Jeep’s New TripCast App Lets You Be a Tech-Savvy Traveler
A new iPhone app from Jeep truly is a trip.
With TripCast, users can post photos, videos, audio clips and status updates during a trip to create an electronic scrapbook that can be shared with friends and family and can be uploaded to Facebook and Twitter.
“TripCast augments the spread of place-based social sharing already established by geo-location platforms like Foursquare, Gowalla and the newly released Facebook Places, while fostering the true adventure associated with the Jeep brand,” said Yvonne Tocquigny, CEO of Austin, Texas-based interactive marketing agency Tocquiny, which developed the free app.
Aside from compiling an electronic scrapbook, TripCast lets family and friends follow a traveler’s trip in real time through a Jeep website or an iPhone. Also included in the app is a “Points of Adventure” function that lists more than 250,000 outdoor recreation spots in the United States.
By the way, you don’t need to be a Jeep driver to use the app.
“TripCast enables everyone with a sense of adventure to plan a trip, share it with friends as their journey unfolds and find new spots to explore,” said Mike Manley, president and CEO of Jeep.
While Tocquiny and Jeep tout the virtues of TripCast, one reviewer praised some aspects of the app while panning others.
On the plus side, SocialCarNews.com writer Richard Read lauds the fact that TripCast is free, and he likes the app’s automatic GPS tracking, iPod integration and “Points of Interest” feature.
On the minus side, he wrote, “TripCast is essentially another social network, and none of us really want to join another social network, do we? The app would be much more appealing if developers had left out the registration part altogether and settled for using Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare or some other network as its social base.”
Read also complains that TripCast works only on iPhones, sports a user interface that “isn’t very intuitive” and can be quite “crashy.”
AppScout.com’s reviewer holds back any criticism he may have had about TripCast: “It looks like a fun way to create a multimedia scrapbook for your next trip.”
Give TripCast a spin by downloading it from iTunes.
To watch a video about TripCast, click here.
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