5 ms·

A Better Way To Travel

32 points by kirillzubovsky 15y ago

porfirio 15y ago
"Featured Stops Starbucks (Coffee Shop) In-N-Out Burger (Burgers) Chevron (Gas Station / Garage) McDonald's (Fast Food) Jack in the Box (Fast Food) Los Pinos Mexican Restaurant (Mexican) Six Flags Magic Mountain (Theme Park) Westfield Valencia Town Center (Mall) Chick-fil-A (Fast Food) Porto's Bakery & Cafe (Bakery) Universal Studios Hollywood (Theme Park) IKEA (Furniture / Home)" First page of results. LA to SF. Next page includes "IN THE MIDDLE OF F#%~*?¥! NOWHERE!!! (Farm)"
- joesunga 15y ago
  @porfirio: Thanks a lot for trying it out. We're currently pulling in data from various sources like Foursquare, Google Places, etc. -- but we do add unique stops as well. Currently we've filled out unique stops for the PNW (since we're based here), but CA is definitely one we'd like to tackle soon.
daveschappell 15y ago
This was a fun week's worth of work for Team TeachStreet. Felt good to get everybody working on a single project (we've spent many months working on lots of different areas of the site, and working with different partners). It was really refreshing, and you could almost 'feel' morale climb, as we all had a chance to just have fun for a few days!
swindsor 15y ago
This was a really quick build using Rails and jquery. We're using Foursquare & Google places APIs, as well as our own set of "cool attractions". We use the Google directions API for routes & mapping.
TheIronYuppie 15y ago
This is really cool - I can totally see using this!
- joesunga 15y ago
  thanks! we're looking to add more unique location data to make the experience even better.
madiator 15y ago
Very nice project! And this is the kind of thing I always want to do: stop at weird little fun places on the way. I wish I had it when I did a cross-country trip. Looks like I had missed a few scenic drives and what not!
- joesunga 15y ago
  that's exactly what got us super excited about it. we didn't want to miss any of those cool unique place when we were going on a drive anywhere.
zacharycohn 15y ago
I'm getting an error when going from Seattle to Yakima, it says: "Your geographic boundary is too big. Please search a smaller area."
- zacharycohn 15y ago
  I'm actually getting that error 100% of the time. I tested Seattle to Redmond, and then I tested a specific address to another specific address, both in Belltown.
  - joesunga 15y ago
    @zacharycohn: thanks for letting us know. we're looking into it as we speak. hold please. :)
  - joesunga 15y ago
    hey zach, we just fixed the bug. just tried both seattle to redmond and seattle to yakima -- worked all the way through. let me know if there's any issues on your end still. thanks!
Schultzy 15y ago
As a lover of road trips, I really dig what you're doing. If I may offer two observations: 1) I would appreciate some sort of filter to hide multi-location stops like Sub-way, Exxon, etc. If you are going to have such data at all, I would appreciate the ability to hide it. I can find a gas station by reading the highway signs, but it's not as easy to find the super unique and interesting stops. 2) Scaling the page to see more of the map makes the text very difficult to read. Anyways, pretty darn good for a week. Thanks for sharing!
- joesunga 15y ago
  @schultzy: thanks a ton for the feedback. here are my responses to each observation: 1. that makes a ton of sense. adding filtering in the future was something we were thinking about and we'll add this suggestion into that list. 2. you can always zoom the window in closer, but we'll look at making the text on the map more readable. thanks again. :)
hugh3 15y ago
Hmmm. Well, the "places of interest" it suggested to me didn't look interesting, but it's nearly useful. What it really needs is just to have a "time" column estimating how far each stop is from the last one. Maybe I just grew up watching too many NSW RTA ads, but I'm a firm believer in the principle that for safety you should stop and get out of the car every two hours. So if it could suggest stops which were spaced roughly two hours apart, it'd be useful to me.
- daryn 15y ago
  great suggestion Hugh. We definitely want to incorporate the time of day and time between stops at some point, both for the reason you suggested as well as to be smarter about the types of attractions we suggest at different times. thanks!
- joesunga 15y ago
  That's funny you say that. The "time" situation was something we struggled with to find what the best experience would be. The questions we had were: - Do you stop 1 hour all the time when you stop at a restaurant? What if you take it to-go? - What if you stop at a stop like the World's Largest Frying Pan for just 5 minutes? Should we allow users to add custom time limits for each of the stops? - Would we be complicating things adding custom times? All great questions and things for us to think about. Thanks a ton for the feedback.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    I'd only want an estimate of the travel times between destinations, not an estimate of how long I'd actually spend stopped at each (which I wouldn't attempt to estimate in advance anyway). For me the use case is this: I want to drive from (say) San Francisco to Denver, and want to plan out a schedule which involves stopping every two hours for a break.
    - joesunga 15y ago
      Ahhh...got it. Thanks for clarifying that.
kodablah 15y ago
FYI, when there are multiple possible routes (e.g. the second when going from Dallas, TX to Surprise, AZ) and you choose one that isn't the default, the "Featured Stops" still show for the default.
- joesunga 15y ago
  @kodablah: thanks for finding that bug. a couple of folks have notified us about that, and we're working to resolve it as we speak. cheers!
- joesunga 15y ago
  @kodablah: We just fixed the bug -- let us know how it looks on your end. :)
matdwyer 15y ago
Cool idea, but I'm not driving 10 miles out of the way to get to KFC/Taco Bell. I don't think this should feature restaurants but rather "things to do", hiking trails, look outs, maybe specific food places (local legends, etc) but specifically things that "make up communities" (I think of like college football towns, etc)
- joesunga 15y ago
  Totally agree. Our first pass was to pull in location information from Google Places and Foursquare, but we feel the beauty of something like this would be the unique locations like you mentioned above. Thanks a ton for the feedback.
mea36 15y ago
You should try pulling from http://www.roadsideamerica.com/ http://www.roadsideamerica.com/ That's my go to site to road trip info.

