YowTRIP mentioned at the Guardian.UK
June 22, 2008 (from Boulder, CO)

The Guardian Online, a London-based newspaper, writes a weekly column in their travel section called "Going Local."

Since March, freelancer journalist Vicky Baker has been traveling in Central and South America guided by local people she meets on social network sites.

This week she visited my hometown: Salvador. I gave her some tips of nice places to go in and near Salvador, which made me homesick :( Salvador is a great town and it's been almost two years since I was there... definitely way overdue a visit.

She also met a couple of my friends through YowTRIP and mentioned it in her article at the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/trav...

What she has been doing and reporting through Guardian is YowTRIP's main objective and what we're trying to enable people to do: Meet locals and other travelers when on vacation. Her next stop is Buenos Aires (One of her favorite cities).

YowTRIP's new face!
June 17, 2008 (from Boulder, CO)

YowTRIP has released its new design! The main feature is the Google maps integration on the home page. This allows you to browse through different cities in the world and have a snapshot of its content before going to the city page.

We expect to have much more integration with Google maps throughout our site.

We look forward to hearing the feedback from our community.

Hello India!
June 15, 2008 (from Boulder, CO)

YowTRIP would like to welcome the newest members from India. Today, we noticed a huge number of Indians registering to YowTRIP.

We haven't found out how they heard about us yet. I-stats (www.i-stats.com) tells us that they're either typing the URL directly or searching for "YowTRIP."

So, let us know where you heard about YowTRIP. TV, newspaper, magazine?

Welcome to our travel community. We hope you'll make meaningful connections for your next vacation here!

YowWIDGET Mini!
June 13, 2008 (from Boulder, CO)

Based on our visitors' feedback, YowTRIP has modified our YowWIDGET to allow you to simply display your upcoming trip. (Or, if you're on vacation, it will say where you are and when you'll be back!)

You won't need to modify the code on your blog/website, simply access your YowWIDGET preferences page and check the "Use YowWIDGET Mini" checkbox.

Now, check your blog/website and you will see a smaller widget with your next vacation. And if you don't have any upcoming trips or are not on vacation at the moment, the Widget won't be displayed at all!

Thank you all for the feedback! Keep it coming. Where will you go next?

Check it out on my website: www.felipecoimbra.com

YowTRIP = Cool Site of the Day
June 5, 2008 (from Boulder, CO)

YowTRIP has been chosen as the "Cool Site of the Day" today (June 5) at www.coolsiteoftheday.com

Don't forget to rank us.

Some other press coverage in the past month includes a Russian magazine, and some bloggers (English and Spanish), check out our press page: www.yowtrip.com/press for more press coverage. If you see YowTRIP somewhere that we didn't mention it there, please let us know!

YowTRIP Demo Video
May 15, 2008 (from Boulder, CO)

Some people have asked/suggested that we made a quick demo video about the main features of YowTRIP.

Well, after some technical problems, our video is ready!

UPDATE: We have edited our Demo video.

Are you the YowADVENTUROUS type?
May 13, 2008 (from Boulder, CO)

YowTRIP has partnered with AdventureCentral, a Denver-based travel distribution and online booking service company (www.adventurecentral.com), to provide resources and ideas for your next adventure.

Hike the Kilimanjaro? http://www.yowtrip.com/country...
Horseback in the Patagonia? http://www.yowtrip.com/country...
Or white water rafting here in Colorado? http://www.yowtrip.com/state.p...

These are just a few cool adventure packages we're adding to YowTRIP. There are hundreds more still on the queue, but we wanted to go ahead and share some of them now!

You will be able to mark the adventure trips you would like to make, so you can find other travelers with similar interests... Or you can create a YowGROUP to start organizing your next vacation!

We're still committed to not adding advertisement to YowTRIP and only add services, when they provide additional value to our members!

We hope you are as excited as we are about this new service! Happy YowADVENTURE!

Are you a YowEXPERT?
April 24, 2008 (from Boulder, CO)

YowTRIP is launching a new service today to help travelers meet local people and learn meaningful information about their next destination from experts (I mean, YowEXPERTS)

So, do you think you know a place better than anyone else? Maybe your hometown or where you live right now? Or just your favorite vacation destination.

