Travellr.com news

Stephen Chapman from MakeTravelFair.co.uk recently named Travellr as a favourite source for connecting travellers to those who have answers to their questions. We're glad to get a mention - especially along side some other great resources for local knowledge, including Spotted by Locals (who often drop in to Travellr to answer questions). 

Head over to Stephen's article 'Mining our Internet Social Circles' for his take on what needs to happen in the local travel knowledge website space, and for some good examples of the local travel movement. 

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It's time for a bit of spring cleaning on our blog - so we thought we'd move across to posterous.com. We're looking forward to keeping you up up to date with news and updates from the Travellr team!

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Since we've moved across to posterous for our blog, we've brought across our list of news articles about Travellr that we published in 2009.

• Can Travel Sites Truly Leverage Social Media?, July 2009 Mark Evans writes about Travellr's presentation at the Montreal New Tech Meetup
• Q&A: Ian Cumming of Travellr.com, June 2009 Simon Ford from Travelshorthand.com interviews Travellr's co-founder

• Rust Report - Aussies worth watching, May 2009 A roundup of companies making waves at home and abroad
• ABC Radio Tech Stream #14, May 2009 Ryan Egan from Radio Australia's Tech Stream interviews Ian at CeBIT in Sydney.
• Article on Chinese Google Earth Blog - Godeyes.cn, May 2009 Chinese blog post (in Chinese).
• Article on French Maps Blog - blog.i-spirit.fr, May 2009 French blog post (in French).
• Aussie Website as new Travel 'Local Webvisory', May 2009 Christina Lucas from Digital Journal talks about Travellr and a round up of other good sources of travel advice on the web.
• Ask Questions About Anywhere Google Maps Mania, an unofficial Google Maps blog, reviews Travellr.
• Travellr Hunts Answers To Your Travel Questions, May 2009 Angus Kidman from Lifehacker reviews Travellr just prior to launch.
• Cool Websites To Use WHILE Traveling, May 2009 http://web.spotcoolstuff.com/best-travel-websites-during-a-trip%20#">SpotCoolStuff notes Travellr in a list of websites to use while traveling.
• Travellr Launches Public Site, May 2009 Kim Heras from TechNation announces the launch of Travellr at CeBIT Webciety.

• Travellr Takes Webciety Wildcard May 2009 Travellr selected by CeBIT to participate in its ‘WebCiety’ web showcase as a wildcard entry.

• TechNation Top 100 Aussie Web Startups April 2009 Monthly startup list of Australian web startups. Travellr enters the list at #48.
• Tips from the T-List April 2009 Stephen Joyce interviews Scott Woodhouse, Co-founder of Travellr
• MyFriendsHotel.com April 2009 Pete Kindness from MyFriendsHotel.com reviews Travellr
• The Times Online UK, April 2009 Mark Hodson, editor of 101 Holidays, says for the hottest travel tips, turn to the people on the ground

• Make Travel Fair March 2009 Stephen Chapman speaks on his first impressions of Travellr
• E-Tourism is Here March 2009 Isaac Mizrachi, Web Content Manager of Lametayel, Israel's leading travel website, offers his thoughts on Travellr
• ANZA Technology Network March 2009 ANZA announces Travellr's private beta release
• ReisPortals March 2009 Dutch travel blogger Ludolf Stavenga reviews the Travellr private beta
• Technation Australia February 2009 Paul Pajo offers a sneak preview of the Travellr private beta, with screenshots and a beta key for Technation readers
• Technation Australia November 2008 Paul 'The Pageman' Pajo catches up with Ian and Scott from Travellr for an email interview after their recent trip to Silicon Valley
• Pitch Club November 2008 Travellr wins Pitch Club - a fast paced pitching and networking event for entrepreneurs and investors
• TheNews.com.au November 2008 Travellr is picked up by Australia's luxury lifestyle daily with updates on ideas, products and emerging trends in the intersection of fashion, art, design, culture and technology
• ZDNet Australia - bootstrappr October 2008 Australian technology community blog takes a look at government-funded startups - including Travellr
• ANZA Technology Network September 2008 Travellr's Ian Cumming is live-blogged while pitching at ANZA's 'Gateway to the US' Summit in Silicon Valley

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[update: The list got covered over at tnooz.com. Lot's of great comments!]

Ever wondered how many tourism-related twitter accounts are out there? We did.

We searched for approximately 200,000 twitter accounts beginning with the words 'Travel', 'Tourism', 'Visit' and 'Discover' followed by a location (ie: 'Sydney', 'London', 'California', 'Vietnam', etc.). We've unearthed more than 1,400 tourism-related twitter accounts, and the results are quite interesting!