"Featured Stops Starbucks (Coffee Shop) In-N-Out Burger (Burgers) Chevron (Gas Station / Garage) McDonald's (Fast Food) Jack in the Box (Fast Food) Los Pinos Mexican Restaurant (Mexican) Six Flags Magic Mountain (Theme Park) Westfield Valencia Town Center (Mall) Chick-fil-A (Fast Food) Porto's Bakery & Cafe (Bakery) Universal Studios Hollywood (Theme Park) IKEA (Furniture / Home)" First page of results. LA to SF. Next page includes "IN THE MIDDLE OF F#%~*?¥! NOWHERE!!! (Farm)"

joesunga 15y ago
@porfirio: Thanks a lot for trying it out. We're currently pulling in data from various sources like Foursquare, Google Places, etc. -- but we do add unique stops as well. Currently we've filled out unique stops for the PNW (since we're based here), but CA is definitely one we'd like to tackle soon.

daveschappell 15y ago

This was a fun week's worth of work for Team TeachStreet. Felt good to get everybody working on a single project (we've spent many months working on lots of different areas of the site, and working with different partners). It was really refreshing, and you could almost 'feel' morale climb, as we all had a chance to just have fun for a few days!

swindsor 15y ago

This was a really quick build using Rails and jquery. We're using Foursquare & Google places APIs, as well as our own set of "cool attractions". We use the Google directions API for routes & mapping.