You can now become one of the experts in that place and help other fellow travelers to take the most out of their next visit. Simply go to the city page and add (1) why somebody should visit that place at all, (2) what the must see/dos are, and (3) some things they need to be aware of before going there.

Then, visitors can post their own specific questions to all the experts (let's see how much do you really know your favorite spot!)

We hope to enable our visitors to get meaningful information and have local contacts to answer all of the questions they might have. No, not another review site!

We're excited to see what we can learn from you guys and we hope a lot of good connections can be made through this! So, become an expert today!

PS: As always, feedback is always welcomed. Click on the green feedback button on the left and tell us what you think!

YowTWITTER!?!
April 18, 2008 (from Boulder, CO)

Everybody is twittering nowadays, so we added your Twitter Updates to your profile. All you need to do is to add it as one of your other social networks you belong (Under: Edit Profile -> Contact Info)

It will be even better to follow your next vacation on YowTrip: Your family and friends will be able to see your twitter updates and check out your photos in one place! Hey, and while you're not traveling, others will be able to see what you're up to.

April 18, 2008 at 3:06:44pm Ben: Very cool!

Slap!
April 17, 2008 (from Boulder, CO)

I got the YowHelper... excuse me, YowHELPER section reviewed and edited by my content person and here's what she emailed me:

"BTW I'm bothered by the inconsistency of your company name throughout your site. I've always gone with the second part of a Yow phrase in caps, e.g. YowTRIP, YowGROUPS, YowBUDDIES, YowMAMA (ha)."

See what I have to put up with?? I LOL, so I had to share it with you guys... So if you see any YowLowercase somewhere else, let me know so I don't get yelled at again.

April 17, 2008 at 10:02:30pm Karen: LOL. "Content person" here, loving this advertisement of my disciplinary tactics. Hey you know Felipe I'm only doing my job! I must have done something right in another life to be able to get paid for yelling at men!! Woo hoo!

April 18, 2008 at 4:48:49pm Ben: Karen, I'm glad you mentioned it. I noticed the same thing the other day.

April 18, 2008 at 8:21:32pm Felipe: Well, add it to my feedback feature (powered by UserVoice)!

YowTRIP mentioned on TechCrunch
April 15, 2008 (from Boulder, CO)

TechCrunch is one of the major sources for tech startup review is yet to review YowTRIP :( But today, as they reviewed another travel startup, they listed YowTRIP as one of their competitors. We'll try to get their attention in a couple of weeks when we roll out another feature to YowTRIP.

The new site on the block is TripSay (www.tripsay.com), and we would like to welcome them to this area. We're all in this business because we love to travel and technology, so the more services out there, the better!

We're not going to say anything else about TripSay because we might be bias ;), but you can read TechCrunch's review at http://www.techcrunch.com/2008...

YowTRIP uses UserVoice to get feedback from the community
April 11, 2008 (from Boulder, CO)

YowTRIP has teamed up with UserVoice (www.uservoice.com), a San Francisco-based startup, to gather feedback from and better communicate with our community.

As you log in to YowTRIP, you will see a "Feedback" green button on the left. When you click on it, you'll get a form to send us a comment right there or a link to add a feature idea, bugs, or simply vote on other suggestions submitted by other travelers.

We value your feedback tremendously and we'd appreciate very much if you took a couple of seconds to tell us what you think about our site and what else you would like to see in here.

UserVoice is still on beta testing, but if you have a website and would like to try their services feel free to contact them directly or let me know and I'll get an access code for you!

YowTRIP reviewed by Mashable!
April 11, 2008 (from Boulder, CO)

YowTRIP continues to make the headlines around the world and in the tech community. Today it was time for Mashable, social networking news (www.mashable.com), to review YowTRIP in their "The Startup Review" section. You can read their review at http://mashable.com/2008/04/10...

For other links about YowTRIP, be sure to check our Press Page at www.yowtrip.com/press We're constantly monitoring the internet for articles about YowTRIP. If you find one before us, please send it in!

YowTRIP Widget is here!
March 22, 2008 (from Sacramento, CA)

YowTRIP Widget is here! If you have a blog or a personal website, you can now add a YowTrip widget to it.

The widget is configurable to display when you're on vacation and your next destinations. You can also display thumbnails of your latest photos.

