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Show HN: Ambulate – Detailed Trip Planning

(ambulate.app)
93 points _phnd_ | 3 comments | 22 Oct 24 12:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.672s | source

Ambulate was created because planning hiking trips using spreadsheets and various map solutions got chaotic. I wanted an app to manage and map multi day trip itineraries in the outdoors/backcountry.

Features - Manage itineraries - Add activities and map markers - Add routes (upload GPX or plot by hand on map) - Desktop and mobile

It is free to try (login using Google or create a user). Alternatively the slides on the home page give an idea of the UI.

I'll appreciate any thoughts and feedback you care to share:)

Show context
jll29 ◴[22 Oct 24 20:22 UTC] No.41918304[source]▶
If anyone needs a good (related) startup idea, here's one for free:

Complex trip planning for professionals, but in a different way from Ambulate - not hiking trips, but transactions across Web sites: I really hate the way how today you cannot "properly" book a flight, hotel, train like you would do it in a SQL transaction

  BEGIN TRANSACTION
    book train
    book flight
    book hotel
  COMMIT;
Only if all three are available and execute the reservation without error do I also want to execute the other ones; that's a prime use case for DB-like transactions, but across Websites. Because no point getting only the flight if I have no-where to stay etc.
replies(7): >>41918513 #>>41919031 #>>41919123 #>>41920769 #>>41921149 #>>41923935 #>>41926200 #
dvt ◴[22 Oct 24 20:44 UTC] No.41918513[source]▶
This is what booking.com kind of tries to do, but I think it's actually a pretty hard problem not only because of scheduling quirks, but often times stuff being delayed, bad weather, etc. will totally throw a wrench into plans.

It would be nice to book a trip with planned contingencies. So basically, no matter what happens, you'll have something to do. This seems kind of a luxury product though, so I'm not sure how many people would be interested in paying a premium.

replies(4): >>41918642 #>>41918656 #>>41918850 #>>41920792 #
1. jeffreyrogers ◴[22 Oct 24 21:01 UTC] No.41918656[source]▶
You can't really do it perfectly unless a single site handles all the booking, otherwise you have race conditions, and obviously there's no incentive for airlines, hotels, etc. to give up booking to a third party since they can upsell you on insurance, upgrades, etc.
replies(1): >>41919690 #
2. madeofpalk ◴[22 Oct 24 23:06 UTC] No.41919690[source]▶
> and obviously there's no incentive for airlines, hotels, etc. to give up booking to a third party

Airlines, hotels, etc give up booking all the time to third parties. That's what booking.com is.

replies(1): >>41940972 #
3. jeffreyrogers ◴[24 Oct 24 23:50 UTC] No.41940972[source]▶
No, they aren't giving up booking. They are extending booking to a third party. To solve the problem with race conditions (You book the last seat on the airline, I book the last hotel room, and neither one of us can finish the transaction) you have to centralize all the booking in one party, which no one will do because they want to be able to upsell you at checkout.