
Show HN: Road Trips in Australia - reverseengineer
https://beta3.ingeenee.com
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BFLpL0QNek
Looks / seems to work pretty well, fast and simple.

The one thing with Australia, I'd probably try to highlight the types of roads
/ ability to set road type preference.

I.E in a small hatchback I'd want to avoid unsealed roads, most rental
companies will disallow them in the t&c's + you don't want to get stuck on
them. However on a offroad/adventure bike / 4x4 i'd want to find the most
remote, gnarliest roads possible.

I'll probably use this to find points of interest / general route then use the
Hema 4WD maps to find a more specific / interesting route.

Also you might do well branding / marketing /designing the site for the grey
nomads. A lot of them use
[https://www.wikicamps.com.au/](https://www.wikicamps.com.au/) and pay to use
it, they have money to spend. Some cross integration with sites in wikicamps
would be useful also.

~~~
reverseengineer
Thanks a lot, this is new info for me. Didn't know about unsealed roads.
Camping is another question: whom to focus on? Universal travelers who love
driving or camping, with equipment...

~~~
inopinatus
More than once a rogue GPS decision has directed my vehicle down an Australian
road only an experienced 4WD group should attempt. The significance grows when
you’re 300km from the nearest settlement.

It’s a big country, and mostly empty.

~~~
reverseengineer
Gut feeling - Google Maps and HERE Maps know that. You could send the route to
those maps. Red globe in right top corner of the map.

But here come their restrictions. Google Maps don't route many waypoints. HERE
WeGo don't know places names, often around Alice Springs.

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Sendotsh
As someone who has been roadtripping Australia for 20 years, multiple times a
year, this is a really great resource.

Plugging in a few family-fav trips and it seems to hit most the major points I
would personally recommend.

I like that each place links to Wikipedia, but I don't think that was obvious
at first. I actually only noticed on my re-visit of the site to see if the
places had a "more info" link or something, and completely missed that they
were links on my first look through.

I would probably add links to Wikitravel over Wikipedia, but maybe that's just
me. I like how it summarises the key tourist attractions and eateries and
stuff.

On the final version of the site, I would definitely consider pulling in some
photos of the places when you expand the breakdown. People who travel/roadtrip
generally like visuals, which is exactly why so many of the roadtrip guides
look more like photography magazines. I'm not sure how you'd do that and keep
it looking so clean/minimal (which I quite like), but I do think it's
important.

~~~
Existenceblinks
Just my opinions, I do not really like those photography magazine-like
planning site/app/guides .. it looks bloat to me. It can have bunch of photos,
I think like photos of hotel/hostel in booking dot com.

I would add something like timeline for activities/scenery like morning
afternoon evening. Not too bloat I think.

~~~
reverseengineer
I already selected such inspiring imagery, though from around the world, not
purely AU. To make landing page more vivid, better understandable. Going to do
next facelift with next country.

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vladgur
It’s a great testament to how small our world really is that a team from
Ukraine picked Australia’s outdoors to showcase its technology. Kudos to both
the team and the choice of geography.

~~~
wingerlang
In case you are unaware, roadtripping is quite a 'thing' in Australia. I guess
for locals, but very much so for tourists traveling within the country. Here
are some examples of classifieds for ridesharing partners
[https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-rideshare-travel-
partners/roadt...](https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-rideshare-travel-
partners/roadtrip/k0c18332)

I guess the team went there, saw it, and decided to work on a website for it.

~~~
reverseengineer
Very interesting for domain expertise. Thank you for this intro!

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Existenceblinks
Wow, this overlaps my imaginary idea of simple notes for trip that replaces
spreadsheet but not getting into those bloat, bad idea of travel planning
startups that rely on commissions.

Keeping data meta, I think, is a good way to go. No identity attached, no
personal photos. Just all info going from A to B. So it's folk-able. I really
like the toggle(switch) buttons, I hope it's not linking to external service
(oh it is).

I had put thoughts so much on this kind of apps and it's abandon because I
wasn't able to think of how it's monetized.

\---

Can I ask where's your data/pricing from, if your source is not secret?

~~~
qrohlf
You might be interested in something I'm working on over at
[https://scoutmaps.io/](https://scoutmaps.io/)

(example output: [https://scoutmaps.io/maps/17-portland-for-
visitors/places/13...](https://scoutmaps.io/maps/17-portland-for-
visitors/places/132))

It's much more of a 'blank canvas' approach - I travel a lot, and I wanted
something that's basically a geographically-aware notes app.

Currently in private beta, but if you want to get on the list shoot me an
email (qr@qrohlf.com).

~~~
Existenceblinks
I think I saw your app before. I have mixed feeling about these modern map
(mapbox, google map etc) although it's somehow great. I found its ux is not
the best and often confusing or tedious. I'd love to see innovation around
mapless approach (like this [https://deepmind.com/blog/learning-to-navigate-
cities-withou...](https://deepmind.com/blog/learning-to-navigate-cities-
without-a-map/))

:)

~~~
reverseengineer
This is cool. They use moving reinforcement from the games to cities. First
you discocer the space, then you move.