TheIronYuppie 15y ago

This is really cool - I can totally see using this!

joesunga 15y ago
thanks! we're looking to add more unique location data to make the experience even better.

madiator 15y ago

Very nice project! And this is the kind of thing I always want to do: stop at weird little fun places on the way. I wish I had it when I did a cross-country trip. Looks like I had missed a few scenic drives and what not!

joesunga 15y ago
that's exactly what got us super excited about it. we didn't want to miss any of those cool unique place when we were going on a drive anywhere.

zacharycohn 15y ago

I'm getting an error when going from Seattle to Yakima, it says: "Your geographic boundary is too big. Please search a smaller area."

zacharycohn 15y ago
I'm actually getting that error 100% of the time. I tested Seattle to Redmond, and then I tested a specific address to another specific address, both in Belltown.
- joesunga 15y ago
  @zacharycohn: thanks for letting us know. we're looking into it as we speak. hold please. :)
- joesunga 15y ago
  hey zach, we just fixed the bug. just tried both seattle to redmond and seattle to yakima -- worked all the way through. let me know if there's any issues on your end still. thanks!

Schultzy 15y ago

As a lover of road trips, I really dig what you're doing. If I may offer two observations: 1) I would appreciate some sort of filter to hide multi-location stops like Sub-way, Exxon, etc. If you are going to have such data at all, I would appreciate the ability to hide it. I can find a gas station by reading the highway signs, but it's not as easy to find the super unique and interesting stops. 2) Scaling the page to see more of the map makes the text very difficult to read. Anyways, pretty darn good for a week. Thanks for sharing!

joesunga 15y ago
@schultzy: thanks a ton for the feedback. here are my responses to each observation: 1. that makes a ton of sense. adding filtering in the future was something we were thinking about and we'll add this suggestion into that list. 2. you can always zoom the window in closer, but we'll look at making the text on the map more readable. thanks again. :)

hugh3 15y ago

Hmmm. Well, the "places of interest" it suggested to me didn't look interesting, but it's nearly useful. What it really needs is just to have a "time" column estimating how far each stop is from the last one. Maybe I just grew up watching too many NSW RTA ads, but I'm a firm believer in the principle that for safety you should stop and get out of the car every two hours. So if it could suggest stops which were spaced roughly two hours apart, it'd be useful to me.

daryn 15y ago
great suggestion Hugh. We definitely want to incorporate the time of day and time between stops at some point, both for the reason you suggested as well as to be smarter about the types of attractions we suggest at different times. thanks!
joesunga 15y ago
That's funny you say that. The "time" situation was something we struggled with to find what the best experience would be. The questions we had were: - Do you stop 1 hour all the time when you stop at a restaurant? What if you take it to-go? - What if you stop at a stop like the World's Largest Frying Pan for just 5 minutes? Should we allow users to add custom time limits for each of the stops? - Would we be complicating things adding custom times? All great questions and things for us to think about. Thanks a ton for the feedback.
- hugh3 15y ago
  I'd only want an estimate of the travel times between destinations, not an estimate of how long I'd actually spend stopped at each (which I wouldn't attempt to estimate in advance anyway). For me the use case is this: I want to drive from (say) San Francisco to Denver, and want to plan out a schedule which involves stopping every two hours for a break.
  - joesunga 15y ago
    Ahhh...got it. Thanks for clarifying that.

kodablah 15y ago

FYI, when there are multiple possible routes (e.g. the second when going from Dallas, TX to Surprise, AZ) and you choose one that isn't the default, the "Featured Stops" still show for the default.

joesunga 15y ago
@kodablah: thanks for finding that bug. a couple of folks have notified us about that, and we're working to resolve it as we speak. cheers!
joesunga 15y ago
@kodablah: We just fixed the bug -- let us know how it looks on your end. :)

matdwyer 15y ago

Cool idea, but I'm not driving 10 miles out of the way to get to KFC/Taco Bell. I don't think this should feature restaurants but rather "things to do", hiking trails, look outs, maybe specific food places (local legends, etc) but specifically things that "make up communities" (I think of like college football towns, etc)

joesunga 15y ago
Totally agree. Our first pass was to pull in location information from Google Places and Foursquare, but we feel the beauty of something like this would be the unique locations like you mentioned above. Thanks a ton for the feedback.

mea36 15y ago

You should try pulling from http://www.roadsideamerica.com/ http://www.roadsideamerica.com/ That's my go to site to road trip info.