To enable it, go to Preferences > YowWIDGET. Select the options you would like to display, copy and paste the code on your blog/website. You can modify your preferences without needing to replace the code.

As always we value your suggestions. Let us know how else we can improve our widget!

Seero goes live and you could win a vacation!
March 21, 2008 (from Sacramento, CA)

Seero, a San Francisco based startup, announced this week at Dolby Labs that their site is open to the public.

At Seero (www.seero.com) you can broadcast live from anywhere. How cool would it be to broadcast your next vacation live to your family and friends? Create an account and try it out for yourself. They're also holding a contest until May and the best broadcaster could win a 7 day vacation at one of 4000 resorts around the world More details at www.seero.com/contest.php

Check out YowTRIP's Seero page at www.seero.com/broadcaster/yowt... and let us know what you think about the site!

YowTRIP Widget!
March 6, 2008 (from Sacramento, CA)

Many of our users have been asking for a YowTRIP Widget, so they can put on their blogs to let their friends (non-YowTRIP members) know where they will be next.

Please, give us a couple of more weeks to finish testing it and develop the configuration page on our preferences section. We want to make it as customizable as possible, so it integrates seemliness with your blog/website design.

Let us know if you have any suggestions or particular needs. For our first widget, we're going to have: (1) a link to your YowTRIP public profile (if you have one - ex: www.yowtrip.com/YOU), (2) a "Travel Alert" when you're on vacation, saying where you are and when you will be back, (3) Your next three upcoming trips, (4) Your latest uploaded photo.

You can check it out on my personal website: www.felipecoimbra.com

SF NewTech Demo
February 17, 2008 (from Sacramento, CA)

YowTRIP was invited to Demo its services at another tech meetup. Last Wednesday, Feb 13, I went to San Francisco to demo YowTRIP to 200+ members of the SF NewTech meetup group.

This is the forth event I demoed. I was also at the Silicon Valley NewTech, SF Beta Holiday Party and Boulder NewTech.

There were five other presenters showing us their latest, so be sure to check them out: Utterz (www.utterz.com), Triggit (www.triggit.com), Blogbard (www.blogbard.com), ClickTale (www.clicktale.com) and Trippit (www.tripit.com).

These events are always very satisfying to me because I get to see what others are working on, show what I'm doing and get valuable feedback. Where's the next one? Nothing is confirmed, but I'm actively contacting people in LA, NYC and Toronto.

Bienvenue la Suisse!
February 6, 2008 (from Denver, CO)

YowTRIP continues to make headlines around the world. Today, we learned YowTRIP was mentioned on LeTemps, a Geneva based newspaper, in Switzerland. We would like to take this opportunity to welcome our new Swiss friends!

New feature: Create or join a YowGROUP!
February 3, 2008 (from Denver, CO)

YowTRIP is launching a new feature today, still under test and partial development (so give us feedback, and report anything you find), YowGroups.

YowTRIP's goal is to connect people traveling by themselves with others also traveling by themselves with similar travel plans. However, we realize there are a lot of people who are not as adventurous and would prefer to find others with the desire to visit the same places and form a group to travel together. And that's why we're introducing this additional feature to YowTRIP.

Here's how YowGROUPS works: Let's say you want to go to Las Vegas for a weekend. Then, you can go to the Las Vegas page (via "Where will you go next?" search) and see if anybody has created a group yet. If not, you can create a group yourself, set the dates, plans and what you're looking for. You can invite your YowTrip friends (and non-YowTRIP friends to join) and let other YowTRIP members find it.

You will also be able to search for YowGROUPS by types/activities. Let's say you want to go gambling, skiing, City/nightlife, etc, but it doesn't really matter where, YowTRIP will show all open groups. - This part is under development. It will be available soon and you will be notified on our February newsletter.

YowTRIP will make the official announcements of this new feature at the Boulder NewTech meetup on Feb 5 and at the SF NewTech meetup on Feb 13.

YowTRIP is a word now!
January 27, 2008 (from Sacramento, CA)

We periodically search ourselves on Google to see if any new bloggers or news site are talking about YowTRIP. One thing that has bugged us for a long time was that every time you searched for "YowTRIP", google would ask: "Did you mean view trip?"... Well, not anymore! YowTRIP is officially a word on Google now! :)

Ola España!
January 15, 2008 (from Lake Tahoe, CA)

(YowTrip part starts at 3min 40sec)

Right before I came to Tahoe last Sunday, I noticed a huge increase in the number of visitors from Spain. As a matter of fact, I-stats (www.i-stats.com) reports that 45% of our visitors this month came from Spain so far. I couldn't tell exactly how people over there heard about YowTRIP, but our web analytics showed us they were either typing the URL directly or search for YowTRIP on google.

