Polarsteps

[RooFlyer]

Is anyone using polarsteps.com ? A friend showed me a friend of his trip to Antarctica being tracked with pics and commentary etc via a phone aa and it looked pretty good. A way to share trips without being on Facebook or Twitter?

Unfortunately you can't really know how it works until you sign up - which I don't want to do without some confirmation of the integrity etc of the site.

 

[RB]

Is anyone using polarsteps.com ? A friend showed me a friend of his trip to Antarctica being tracked with pics and commentary etc via a phone aa and it looked pretty good. A way to share trips without being on Facebook or Twitter?

Unfortunately you can't really know how it works until you sign up - which I don't want to do without some confirmation of the integrity etc of the site.

I have signed up but that is as far as I have got. I must have entered some dates & gave the trip a name. Got a prompt about our 2023 trip starting but I didn't take it any further- so can only say I have not been swamped by spam emails etc

 

[smckay]

I used it for a trip in Europe last September.
Can't say I was impressed, or maybe I am dummy.
Each time I posted a picture and tried to publish it, the time was wrong as was the location.
Although, it was a cruise across the Arctic so perhaps reception was sketchy, but when looking at my trip we went backwards, forwards, side to side, sometime within minutes of each other.
Others using it seemed not to have this issue.
It is reasonably easy to use.

 

[Duggo]

My wife used on our half lap of Australia and it was fabulous. It did take a while to work out how to use correctly but after initial hurdles it worked a treat. The idea that you can make a coffee table style book with photos etc from your trip is also a plus, although not cheap it’s certainly a great way to make a once in a lifetime trip live on with a documented account.

 

[RooFlyer]

I signed up today and had an initial look. Not very intuitive ... and they push their 'merch' pretty hard (guides etc). Have a trip to Brisbane (ex HBA) coming up, so will see what happens.

But question: Do you set up the trip up-front (ie enter data like TripIt), or just let it unfold as you go?

 

[smckay]

I just did updates each day. I think you can set an itinerary but beyond this little black duck.

Post automatically merged: Mar 9, 2023

My wife used on our half lap of Australia and it was fabulous. It did take a while to work out how to use correctly but after initial hurdles it worked a treat. The idea that you can make a coffee table style book with photos etc from your trip is also a plus, although not cheap it’s certainly a great way to make a once in a lifetime trip live on with a documented account.

I must have been holidaying too hard to read the manual

 

[RooFlyer]

Now it says to make the app work ( or function I guess) I must enable “always allow location services…” and not the “ only when using app” I had selected.

Why does it need to know where I am when I’m not on a trip?

 

[smckay]

Now it says to make the app work ( or function I guess) I must enable “always allow location services…” and not the “ only when using app” I had selected.

Why does it need to know where I am when I’m not on a trip?

Big Brother needs to know what you are doing, viewing, purchasing and going so appropriate 'targeted advertising' can be delivered to you.

What it does is it tracks your movements and then prompts for suggestions based on the places you have been. When you open the app again it will give you a bit of a timeline.
IIRC this is where mine started to play up, not sure if it is differing time zones we were going through (backwards, so always picking up an extra hour per day) that threw it out as maybe it recorded the locations in local time and couldn't cope with the fact that an hour later I was 100km away but at the same time I was an hour ago. (Maybe I just answered my own questions about why it was all over the shop).

 

[RooFlyer]

Thanks. I think this is a delete.

 

[smckay]

Thanks. I think this is a delete.

I would not stop you from doing that. I'm not an expert on this sort of app but I thought it was awkward and all my friends (ok, my friend) didn't like the fact they he had to create an account (I think?) to see the trip. There might be better out there.

 

[RooFlyer]

I was mainly attracted to it when I was shown by a friend who is looking at the trip of a friends of his, and it looked as it was sort of a way to share pics and commentary of a trip without doing Facebook etc which I’m not on.

TripIt is ideal for me for my own trip planning and laying out and I guess friends may have to miss out on my various trips .

I’ve deleted it.

 

[VPS]

This was in the Traveller letters on the weekend - I also used to write a blog on Wordpress which was easy to share