Ethan Jewett's dashboard

Great idea, but its current implementation is quite poor sadly.

Namely that it does not recognise multi-part trips, so I have to copy each individual stop, and then when it copies it does not maintain them as a multi-part trip, and there is no way that I have found to merge them into an existing trip either, so im stuck with 10 separate trips now, with no indications of where I will be travelling from etc.

What is really required for multi-part trips is the ability to define an empty trip, like a place holder, and then move actual trips into that place holder.

And in place of the copy feature what needs to happen is something along the lines of being able to specify trip participants, so rather than it making a copy of a the trip that isn't needed you can simply specify that you are going on that trip, and have it appear in your trip list.

In the case that someone does genuinely want to copy a trip from another user, then it should definitely preserve the multi-part elements if any of a trip.

Does this make sense to everyone, feedback is welcome of course.

When can I expect to see this rolled out :)

Also, I had the same problem when a friend of mine got married in Jamaica. It would have been nice to have used the name of the resort, not the resort town in Jamaica.

What about if we manually type in entries that aren't in the database? If you want to track the metadata for Dopplr's statistical purposes (e.g., "state of travel 2008"), then you could add a Google Earth function right on Dopplr allowing me to put a thumbtack on the map where the resort should be placed if it were to exist in your DB.

~Chris

@Matt Bidulph: I have a rock climbing / mountaineering trip to Bugaboo Provincial Park (British Columbia) planned for late August. Even with the Geonames additions, the park -- an official park maintained by the BC govt -- isn't showing up on Dopplr.

http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/expl...

I had trouble figuring out how to add it into the Geonames database (assuming that I can). Either way, it's annoying if I have to go in and add another destination in Geonames every time I want to add a trip (mountain ranges, for instance). When people read "Radium Hot Springs, BC" they don't get it; when they read "Bugaboo Range" or "Bugaboo Provincial Park" they would probably get it.

I realize that this is not an easy problem for Dopplr to address, but wanted to let you know that it's very important to me. (although maybe not so much to ppl who aren't amateur mountaineers/adventurers)

Chris

For everyone who visited this topic over the last few months, I just wanted to note that as of June 12th 2008 we've been importing the full geonames.org dataset into our database, and taking their nightly feed of updates. There's more detail in our blog post at:

http://blog.dopplr.com/2008/06/12/24-...

If there are places you want listed in Dopplr that still aren't available, please let us know.

Thanks for sticking with us while we reached this milestone.

Same problem for me with Austria. Most of the places I go to are small, but still there are friends living there.
Make me able to visit them, pretty please!

I don't know why Mattb says "this solves the problem"... – Luhmann, on May 17, 2008 00:51

Just checking in every three months or so. Still not fixed...

Hi Ethan

Thanks for getting in touch. The problem you reported was a bug in the calendar importer - it's now been fixed.

Glad to hear that you're enjoying using our carbon calculator :)

That's awesome, Matt. Thanks much.

Amy - just to let you know, the feature to 'Copy a trip' from someone else who you share with is live now (and has been for a little while) Just wanted to put it in this thread!

Hi Ethan

Sorry you're having the problem, and thanks for letting us know. We're going to look into it and see what we can find.

i think that adding itinerary information would expand Dopplr's utility because then one could use Dopplr to actually plan a trip with people or store reference information for one's own or someone else's trip. That would make things easier if you were picking up a friend at the airport because you wouldn't have to fish out the itinerary they sent you a few weeks/days ago. Or if you were meeting up with people at a house you rented you could just stash the rental info on Dopplr instead of in some email or group thread. Or heck, if you and your friends travel a lot, you might actually have a layover in common and could meet up in the elite lounge. It's also good for people at work or home that might need to find you.

"Adding the dates and times I'm in a city to Dopplr is an order of magnitude less frustrating than booking the flights and hotels in the first place."

Sure, but it's a necessary dependency (unless your driving there and staying with friends I guess). So if that dependency chasm is already crossed then I reckon it's important for Dopplr to let me extract as much value from that process as possible by utilizing the valuable information contained in those emails generated.

"Ben, it sounds like you're not really bothered about that a lot of the time... I would totally cross town in New York or Shanghai to hang out with my Dopplr contacts! If the trip was too short to bother doing that, I probably wouldn't add it to Dopplr."

In general I would too, especially if I'm traveling back to my native London (I live in San Francisco). But for short hops to places like LA which I do weekly, I can't realistically jump over to Pasadena when I'm holed up in West Beverly Hills overnight.

"If you don't want serendipity, likely serendipity doesn't want you :) "

I do want serendipity, but I don't see why that serendipity can't come for free/zero-time spent. In fact, that then increases the chances of serendipity for my contacts too. It's a two-way thing.

"will TripIt add trip sharing". They already do. It's not as good as Dopplr and also friend discovery is non-existent so I have to add friends by adding in their email address.

But with my developer hat on, it's not hard to improve the friend discovery - and easier than adding email parsing... which is why I'm concerned for Dopplr. TripIt actually has all the nuts and bolts in place, it's just poorly designed right now.

Maybe Dopplr is trying to go after a different kind of person. Could be it. If it is then the subtlety is lost on me (and no doubt others). I look at myself - a very frequent traveler, who lives abroad, has contacts around the world but very time poor. Up until know I thought and assumed I was bang on Dopplr's target market. But if I am, they can't expect me to manually enter my plans when the data is already there. It's not very Web2.0, dare I say it.