snaptrip: introducing overview and export
As I've written elsewhere, in 2009, I'm hoping not just to launch new sites, but also to keep returning to my other projects and keep on extending them. snaptrip's no exception, so I've returned to an unfinished page which tried to take the single list of trips and give an overview of your travel. It's now a part of the site; follow the link at the bottom of the block of text on the home page.
Of course, this has happened pretty much simultaneously with Dopplr's unbelievably gorgeous Personal Annual Reports, which are (deservedly) getting a lot of attention at the moment. However, there are some reasons why I think snaptrip's overview is also worth looking at at.
Firstly, if you have trips before 2008, they're taken into account on the overview (complete with a per-year breakdown). Secondly, the overview is (more or less) live - if you add a trip on Dopplr, it'll show up within the hour on snaptrip. In contrast, there's not currently a way to request a new annual report PDF.
Thirdly, the overview highlights some different information from your data. For example, it totals mileage (well, actually, distance in kilometres) on all trips for your modes of transport - planes, trains and automobiles, for example. I also decided early on that I'd like to see country-level aggregated data, so there's both a map of countries visited and a list detailing how many trips you've been on to each (as well as an ordered list of top cities).
The launch of the Dopplr reports also flushed out a bunch of ideas for panels I'd like to add. A fairly common request was for personalised Flickr photos in the reports, and this is obviously natural snaptrip territory. I suspect I'm going to run into some of the issues that stopped Dopplr themselves doing this, but it's definitely on the todo list.
However, I have been able to quickly build one of Meg Pickard's requests: you can download a CSV listing of all your trips, including distance travelled and the transport mode, which will hopefully let you make your own visualisations and discoveries.
It feels as if this year might be one where personal informatics makes it into the mainstream; I'm hopeful that snaptrip's overview and export can play a small part. (Dopplr's report already played a large one.) Please try them, and feel free to suggest things (and let me know if you run across any bugs).
[Edit] Apologies for the site's flakiness this afternoon (UK time). I think it's back to more or less being happy now. Session management has leapt right up the todo list.
Of course, this has happened pretty much simultaneously with Dopplr's unbelievably gorgeous Personal Annual Reports, which are (deservedly) getting a lot of attention at the moment. However, there are some reasons why I think snaptrip's overview is also worth looking at at.
Firstly, if you have trips before 2008, they're taken into account on the overview (complete with a per-year breakdown). Secondly, the overview is (more or less) live - if you add a trip on Dopplr, it'll show up within the hour on snaptrip. In contrast, there's not currently a way to request a new annual report PDF.
Thirdly, the overview highlights some different information from your data. For example, it totals mileage (well, actually, distance in kilometres) on all trips for your modes of transport - planes, trains and automobiles, for example. I also decided early on that I'd like to see country-level aggregated data, so there's both a map of countries visited and a list detailing how many trips you've been on to each (as well as an ordered list of top cities).
The launch of the Dopplr reports also flushed out a bunch of ideas for panels I'd like to add. A fairly common request was for personalised Flickr photos in the reports, and this is obviously natural snaptrip territory. I suspect I'm going to run into some of the issues that stopped Dopplr themselves doing this, but it's definitely on the todo list.
However, I have been able to quickly build one of Meg Pickard's requests: you can download a CSV listing of all your trips, including distance travelled and the transport mode, which will hopefully let you make your own visualisations and discoveries.
It feels as if this year might be one where personal informatics makes it into the mainstream; I'm hopeful that snaptrip's overview and export can play a small part. (Dopplr's report already played a large one.) Please try them, and feel free to suggest things (and let me know if you run across any bugs).
[Edit] Apologies for the site's flakiness this afternoon (UK time). I think it's back to more or less being happy now. Session management has leapt right up the todo list.
posted by Paul Mison at 12:09:00.
5 Comments.
