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Here is a new road trip planning tool that makes good use of a mapping API and and has a very cute user interface. So, go check it out and report back with your findings.
One special note -- take a look at the job description they are offering here. Maybe I ought to apply?
Mark
Had a little play with it, and since I am thinking of tripping around Tasmania next summer, entered Launceston and changed the country to Australia.
It promptly came up with the information for Launceston MN. Did it three times with the same result.
Maybe I am missing something!
Since Australia is supposed to be one of the supported countries, I plugged in Hobart (which the capital city of Tasmania) and, like you selected Australia -- but it wasn't able to find Hobart..... so then I did the same with Launceston, Tasmania -- It couldn't find it either.
So, that's not very impressive a beginning....
Mark
Mark,
Even in North America I am not having any luck. I put in Dawson City - Yukon - Canada, but it keeps telling me it cannot be found. Just gives me all the other 'Dawsons'.
Seems like they have a bit of work to do yet.
Thanks for the prompt reply, and the posting. I'm very open to new ideas you might have, or suggestions. I see that some of your visitors were trying to plan road trips outside the US. We are currently working on this, but since Google Maps doesn't have road maps for the rest of the world it's a little difficult to run the same version for the US... It's in the works though!
Thanks again for the link, and like I said.. Any improvements, suggestions, ideas... We're open to them all plus constructive criticism. The overall goal is to provide an easy to use tool, without all the ads and clutter you see on other road trip tools pages...
Keith Johnson (owner of the company)
I did a trip from Las Vegas to Santa Barbara to Aptos to Placerville to Furnace Creek and back to Las Vegas. It worked pretty well --- the notes appear in a notebook (spiral-bound) and it loaded pretty fast.
Choose a route in the USA and give it another whirl.
Mark
[edit]: Another nice feature of the service is that the system sends an e-mail reminder about the trip, which is handy since I had forgotten what the link was.... Here is that California Circular trip so you can see what the various elements of a completed trip look like.
Maybe Mr Johnson could do with a little help. Google maps has been available here for years. Many people, including myself, use them from time to time to get directions or establish a route. I just put Launceston Tas to Hobart Tas in Google, and it worked perfectly. And it is exactly the same version as for the US.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Sedenquist
And I am sure that it goes for Canada and much of the world outside the US.
Hi Everyone
Thanks for checking out our road trip tool and I appreciate all the feedback! We currently understand that google maps does mapping throughout the world, but we found during our development stages, that simply just showing google directions wasn't good enough for our standards. We wanted to make sure that gas/fuel prices, lodging, weather, and attractions all were up to par. Unfortunately, most of these services are not global, and would create problems on our web site.
But that doesn't mean that the US doesn't have great road trips! Try driving up to Maine, down the west coast of California, or through the wild west to Yellowstone! All great vacations in my mind.
Keith et al,
Thanks for joining the discussion. I am sure you'll get some more ideas, tips and opinions herein. This is a highly motivated and dedicated group of gear and idea testers.
Mark
Ahh - it's fun to be on the testing side of the fence. So, I get to bring up some points that I found odd instead of being the one that has to explain them! These notes were made testing without signing in to the site. Perhaps that enables extra features that correct for some of these issues?
Entered "Boston" and "Massachusetts" in the selection criteria - the following page prompted to choose between "Boston Massachusetts US" and Boston United Kingdom. I already chose the state.
How do you alter/remove a particular stop on a road trip? Is this possible? It isn't obvious.
Printer dialog immediately appears when clicking on the "Directions" link in the "Travel Notepad". I was expecting just a page with directions to appear. It seems the links was copied from the "Print Directions" option on another page.
"Watch an Overview" feature does not work on Safari 4 beta on Mac OS X. The fun of beta software. Works fine on Firefox on the same platform.
"Copyright" states 2001. Is that correct?
Ok. I'm going to take off my "nitpicking tester" hat now.
That said, it definitely has potential. I'm glad they chose to display the entire link in the address bar so I could easily copy my roadtrip without having to log in to the site.
For about 18 long, torturous months, we tried to build an application like this. If I really wanted to extend that torture to Keith, I would point out the bugs I know couldn't work yet on this application. But I gotta admit, Tim, the bugs you found are beauts!
Speaking of new apps -- we launched the latest version of our Las Vegas site yesterday and I would love to get your feedback on it too.
I put a screen shot of what the opening page of the sample trip routing plan looks like on the RTA blog.
Mark
Hi Everyone,
We have made some changes/suggestions that you all have given throughout this forum. Please visit: myownbelhop to see the new changes and give feedback if you have time.
Mark, I hope you don't mind we included a graphic for RoadTrip America on every page with a link back. I figured you've been so much help so far in providing feedback your site deserved a little recognition.
Keith Johnson
BellHop.com
Good work !
I have just had a very quick look and routed a Denver to Denver round trip with 7 stops and it was quick to load and easy to use and the added info can help.
I am not sure whether you can alter the suggested route between two points or not, but to route the way I wanted to go [rather than the most efficient one given] I put in towns along the way [between A and B] to make it detour off the recommended route. That is fine but I only have the option to actually stay at that point for 1 or more nights and do not see the option to pass through, ie; a 0 night option in the drop down box.
