I just love the juxtaposition in the tag cloud of Ruislip & San Francisco (having lived in both places that caught my eye, although I lived a mile from Ruislip)

The site looks well executed but I have to admit, I’m getting fed of mash-up sites like this.

looks like a similar concept to http://www.tripcart.com except with more emphasis on the social networking and less on providing actual info

Darren, apparently, ’stealth mode’ is the new beta

Great Link darren, We have added mapsack as a trial, as we can download our Photo Portfolios of where our Travel Consultants have visited, hopefully encourage people to leave comments etc
The map is on our site at present, and we will start to put a few Albums in to see how it will look and Work.

Darren, that is a very good idea, I like it.

In my opinion, there are too many map/photo sites now but few of them, if any, are offering the sucker punch - that hook that’s gonna draw you in.

One Thing i have noticed, that they have an early version of downloading from Flikr and you can’t download Photos as a Complete Set. So Will have to hope this improves or we can find a way around this

Darren, Did you have any trouble downloading your Photo to the Map, have reported it on their Forum, but have tried all afternoon ( in between clients) to load Photos. I get my Flickr photos o.k on the left hand side, Click on the ones to put into the map, then click on the map to leave my pointer where I want them placed, then hit the add button, a little Gizmo then comes up showing as BUSY and then a full page of HTML with an error message!!!!!

Not a Good start.

By the way we are trying to start our own map, so it shouldn’t be two Cluttered.

( Side Note, your Tickets arrived today and are on their way to you, Perhaps you can put a Flag on your map for Kos )

Darren, I do nelieve they have Internet Cafe’s on Kos. We will know when we see you popping up:)

Hi there…

My name is Alastair James and I am lead developer for mapsack.com.

Thanks for all the discussion regarding out site. There are some good points raised.

The number one point seems to be “whats the point”. Yes, thats exactly what we realised about a month and a half ago. Since then we have been working on mapsack 2.0 in the background. In 2.0 we are focusing entirely on travel with the aim to make it much more useful!

In 2.0 we have categories as well as tags. The categories are “hotels”, “places to eat”. “airports” etc…. This should make it easier to find what you want. Within these categories you can still apply tags and the tag cloud still exists.

Also, we have some tabs at the top to separate ‘expert’ content from user content. ‘Expert’ content is listings from other travel sites and travel writers. The goal here is to put all the really useful stuff in one place. We will also promote users to experts if they write good entries.

A new feature is ‘my map’. You will be able to browse around planning your trip, bookmarking or adding places. These bookmarked places get added to ‘my map’ (well your map, but you know what I mean) and you will be able to print it out and take with you!

As for flickr uploading… Sorry you might be having troubles with it. It is actually being removed from 2.0 as we found the type of content uploaded not that useful for travellers. Also flickr allows geotagging itself… No point doing it on mapsack. You will still be able attach single photos to existitng places though.

We are also improving the tools that allow people to place the map on their site. There is a new admin tool that lets users manage their own items. For selected partners (larger sites that use our map) we offer even more tools to manage your own user base and select exactly what content you would like to show.

Anyway, 2.0 will be online in a week or two. Please be take another look after that! The beta title is going too by the way

Regards

Alastair James

Oh, and the map is bigger in version 2.0!

Alastair James

I went to visit just now and lasted aobut five minutes. Just too tedious working with that map.