I asked a couple of the people who signed up and they told me they saw about YowTRIP at a couple of newspaper/magazines in Spain: El Pais and El Semanal Magazine. I'm still not sure what the articles were about, so if you have any information, please share it with us :) -- We'll send you a free YowTRIP shirt!

So, we would like to take this opportunity to welcome our new Spanish members to YowTRIP! From the very beginning, we have planned to have YowTRIP in several languages and this has bumped its priority. We will begin on YowTRIP's Spanish, Portuguese and French versions soon.

January 29, 2008 at 2:58:34pm Marion: Hi Spaniards new comers might have read "El Pais semanal" issued on January 13th, which dealt with many websites related to travel, among others yours! Cheers, M.

February 3, 2008 at 4:01:32pm Felipe: Thanks Marion. I haven't been able to see it yet. But YowTrip was also on RTE. I was able to get their video at their website and posted it at www.yowtrip.com/press

January NewTech Meetup in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco
January 9, 2008 (from San Francisco, CA)

This week I came to the Bay Area to check out the demos at the monthly NewTech Meetup meeting in Palo Alto and San Francisco.

In Palo Alto, three companies showed their products/services for the 150+ audience, they were: BlogTalkRadio (www.blogtalkradio.com), Seesmic (www.seesmic.com), and TripIt (www.tripit.com) - Another fellow company in the travel industry. It's always great to see what others are doing and how they're doing.

The next day, I went to check out Sandbox Suites (www.sandboxsuites.com) in San Francisco and worked from there while I waited for the SF NewTech Meeting at night. This is a great idea and if I lived in SF, I'd definitely use their facilities. It's a shared office environment for entrepreneurs who work from home, but would like a better place than a coffee shop to meet other entrepreneurs, clients, etc.

The event in SF was at Mighty. There were probably 200+ people there. This was my first time at the SF NewTech meetup group, but the format was similar to the Silicon Valley one. At the end of the demonstrations, I went for the 60 seconds announcement time and talked about YowTRIP. I didn't get as much as a response as I got when I announced YowTRIP for the first time in Palo Alto, but I was able to make a few contacts.

Next month, I'm going to demo YowTRIP at the Boulder NewTech meetup in Colorado, so I won't be able to go to the Silicon Valley one. I'll post some updated from Colorado and you can follow me at www.yowtrip.com/felipe

YowTrip's presentations in SF and Palo Alto
December 13, 2007 (from Sacramento, CA)

This week, YowTrip demonstrated its social network for travelers at two events in the Bay Area.

On Monday, Dec 11th, YowTrip had a demo table at the SF Beta Holiday party in San Francisco. There were over 250 people at Minna Gallery. I enjoyed meeting other start-up entrepreneurs and answering questions about YowTrip. Out of the other companies demoing at the SF Beta, Dial Directions (www.dialdirections.com) was the one I enjoyed the most. Very cool technology and it comes in handy for those of us still without a GPS.

On Tuesday, I went to Palo Alto to demo YowTrip at the NewTech Meetup group. There, I showed the site and answered questions to a crowd of 150 entrepreneurs, investors, and tech enthusiasts.

This month, the companies sharing the demos with me were: ThePoint (www.thepoint.com), DocStoc (www.docstock.com) and MyBlogLog (www.mybloglog.com)

Congratulations to our iPod winner!
December 4, 2007 (from Sacramento, CA)

YowTrip would like to congratulate Sara Safavi, our biggest contributor and therefore our iPod Contest winner!

Over the months of October and November, YowTRIP encouraged each of its users to accumulate Yoints (YowTRIP points) for every action on the site. Sara invited 32 friends; added 57 photos, 1 travelog, and 9 travel plans; submitted comments; and earned herself a brand new iPod Nano!

"This contest was fun, and winning is AWESOME -- but in the process of promoting YowTRIP in the last two months, I've really become addicted to the site. Keep up the great work" - Sara.

