
Show HN: I open-sourced my travel planning startup, Wanderlust - danecjensen
http://mywanderlust.co
======
BenjaminN
I'm working on something similar at
[http://tripovore.com](http://tripovore.com)

Basically I think city guides are obsolete (they have been there for 200 years
with no major innovation) and have to be reinvented and trip planning
automatized using APIs we have online. I currently use 6 of them: foursquare,
songkick, instagram, google places, google translate and facebook. I've been
working on this for the past 8 months, but I'm having UX difficulties keeping
such a complex problem as simple as possible. I first started this during the
foursquare hackathon 2011 and the project won the grand prize (called my next
trip at that time).

Would love to hear any feedbacks you got at feedback@tripovore.com

Thanks!

~~~
imrehg
Would love to know what's the source of the location name autocomplete, this
is not the first page where my city name of "Taipei" gets corrected to merely
"Da-an District, Taiwan" \- no city name, just one of the many districts of
the city. If I wasn't living here, it would be mighty confusing.

~~~
BenjaminN
Google Places API

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danecjensen
I've been working on this for 2-3 months and realized I don't have enough time
to donate to it. So, I open sourced it. I always envisioned it paired with a
mobile app. It's written in AngularJS and Rails hopefully someone can start
helping me where I left off.

~~~
erikig
Thanks, there are parts of this that I really like. I'm hopeful that more
developers will follow in this trend and release their projects in works as
open source projects.

Incidentally in reviewing I also came across some of your other projects,
(sockclub.com, cam.ly etc) - kudos on taking your ideas all the way!

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misiti3780
This is a great idea. Nice work. I'm probably the only one here but everytime
i see open source I run to github hoping for a python project but almost
always am looking at ROR .... oh well

We need more open source Django

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aram
Not sure what you mean - this is actually built with RoR.

~~~
misiti3780
i know i am saying i wish more projects like this were written in django -
that is it

~~~
aram
Got it now - thanks :)

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aram
Here's the link to Github repo:

[https://github.com/danecjensen/mywanderlust](https://github.com/danecjensen/mywanderlust)

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dmamills
Somebody has a hankering for starbucks:

[http://mywanderlust.co/trips/c8b8d9b3444c2dce21fcf12063101b7...](http://mywanderlust.co/trips/c8b8d9b3444c2dce21fcf12063101b77a93c30f6/edit)

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mck-
Nice app :) Once you have decided all the destinations you'd like to see, it'd
be sweet if it could tell you how to go there (i.e. plan the optimal route)

I did this side project [http://www.routific.com](http://www.routific.com) to
do route optimization (you can also specify time-windows, which would be neat
for opening/closing hours) -- the algorithm is open source:
[https://github.com/mck-/Open-VRP](https://github.com/mck-/Open-VRP) \--
perhaps an idea to integrate it?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Half-off topic/rant: I would love if trip route planning tools could take into
account public open/close time information. Twice I've been in the South
Dakota area on road trips, and each time I miss being able to see the Minute
Man silo site near Rapid City because they lock the fence up around it outside
of visitor hours for security reasons:

[http://www.nps.gov/mimi/planyourvisit/hours.htm](http://www.nps.gov/mimi/planyourvisit/hours.htm)

TL;DR Please incorporate open/close time data in travel planning apps!

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govindkabra31
This is great.. why dont you pursue further? Looks like some of it is coming
from 4sq api, I can help you there if you are stuck.

Kudos on working on it, and hope you find time to continue building on it. One
specific feature that will make it so much easier is if there was a way to
bootstrap your list. May be display top tourist locations to start with.. you
can also search for tiplists on foursquare to give user starting point. Not
sure if you already do that, and I just couldnt figure out..

~~~
danecjensen
Thanks for the kind words and feedback. I agree about bootstrapping a list.
Suggested places feature is a top priority. Do you work for 4sq? If so please
email me: hn handle at gmail

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brickcap
Wow nice work. When I travel outside I usually use wikipedia to get a list of
places where I should go. But a direct recommendation from friends is a lot
better since wikipedia lists only places/things that are relatively popular.

I think a mobile app that keeps track of the paces you have been and then
syncs it to wanderlust for friends to see could be really good. I think
facebook does it but here it would make sense.

