, google sheets and try to run a trip .
And having the content all available offline is key. It's the worst experience being somewhere unfamiliar, with a taxi driver houding you, and you don't know where to go.
gigel82 4 hours ago [-]
We take trips to Europe every couple of years, usually around a big city with lots of tourist attractions (like Paris / London / etc.); there's a lot of planning involved, sometimes including purchasing tickets using various museum / attraction websites and it's a PITA to keep track of the itinerary and all the e-tickets, timing, etc.
Never found a solution for that particular problem. I tried Wanderlog -which sounds good on paper- but it was too clunky to use. Needs something simple and clean. I like this UI, but it's for a different purpose than going to a city with lots of attractions / museums / restaurants / etc.
sanjeevverma1 7 hours ago [-]
This is from 2019?
graysonpike 7 hours ago [-]
I don't think the slides are enough to view the app's features. I don't want to create an account just to see the features. Also the auto-advancing slides don't allow me to look closely at the UI.
6 hours ago [-]
MASNeo 6 hours ago [-]
I think this needs a non-registered user page. Not feeling to sign up to just have a look.
6 hours ago [-]
gacklecackle 6 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 21:42:20 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
But to the more important stuff: the main tools I use for trail/route planning are Gaia and CalTopo. These tools have a lot of route building tools and overlays for both planning and navigation and I guess you don't want to replace these tools and if you acknowledge hikers are using these tools already and see a way to complement them somehow, I think you want to let the user directly reference their tracks/routes from within Ambulate as it's unlikely they'd like to replicate their work in another tool.
Complex trip planning for professionals, but in a different way from Ambulate - not hiking trips, but transactions across Web sites: I really hate the way how today you cannot "properly" book a flight, hotel, train like you would do it in a SQL transaction
Only if all three are available and execute the reservation without error do I also want to execute the other ones; that's a prime use case for DB-like transactions, but across Websites. Because no point getting only the flight if I have no-where to stay etc.It would be nice to book a trip with planned contingencies. So basically, no matter what happens, you'll have something to do. This seems kind of a luxury product though, so I'm not sure how many people would be interested in paying a premium.
I mean, it's meant to bring benefit to them, not to the user.
* When adding an activity (or route), I instinctively look for a button at the buttom that says "Save activity". And possibly one that says "Cancel". Right now it's immediately saved and appears on the itinerary. That might be faster, but it leaves me feeling anxious about state.
* The ability to share a Trip with others and even to allow collaboration would be a game-changer. Might require you to allow people to view/create/edit Trips with a "guest" account.
* It would be amazing if there was a way to automatically generate driving or public transport directions and have the Activity and Route both added into the itinerary.
Would be nice to see a little more detail on the individual features on the main page.
Oh and your copyright is out of date.
Edit: Additional feature would love to see -- merge the trip plan with photos from the trip and send draft or publish to SSG/blog of choice.
I signed up with leave.my.personal@data.alone.com
Username: wiwhslhypgtjahnblg@nbmbb.com Password: wiwhslhypgtjahnblg@nbmbb.com
I'll save you the trouble: it's pretty barebones, but I'm guessing it reflects the needs and wants of the author and good for them
Eventually you get to a point where you need a detailed itinerary of waypoints, maps, resources etc to help guide a multi-week or multi-month trip.
Currently no app supports this space. it's almost overwhelming to juggle 3 mapping apps (google, apple, gaia), multiple adventure apps , google docs, google sheets and try to run a trip .
And having the content all available offline is key. It's the worst experience being somewhere unfamiliar, with a taxi driver houding you, and you don't know where to go.
Never found a solution for that particular problem. I tried Wanderlog -which sounds good on paper- but it was too clunky to use. Needs something simple and clean. I like this UI, but it's for a different purpose than going to a city with lots of attractions / museums / restaurants / etc.