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Polarsteps — Automatically track your journeys on a stunning map
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I love it! There aren't that many good ways of visually logging travels, but this looks great!
That being said, these kinds of travel apps always struggle with getting a decent user base. It's not too surprising as most people don't travel enough to form habits around products like this. Do you have any plans for addressing this issue? (I would love Tripit and Foursquare integration btw)
I'm not sure if calling Palestine "false" is entirely appropriate either 😜:
@runningtk Cool to hear you like it:).
Polarsteps is all about beautiful routes. The current product is focused on logging your current route, but that’s not where it stops. We want to expand to more activities than just the logging of a current journey. We have already been inspired by some of the journeys our test users made and can’t wait to see what happens when more and more travellers start sharing their routes. Eventually, we want to become the place to go to for discovering, planning and logging route-based trips. That should make Polarsteps more than an app you just use during the journey itself.
We'll look into the Palestine bug ;), thanks for reporting!
Cheers,
Koen
Just wondering if this is a passion project or how you will make money? I take about one big trip a year. I probably would not be willing to pay for my GPS points on a map. That being said, it looks awesome.
Congrats on the release! Great work.
Reminds me of this: http://www.nytimes.com/interacti...
I love this! I travel back and forth and this is going to be cool to visualize later on!
This is a cool app! Will definitely keep using this for logging my own upcoming trips. Also, as suggested above, I am very curious how you will be able to get inspired by following/browsing other travelers. Would be a great feature.
Hey @koendroste the Website looks amazing! I'll definetely try it on my next trip! Do you want to add premium features in the future? Or how do you plan to monetize it?
@manuel_brun thanks!
With regards to monetization: the current beta version of Polarsteps is primarily aimed at helping consumers log their routes and tell their travel stories. We believe that travel organizations have amazing routes to share as well, and we want to offer them the possibility to create branded accounts where they can share those routes and their stories. Features that we are considering include things like embedding content on their own websites, easily sharing it on social media channels and adding booking & pricing info directly to the trips.
Once we reach a critical mass, we want Polarsteps to become the "top of mind" place for discovering, logging and sharing beautiful routes. The monetization model we see around that focuses on a marketplace for routes and monetizing our trend data about destinations and the collective travel behavior of consumers. Additional income may come from consumer features (such as ordering printed photo albums), but that's not the core of our envisioned business model.
Hey guys!
I'm Koen, one of the founders of Polarsteps. We're 4 enthusiastic adventurers with a passion for travel, design and code.
The first idea for Polarsteps came from our co-founder Niek, who made a transatlantic sailing trip from France to the Carribean a few years ago. He took a GPS-device with him to track his route and published updates on a website by sending his coordinates to a server through a satellite phone. His site went viral among backpackers and overlanders, who all loved the concept of telling your story on a map. Next prototypes were tested on an overland trip from the Netherlands to Mongolia in a Jeep Cherokee and a trip on a motorbike from Amsterdam to Cape Town. Based on the lessons learned we started building a version for general release, which is now in public beta. The core vision – telling travel stories on a beautiful map – always remained the same.
For those interested in what the end result looks like, here's a cool trip logged with Polarsteps (Amsterdam to Cape Town on a motorbike): https://www.polarsteps.com/niek/...
Looking forward to your feedback on our first beta, and thanks for your votes! :)
Koen
@cameronsmith Yes, it's definitely part of our vision to not only let people log their own journeys, but also discover awesome routes of others (see also my explanation above). We hope to add route discovery features soon!
Rise