Really good work.

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sanyi
There's already a Wanderlust:

[https://github.com/wanderlust/wanderlust](https://github.com/wanderlust/wanderlust)

~~~
coralreef
...Really? There's thousands of projects with the same names.

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eddmc
Is there any other open-sourced trip planning code? The main one I could find
on github is OpenTripPlanner
[[https://github.com/openplans/OpenTripPlanner](https://github.com/openplans/OpenTripPlanner)]

The travel industry is plagued by Trip planning startups that don't make it. I
would have thought one of these might have open-sourced their code before.

~~~
danecjensen
I couldn't find any open source projects when I looked before I started the
project. It's a good point that the internet is filled with trip planning
software. I found many web apps but I didn't love any of them. Hopefully this
will bring us a closer to a trip planning webapp that actually works.

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MakeUsersWant
You guys might want to add some content. Screenshots for search response to:

* Berlin: [http://minus.com/lbzErr5MEypU8x](http://minus.com/lbzErr5MEypU8x)

* Paris: [http://minus.com/lpG6vZUm8QuI4](http://minus.com/lpG6vZUm8QuI4)

* Prague: [http://minus.com/lbiTwT6lsWNKzQ](http://minus.com/lbiTwT6lsWNKzQ)

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weames
I love the app. Very simple and easy to use, I would include facebook as you
move towards mobile. It would be nice to see what my trips and plans my
friends have in their travels and being able to browse that would prompt me to
use the app more and keep me on the app longer. More of a UX comment for the
future but I hope it helps. Keep it up. #teamopensource

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zoner
Wow that is wonderful! Great idea! I have a tourism related startup I shut
down 1 year ago, very similar to this, but it was more basic. I was write it
in rails as well.

I need a week off from work and I can make the UI translatable and finish the
Hungarian translation if you are interested.

I did not check the source, is it planned to show recommended destinations
after I selected a city?

~~~
danecjensen
Recommendations/or Suggested Places is a feature on top of the priority list.

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jesalg
I had created a travel app very very similar to yours earlier this year using
RoR and AngularJS as well. Eventually it fell on the wayside. I just open
sourced it:
[https://github.com/jesalg/Travelizer](https://github.com/jesalg/Travelizer)

We should talk about how to collaborate our efforts.

~~~
danecjensen
Awesome. I downloaded the project but was having trouble creating a user. I
want to know more about your project.

~~~
jesalg
Ok I'll shoot you an email.

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oceanician
Cheers, this is interesting as I've recently started a travel planning
project, incorporating prices of flights, lately. Would love to chat to others
who've gained traction, and started making sales in this area.

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smnrchrds
I get a message saying "No such app". Does anyone else have this problem?

[http://i.imgur.com/nILZbsh.png](http://i.imgur.com/nILZbsh.png)

~~~
danecjensen
I don't know how you ended up at the www subdomain but try the naked domain
mywanderlust.co without the www. Also, I fixed the www domain.

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wehadfun
Nice app.

I think Comp Sci classes should take these have baked start-ups and let
students take a crack at them.

So after you add your destinations what are you supposed to do?

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kafkaesque
Genuine question: Can someone explain how this is different from something
like Yelp's lists?

Is this concept more of a 'share your route'?

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sashaeslami
Suggestion: Maybe you can change the messaging on the landing page.

"Build your Perfect trip." or something along those lines might be good.

Cool stuff!

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stef25
Looks nice. Where are you getting the destinations data from?

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aioprisan
This would take about a hour to code in Meteor and quite a bit less code as
well. Nice job though, love the idea!

~~~
govindkabra31
People grossly underestimate time it takes to figure out what to build, how to
design UX, which APIs to use, how the workflow works. And all the inspiration
that goes into coming up with something new.

Sure, if you are given a working website, and you were to replicate exact copy
of it, you can do it far faster

(still not sure about 1 hour estimate-- show us if you really mean it).

~~~
aioprisan
Absolutely, I agree that a heck of a lot more time than 1 hour would go
towards figuring out the entire user flows, UI etc. I never meant to discount
that aspect and that's where some of the negative karma here is coming from.

As far as building a Meteor clone, challenge accepted. As soon as I get off
work in a few hours, I'll get banging.