But here is the real deal - we are going to navigate and move people by any
multi-modal transportation. Uber or Moovit or Rome2Rio. First: they could be
safe by design. Second: their value proposition is wider. We just started with
cars and road trips. Third: car driving will be experience itself in long term
future. People will pay to drive like they pay today for horses. People will
kiss and lick cool cars.

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VoidWhisperer
Perhaps it may make sense to say something if none of resulting trips meet
your search criteria.. For example, while I understand this isn't a realistic
search, I entered '$300' and left the rest of the options as the default. All
of the resulting options are 9x to 10x+ the cost of what I entered with no
indication that it couldn't find trips matching my criteria better other than
a 'relevancy' number that is hard to find in the UI because it does not stand
out.

~~~
reverseengineer
Good point. This is planned but not done yet. We are going to show what
requirement not met with strike thru. You could notice this trick in Google
search results. One or two words are crossed, and closest possible search
result still returned. Thank you for this UI suggestion.

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Jedd
Looks neat.

If I enter an 'aggressive' timeframe, is it intentional that it assumes I have
longer time than shown? (Sydney to Hobart, no waypoints, 4 days - it insists
that the minimum time this trip can take is 11 days).

Small UX things - I like to tab between fields, and use keyboard shortcuts for
drop-downs - I would like to be able to select '2 tourists' by pressing the
number 2. Date-pickers are always horrible - Monday as first day of week would
be great, option to text-enter ISO periods ditto.

~~~
reverseengineer
Thank you for both parts. Neat part: it tries harder to meet duration rather
than budget, though it works to meet them both simultaneously. This is exactly
the sizzle. Sydney-Hobart is 23-24h of pure driving. If you drive several
hours per day it's several days. With few hours per day it's more than a week.
With sightseeing it's longer. So 11 days could be exaclty optimal. Possible to
tweak curiosity & comfort levels. With Long Day curiosity you will compress
the duration.

~~~
Jedd
Understood. I picked that as it's my next kind-of road trip (though I'm
anticipating most time spent at the destination).

It's ~ (9 + 3) hours of actual driving, with an overnight ferry ride in the
middle, btw. Anything involving a ferry or similar will complicate an
algorithm, I'm sure. I'm assuming you basically ignore captive travel time in
those situations?

I had not experimented with the budget constraints originally. I note that if
I put in 4 days & $2000 it offers trips of 13-15 days and $3000-4400. With 4
days and $3000 budget the trips are 10-14 days and $2600-3900.

~~~
reverseengineer
We know ferry time usually. Regarding alternatives, interesting and useful.
Will debug how it thinks.

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empressplay
Neat, but misses a number of inland small towns that are in themselves
attractions, such as Daylesford VIC or Maldon VIC.

~~~
empressplay
Also, I had to blow out the itinerary to three weeks in order to get a single
route between Adelaide and Melbourne that went via the Grampians, which is
overlooking a pretty serious tourist attraction...

~~~
reverseengineer
Grampians National Park is present in Knowledge Graph, possible to enter as
waypoint. Why it's overlooked (or bypassed)? Good question for us, will
investigate... That's why showing it here!

~~~
cmroanirgo
Not sure what your inputs are, but perhaps a rule of thumb (if not there
already) is to generate a list of attractions sorted by quantity of reviews on
(eg) trip advisor and then compare that result with #of people who actually go
there.

It could give you the chance to rank 'must see' weighed against 'off the
beaten track'. (Oz has heaps of 'off the beaten track' that the hordes of
tourists don't know about)

~~~
reverseengineer
This is tricky. We don't know who landed on the page. How to propose Paris in
France without Eiffel Tower? OK if user explicitly checks "avoid 'must see'"
or "avoid overtourism". Then possible to propose different stuff. One traveler
told me exactly this, a week ago. Maybe we will implement this feature.

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Laska
Why I can not open some websites on Internes as that one. It says:
ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH

By the way I am webdesigner and if you wish hire me as a designer or tester
for your IT projects, this is my email: dizayner.design@gmail.com

Also I will be glad find friends from over the globe :)

~~~
mario947
What OS and web browser do you use? What versions? I'd start from updating
both to the latest ones.

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crummy
I entered "Melbourne" and was surprised (stupidly) that it never went far from
the city. I wouldn't mind it just picking some other destinations given a week
or so.

~~~
reverseengineer
Some people love to stay a week in Melbourne. Though better to tell it where
you want to start, what you like in the middle (waypoints, travel-thru) and
where you finish. Could be same Melbourne or could be diff location.

We did not design UI at all, because we are thinking of voice interface. You
are telling your desires and constraints in conversation. They are captured.
Then API is called.

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dmolony
Why does the site insist on having cookies enabled before it even attempts to
work?

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reverseengineer
It caches API access token in the cookies to use for search requests, for
throttling. If you search too fast, you will get human vs. robot check...

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markdown
It's unclear what the first field is for, departure point or destination.

~~~
reverseengineer
Agree, this is very thin wrapper on top of the tech we built. Will design UI
to be both clear and engaging. Thank you for pointing to usability \m/

