Have you ever tried Hákarl, the rotten shark of Iceland? Chef Anthony Bourdain, who has travelled extensively throughout the world sampling local cuisine has described hákarl as "the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing" he has ever eaten.

Still, the people of Iceland think it's a delicacy and most travelers to Iceland like to try it out to see for themselves if it's really as bad as people say it is.

Image: Chris 73 / Wikimedia Commons

Eating rotten shark in Iceland, drinking Snake Wine in Laos or having Balut eggs for breakfast in the Philippines is just one of those things that makes travel such a great experience.

We're busy adding exciting food experiences to our guides and we're taking the algorithmic approach, as you would expect from us. So for each country we automatically compile a list of dishes and we rank them algorithmically. We're still tweaking things a little, but things are looking pretty good already.

Currently, in Iceland Hákarl has the number two position in our ranking - number one is Þorramatur which includes half a head of a sheep so that seems just as exciting. The Balut eggs top the charts in Vietnam. And these delicious caterpillars have the top spot in Zimbabwe...

During the Jamboree we spent a lot of time on making a new version of our App and we've just uploaded it to the Appstore. We'll launch the new version for Android soon as well, so in a week or so the whole world can enjoy Triposo 1.6. As always there are lots of small improvements, fresher content and better suggestions to name just two, but also a few bigger ones. Since you are probably most interested in those let's have a look at them.

A new button!
When you open up the guide of a destination you are actually in, you will find a new button. Whoa! Click it and you get an overview of all the places around you ordered by distance.



What's interesting to notice is that this list contains both points of interest we have detailed information on, as well as places that we don't know very well.



When you hit on a place we don't have a good description for, you can immediately add you own content to it. The next step in many cases will be to check in. Our checkin functionality works offline and check ins can be published to Facebook (but it's not necessary). Check ins also show up on your travel log.

Add places
Now that you can give your fellow travelers the low down on all the places around you, you probably want to add a few places no one has ever heard of as well. The good news is: you can! There is a plus button (another new button!) which opens a little wizard.



We review all the things you add, and where possible we try to feed them back into the appropriate sources to help out great open content projects like Wikitravel, OpenStreetMap or ChefMoz.

Your travel log
Finally, we've launched the travel log website. All the check ins you do in the app, end up here on our website - even the checkins you did with the old version. We present all your checkins on the map, and you can navigate them easily.

Last night we had our Jamboree Party and it was good fun!

I spent a good part of the afternoon walking around on the Jemaa el-Fnaa asking travelers to join us for our party to share their ideas of what the ideal travel guides should be like. Even though I sometimes felt like I was a Moroccan tout trying to lure people to come and eat at my restaurant, it was actually very interesting. Just talking to these travelers, explaining what we were doing and asking what they used as a guide book was like a mini field research.

Each and every one of them had bought books (Lonely Planet, Guide du Routard were the most popular). Most of the them had not considered the option of downloading a travel guide to their phone because they were not aware that there were guides for places like Morocco. "I know there are guides for London, but I didn't know they would exist for Morocco," one person said. When I showed what our app was like and what they could do with it, everybody said it would be useful for their trip (but maybe they were just being polite). They mentioned offline maps, restaurant reviews and price indications for transport as things they particularly liked in a travel app. One person had searched for offline maps in the App store but had not been able to find one for Morocco.
And yes, yes, yes, one traveler had actually used Triposo for her trip (and liked it!)

Then finally we had our party!

The Triposo team at the start of the party

Even though it had started to rain and the restaurant was a bit of a walk from the square, some of the travelers we had invited actually showed up. So we did a little travel quiz and gave away Triposo t-shirts to the winners as well as the losers.

The contestants in round one of the quiz

We're throwing a little party in Marrakech to celebrate the fact that we're having such a good time here.
If you happen to be in the neighborhood, drop by. The party starts Thursday at 20:00 hours and we'll keep you posted on where it is.

It's official: the first Triposo product launched from a rooftop terrace in Marrakech is here. Just watch us launching it - Jon, the second from the left, is pressing the launch-button.


Just minutes ago we published the website where you can see all the places where you checked in with our app from the rooftop of the Riad. You can see the checkins I did here: checkin.triposo.com/c/richardosinga

Even though the website is working, you need the new version of our App which isn't available to the public yet for your checkins to show up on the site. Luckily, we set it up in a way so that it will work automatically once you update to the new app - even the links from Facebook that now land on a place holder page will be working automatically.