YowTrip will continue to give away prizes through different contests and competitions. So, what's next? You can vote or suggest a prize at www.yowtrip.com/whatsnext. The new contest will be announced on our January Newsletter!

Meeting people in the Silicon Valley!
November 6, 2007 (from Palo Alto, CA)

I have been going to Palo Alto for a monthly web 2.0 meeting since when I started working on YowTRIP in April. It's a great way to see what other companies are doing and to tell other people about YowTRIP.

There are usually 150+ people in these meetings and they are a mix of startup entrepreneurs, bloggers, investors, and people interested in new technologies. There are usually four companies that do a quick five minutes demonstration of their application/services and then people get to ask questions and talk about them.

The companies that presented this month were: Shozu, Krillion, Gigya and Plaxo. At the end of these presentations, they open up for anybody who has anything they're working on or any announcement for the public.

I was waiting for YowTRIP to be at a more mature stage before talking about it at these meetings and I was amazed at the response I got. I had so many people who came to talk to me after the presentations were over. They wanted to tell me they liked the idea, that there was definitely a huge market for it, and they wanted to know how it was doing so far. I gave out all of my business cards and many of them actually came to see the site, signed up and followed up with more questions or comments.

Also from that meeting, Axosoft's CEO was there and he gave a copy of their Bug Tracking software to anybody who was interested. I was actually looking for something to better organize and schedule new features as well as outstanding issues, so this came at a very good time.

Meet other YowMembers!
November 4, 2007 (from Sacramento, CA)

As YowTRIP grows, there is a greater need to connect our world travelers together. Now, when you visit a city page (either by using our Popular Cities links or by using our Where will you go next? search), you will see the member who are from that city, live in that city, or have visited that city, along with what they think about it and what future visitors might need to know about it.

YowTRIP supports Schools for Humanity
November 2, 2007 (from Sacramento, CA)

YowTRIP is a proud sponsor of Schools for Humanity (SFH), a small but effective non-profit dedicated to building schools for underprivileged children in developing countries. SFH was born through a very moving experience by its founder, Dave Brown, during his stay in Shashemene, Ethiopia last year building homes in the community as a Habitat for Humanity volunteer. He grew very close to the children and their families, and was saddened to learn that they would most likely not have opportunities for an education. So, he made a personal vow that he would return to build them a school.

This summer, a small volunteer team traveled to Shashemene to make arrangements to rent a building that would act as a temporary school until the new school is built. As a result, SFH is now providing an education to 160 children who otherwise would go without one. But to continue its work, SFH needs our help. For a mere $20 a month, much less than a month’s worth of Starbucks, they can provide the support for one child to attend this school. Working together, we can eliminate illiteracy one village at a time.

To learn more or to donate, please visit www.schoolsforhumanity.org

YowTRIP gets a little more web 2.0 today
October 21, 2007 (from Sacramento, CA)

We slightly changed our design to follow the web 2.0 design trend. Most of the information and navigation stayed unchanged. We're finishing up our November Y newsletter, but we can share some new features and improvements already implemented in the past couple of weeks.

Popular Cities (tag format): You can now see YowTRIP's members most popular cities. Cities are ranked based on the number of assets (travelogs, photos, videos, tips, trips) as well the number of times searched.

YowMap: YowTRIP's interactive map now displays the cities you've visited. You can add cities by searching for it using the Where will you go next? search.

Then you can use the map as a shortcut to go to the cities which you've been.

YowMessages: YowMessages is YowTRIP's news feed. It automatically tells your buddies when you make any changes to your profile or add any asset to your account.

When one of your buddies adds a photo, it now displays a thumbnail representation of that photo and you can click on it to go directly to the larger version of that photo in your buddy' profile.

We would like to thank all of our members for their feedback! Keep the coming...

We're one month old! And here's our first Y newsletter.
October 4, 2007 (from Sacramento, CA)

YowTRIP turns one month old today (read Oct 1st) and I would like to thank all of my friends and supporters for joining YowTRIP, inviting their friends to join and for all the feedback. Also, I'd like to thank our first member who found us through google search.

Today, we sent out our first Y newsletter with updates and promotions. We're going to keep our member informed about everything that is going on at YowTRIP on the first of every month. You can read this month's issue at our Y newsletter page (www.yowtrip.com/ynewsletter).