So without further ado, here's our list of top tourism tweeters -

Top 10 Tourism Tweeters

1. TravelPortland (13790 followers, 564 listed)
2. VisitVentura (10046 followers, 67 listed)
3. VisitChicago (8943 followers, 351 listed)
4. TravelPonce (8770 followers, 86 listed)
5. VisitMaine (6688 followers, 275 listed)
6. TravelOregon (5513 followers, 301 listed)
7. VisitSanDiego (4536 followers, 149 listed)
8. VisitVirginia (4059 followers, 239 listed)
9. VisitFlorida (3942 followers, 187 listed)
10. VisitOrlando (3916 followers, 183 listed)
View full list

Top 10 Country-based Tourism Tweeters

1. VisitPeru (3171 followers, 105 listed)
2. TravelEcuador (2798 followers, 61 listed)
3. VisitJordan (2467 followers, 103 listed)
4. VisitNorway (2193 followers, 110 listed)
5. TravelNepal (2001 followers, 22 listed)
6. VisitMonaco (1750 followers, 79 listed)
7. TourismRomania (1706 followers, 0 listed)
8. TravelCroatia (1462 followers, 18 listed)
9. TravelThailand (1346 followers, 4 listed)
10. VisitNepal (1197 followers, 12 listed)
View full list

It's also worth noting that wefollow.com and twibes.com have a number of tourism related twitter groups - these are worth checking out.

Finally - we've published our full list on google docs if you want to dig a little deeper into the results. If you find anything interesting please let us know!

[A few notes - added from reader feedback]

1. This list doesn't include twitter accounts that don't begin with 'Travel', 'Tourism', 'Discover' or 'Visit'. (Feel free to take this data and extend it!)
2. The lists are ordered by the number of followers.

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As a holiday gift, we've released a cool new Travellr desktop wallpaper for you to pimp your desktop or iPhone with. From the team at Travellr, we wish everyone a fantastic holiday and new year!

You can get it in the following sizes:

• Download 1080p wallpaper (1920 x 1080) - large monitors
• Download widescreen wallpaper (1440 x 900) - suits most laptops
• Download 4:3 wallpaper (1024 x 768) - non widescreen
• Download iPhone wallpaper

Mac OSX Instructions:

1. Download the wallpaper, save or move it to your 'Pictures' folder
2. Go to 'System Preferences', then 'Desktop and Screensaver'
3. Choose the wallpaper

Windows (Internet Explorer) Instructions:

1. View the wallpaper image in your browser
2. Right click the image, and select 'Set as Background'

iPhone Instructions:

1. Email the wallpaper image to yourself
2. View the email on your iPhone, tap the image and choose 'Save Image'
3. View the image from 'Photos', then choose 'Use as Wallpaper'

Please let us know if you enjoy these wallpapers, we'd love to hear from you!

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Ever wondered what the reaction of your colleagues would be if you told them that you're quitting your job to travel around the world?

We just came across this inspiring and amusing video from one of our members, MojoTrotters, a Brazilian couple in Montreal who are leaving their jobs for a year to travel around the world and document their trip.

You can read and watch more about Roberto and Bianca's (MojoTrotters) journey here:

Blog - mojotrotters.com
Twitter - twitter.com/mojotrotters
Youtube - youtube.com/user/mojotrotters
Travellr - travellr.com/people/mojotrotters

Good luck guys - we hope you drop by and visit us in Sydney, Australia!

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Dear friends,

We've just released a big update to Travellr.com, based on the great feedback and suggestions from our community. We've added hundreds of improvements, including a brand new site search, better profile pages, a global feed of activity, and Facebook Connect sign-on.

We've also improved our recommendation engine to provide real-time alerts, so your questions get answered faster from people who know.

It's been a big year for us at Travellr. In February we launched our private beta from an Internet Cafe in Laos. Since then, we've got some great press and reviews from around the world, won a number of awards, grown our team, and joined the World Nomads Group. Not bad, hey?

Next year is going to be bigger and better for us at Travellr. We're going to be introducing community moderation, a local expert rating system, and opening up our public API.

As always, keep asking your travel questions and sending us feedback - either on our site or on our Facebook page. Thanks for your continued support!

Have a great holidays, and see you next year.

- The Travellr team

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Travellr.com was awarded the Premier's Digital Futures award at the TASICT Awards on Friday evening - way to go!

We're really honoured to receive the award, and really chuffed to be included amongst the top innovators in Tasmania. We'd like to thank TASICT for recognising our efforts, and send a special thanks to our wonderful community who've helped to provide thousands of answers to questions in over a hundred countries world wide!

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