It's not a big issue but if part of the route you want to do needs 4 destination points to take you through the area you want in one day you have to add the 4 night total together to get your days travel time and you would have to back track to add your true total of nights, which could be a bit confusing on a really long trip.[ This example would record 4 nights instead of 1]
Gee, I hope that makes sense !
Keith,
I tried a trip departing from Cody, Wyoming and just about every city in Montana that I tried came back with a "destination not found error."
WRT the use of the RTA logo -- I'll get in touch with you via e-mail.
Thanks,
Mark
Ok, so I have to get out there and pick on somebody else's code since I've been dealing with a "situation" over the past few weeks.
It looks like the items I mentioned previously have been corrected on BellHop.com. However, here's some fun (based around Mark's previous entry):
Why can't I take a trip from Cody, WY to... anywhere? I tried from Cody, WY to Boston, MA, and all I receive is this error:
When receiving the above error message, I am not returned to where I came from, instead, I get a blank page.Quote:
No corresponding geographic location could be found for one of the specified addresses. This may be due to the fact that the address is relatively new, or it may be incorrect.
Error code: 602
I tried a few other places and the same occurs. It appears that you can go to (and through) Cody, WY... you just can't leave if that's where you are starting from. Should the residents of Cody be informed of this situation? ;-)
Actually, after a bit more testing, I was able to get out of Cody, but each time I did, if I wanted to remove the city I was going to, this would happen:
"Remove this leg" results in this error:
Looks like there is some confusion about zero-based arrays here...Quote:
Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a0009'
Subscript out of range: '[number: -1]'
/roadtrip/roadtrip1.asp, line 49
How do I know if entering a state is appropriate? Entering just "Boston" or "Los Angeles" results in a "City not found" message. It seems the state is a required, not optional, field.
If the site only has US cities for now, why are there options to select Canadian provinces and Australian states?
California is missing its two-character state code in the combobox.
Tab order on Firefox 3.0.5 is not consistent (Safari 4 beta seems okay).
Mileage calculator - if I don't put in a state, could it use the national average as a default?
That's all for now.
Mark - I haven't had a chance to take on the Living Las Vegas site, but I'll be sure to stop by and have a look-see.
St Paul MN keeps coming up as 'City not found'.
I had wanted to plot my route from St Paul to Boston.
I hit every town I went for, and some of them were small towns like Leadville CO and Chinle AZ and so on.
Did you enter "cody wyoming" in the first box ?Quote:
Posted By Mark I tried a trip departing from Cody, Wyoming and just about every city in Montana that I tried came back with a "destination not found error."
When I typed in cody in the first box and Wyoming in the second it came up straight away [twice.]
Although if you type "cody wyoming" in the first box it won't recognise it, you can only type "cody" and then use the "which state" drop down box.
I used the same method as I mentioned above "st paul" in the first box andQuote:
Posted By Lifemagician St Paul MN keeps coming up as 'City not found'.
"minnesota" in the second and got the same as you, however I then tried
"saint paul" and all is well, although that will cause confusion and will need addressing.
Yes, the "name state if appropriate" tag could be confusing but I guess if you are travelling between 2 city's in America then it is gonna be in a State and therefor appropriate. I presume this is to cover searches outside of the US but would be clearer if it just prompted you to "name which state"Quote:
Posted By Tim It seems the state is a required, not optional, field.
Hi,
There's a new version with some slight differences. Any feedback would be appreciated. One major difference is that we open our lodging results, city results, attraction results in the same page now. It just fades the background and creates a cool new window. (we wanted to steer away (no pun intended) from the popup window idea)
Road Trip Tool
Thanks for all your help
Keith
At the moment if I put in a route all I get is the following message;
"The Google maps API key used on this website was registered for a different web site. You can generate a new key for this website at http://code.google.com/apis/maps/."
Edit ] The above problem is no longer, but I have tried 3 simple routes from Denver with no luck. It is tracking the route on the map but when you click on "add stop" I get an error code [602] and "no corresponding geographic location" notice that has been noted before.
I think I'd use it if I could add stops without spending a night.
The way it is currently set up, you have to state a number of nights you want to spend at each stop. How do you set it up so you can get directions to a restaurant or attraction you'd like to stop at on the way to your stay for the night?
I put in Hoquiam WA-Boise ID-Wall, SD and ended up with directions from Wall to Mukwonago, WI. Go figure.
Oh, and it took about 25 minutes for the little car to travel the whole route (the right one, BTW) to come up with this wrong route. During that time, my computer ran at a snail's pace.
When I just used the search function for Seattle, the preferred hotel was one in Mt. Baker...a good 2.5 hours from Seattle. The second choice was one in Gig Harbor, a good hour away, if traffic is good. I don't see how this would be helpful to travelers to Seattle who aren't familiar with the area.
I ran another roadtrip from Hoquiam WA to McCall ID. The map that came up looked good but when I went to print the directions, the directions were from McCall ID to Mukwonago WI. What?
I can only assume that the travel gods really want me to roadtrip to Mukwonago?
Odd.