Travel Blogging is great in theory, but often hard to actually accomplish. After a long day of sightseeing abroad you dutifully sign on to your hotel’s patchy Wi-Fi and try to upload images and correlating text for your travel blog — or you are like me, and after sightseeing you “dutifully” patron the hotel’s bar instead. Suffice it say, your travel blog (and mine) is not what you had hoped for.
But it can be. TripColor, a new social travel blogging app has made it mind-blowingly simple to create and maintain a legitimate travel blog.
Learn about the app that will make you a travel blogging pro after the jump.
Your Trip
TripColor is pretty straightforward; you set up an account and start adding photos. Okay, it’s a little more complicated than that, but not by much.
TripColor is extremely easy to use
First photo
After creating an account, you can start blogging. To set up a new trip, simply tap My Trips in the center of the toolbar. A new page will open and you can name your trip, write a brief (250 characters max.) description, set your privacy level (public or not), and choose a category that best represents your trip. You have to choose at least one category in order to create your trip. The given categories are: Adventure, Outdoor, City, Family, Exotic, Relax, Culture, and Romance — too bad there isn’t a debauchery category, since quite a number of my vacations tend to head in that direction.
You must select a category for your trip
After you have set up the basics for your trip, you can add photos by tapping the add symbol in the top corner. Easy, right? You have two options; Take a Pic or From Album.
You can create content while offline, which will post as soon as you are connected again.
It’s nice to have the option to add a photo at a later time, because let’s face it, when you’re in the moment, it’s sometimes hard to talk about the moment.
Your trip details change to reflect added content
If you are connected to the Internet (and have allowed TripColor to use your location) when you are uploading your photo, then your location will be recorded via GPS on the map. If you are not connected to the Internet, then you can zoom in on the map and drop a pin marking your exact, or general location. When you are offline, you can still add photos, descriptions and manually map your location; the information will remain pending until you are online again.
Available categories for feed specifications and an uncategorized Feed
You can add the name of the location to the photo title, date (the app will load the current date/time) and your “blog” or whatever it is you want to write about the photo. When you are finished, your trip will update accordingly.
A Featured Feed
In addition to creating a running feed of your own trips, you can browse other user’s travel blogs. By tapping the Browse icon, you will be directed to a page featuring two different types of feeds, the Featured Trips and your Feed. Both feeds are sorted by the categor(ies), or lack thereof, that you determine through the Filter option. The Featured Trips are the envy inducing trips, which tend to feature photos that look like they are straight out of Travel and Leisure. The Feeds option features trips that match your filtered categories; some trips look truly amazing, and some … don’t.
Sharing is Caring
Tripcolor creates a travel blog webpage with your uploaded app content
Every time you post a photo, you have the option to share via Facebook. Unfortunately, you can only share via Facebook, except when you tap the Profile tab. Your Profile is your iPhone User Page, aka your more traditional web travel blog. This page shows you a preview of your Trips Webpage and gives you the option to launch an application to visit that webpage, or email the link to someone.
Final Thoughts
I love the simplicity of the design used throughout TripColor. It is exceedingly easy to use and I love the idea of creating a webpage as well as a social feed. What is truly my favorite feature is the amazing ability to load photos and add descriptions while offline — they will remain pending until you are able to connect to the Internet again.
There are a few things that I believe can be improved upon. For example, I would like the option to follow certain people and regions on my feed. I think it would be a worthwhile component, rather than choosing a category that doesn’t always produce the most enviable content. I would also think a search function would be relevant. This goes along the same lines as wanting to follow certain people or regions in order to avoid trips that I don’t find interesting.
Regardless, this is my favorite social travel app that I have come across and I am looking forward to documenting my upcoming adventures with it.