Sunday, July 17, 2011

Big update, here's what's new and what's coming

After many changes behind the scenes over the past year or so, we've finally updated the live site to share with everybody.

The look has been changed a bit, things should seem less cluttered and more organized. When you focus on one location, you can see all the activity going on there, as well as places to stay. Activity includes people coming and going, their comments, blogs and posts from couchsurfers in the area (only in select areas, more coming soon).

Couchsurfers will also be happy to see a few other new features too. Now you can see all the places along a route where there are couchsurfing.org hosts, and also all the couches close by whatever location you're looking at, great for people who want to stay just outside the city.

Hitchhikers can be happy too as there's now better integration with hitchwiki.org to retrieve relevant articles and get hitchhiking spots for the map.

This update also includes the upgrade to the latest version of the Google Maps API, this is lighter weight and works better on mobile devices.

Poke around and you may see some other things here and there that you like.

This is only the beginning of a rush of new energy being put into the Trip Hopping project. Over the next several months you will see some great new changes, behind the scenes things are getting more organized as well which will speed things up significantly.

Want to be a part of it? Check out triphopping.com/brew if you'd like to volunteer your efforts in any way. In November we will be having a volunteer marathon in Phoenix for the whole month, so let us know if you'd like to join.

Keep hopping!