The biggest news is of course our iPod nano promotion. All you have to do is invite your friends to join and use YowTRIP. You get yoints (YowTRIP points) for everything you do on our site. On December 1st, the biggest contributor will receive an iPod nano!

So, start saving yoints now! Please help us grow this online travel network!

New features and improvements!
September 24, 2007 (from Sacramento, CA)

I was going to go camping at Yosemite Natl Park, CA this weekend, but the weather wasn't looking so great, so I decided to stay in to finish up some new features and to fix a few issues here and there.

The first thing you will notice is this green box on the left of your profile page. This will make it easier for you to search for new friends and invite your friends to join YowTRIP (yes! Please do!), as well as give you easy access to your main profile preferences.

Another very useful feature is the Your friends upcoming trips right below your YowBUDDIES list. This list is automatically updated to display the next trips your friends have planned, so you can always be informed about your friends' plans. Make sure you add your travel plans as well...

And last but not least: YowMAPS. You can create Your Own World (Yow) map with the countries you've visited. As you navigate through YowTRIP city/country pages, we'll ask if you've been there. If so, we'll add this location to the map. This feature will most certainly be enhanced and the option to display the cities you've visited on a map is in the oven and should be available soon.

Please enjoy, and keep the feedback coming!

New York City YowTRIP!
September 18, 2007 (from New York City, NY)

As I mentioned, I wanted to take a trip after launching YowTRIP so I could have first-hand experience in using YowTRIP to post photos, videos and travelogs as well as telling people about it.

So, I chose the must-see destination for world travelers: New York City! I got my favorite clothes on (see photo) and left Sacramento, CA on Friday night (Sept 14th) on a red-eye.

New York City is everything you hear about and more. I feel like I didn't do anything there. I definitely should have planned for at least a one-week stay. So, I may just have to go back soon... (yes, I'm always looking for an excuse to travel).

I did meet a lot of nice fellow travelers and, of course, told everybody about YowTRIP!

Get your YowTRIP shirt!
September 10, 2007 (from Lake Tahoe, CA)

I'm so excited about YowTRIP that I want to wear it everywhere I go. It's also a good way to let other people know about it. So I decided to have some shirts made. I used CafePress for I-stats (www.i-stats.com) in the past, but both the shirts and the printing quality were not good... and they were expensive!

So, this time I decided to do a little search for other options. I found this great very inexpensive company: CheapesTees (www.cheapestees.com). I ordered the minimum just to try and I was very happy with their customer service and product quality. I'd strongly recommend it, if you need some shirts made for your business.

This past weekend I went to Lake Tahoe with some friends and I made everybody wear a YowTRIP shirt at the beach... Ok, we did it for the picture.

I still have some extra shirts, so if you'd like one, e-mail me your address, color preference and size and I'll get it on the mail ASAP (worldwide shipping). Oh, if you get a shirt, please take a cool picture wearing it on your next vacation and post it on YowTRIP!

Update on Dec 1: Sorry, I ran out of YowTRIP shirts. I only have a couple of XL ones. I'll post something when I order more.

YowTRIP goes live!
September 1, 2007 (from Sacramento, CA)

After many months of hard work, I was very pleased to launch YowTRIP on September 1st. I believe we have a great product here, one whose main objective is helping world travelers like myself meet other people traveling to the same places, as well as allow friends back home to follow our trips. As a social network, YowTRIP allows you to build your network of friends to be able to collaborate travel content: travelogs, photos, videos, tips.

When you add a new travel plan, YowTRIP automatically matches you with any user traveling to the same location during the same time, as well as to residents of your destination city.

You can also create a public profile (mine is www.yowtrip.com/felipe) that allows your non-YowTRIP member friends to follow your trip, leave comments and subscribe to receive e-mail updates. You can follow my first YowTRIP experiment trip to New York City next weekend! Just sign up for updates and you will be with me in The Big Apple!

So, please try YowTRIP and let me know what you think! I've been getting a lot of valuable feedback and suggestions, so I see a lot of work ahead as I continue to add and enhance features, and together we make YowTRIP the best it can be! New features will be posted on this blog, so be sure to check back regularly. I'll also send updates in our newsletter at the beginning of every month.