Hiking in Spain

What do you do when your spouse plans a week-long trek through Spain with her friends? See if she can test your plnkx app, of course.

Rick Steves the Travel Guy

One group of people who might find plnkx useful are tourists. Rick Steves is a well known tourist – a European travel expert, guidebook author, and TV travel host. That’s why this use-case is called the ‘Rick Steves’.

Not Rick Steves

One-hundred, ninety pound nut and bolt, one of 16 used to join sections of the generator shaft of a 75,000 kW generator - Grand Coulee Dam, 1942

For example.

There’s a park near the base of the Grand Coulee Dam. A short walk up the hill is a visitor center. When does the visitor center close?

You can google for a web site and click around looking for hours-of-operation, but what if it was easier to just plnkx it? That is, click the plnkx button to see what’s there.

Or suppose you’re in downtown Seattle near Pike Place Market. Is there anything going on that might not have made it into the travel brochures?

Perhaps you’re attending a festival in Bangkok. Are the pick-pockets on the loose?

Visiting Europe: Any travelers from the States staying in your hotel? Sitting at the bar? They just might post a quick note, hoping you’ll say hello.

But what if you have information to share and you can’t be there in person? For example, suppose you want to post a note to Spain from Seattle.

Seattle to Spain

Rick Steves’ Europe Inc. publishes dozens of travel books, and updates them when practical. But wouldn’t it be great if the information could be updated almost immediately?

That’s what I wanted to find out.

The Test

So the test was this. Sit in Seattle, post a plnkx note, and wait for my wife to find it, real-time, in Spain. If it works, then that’s timely information at your fingertips. That’s location-based, digital post-anywhere-notes. That’s plnkx.

The Note

I had their itinerary so I knew they’d be at a certain hotel in a few days. I googled the hotel, found the GPS coordinates, then looked for a curious fact or something interesting to say.

Here’s what I found: “The city is particularly attractive to retired people, many of whom come to settle there from other areas across France.”

I was trying to be funny.

And this really would be a test. Why? Because the day before I had noticed a problem.

A Problem?

In France, she posted a note. But when I clicked on the coordinates in the note, it took me back to where they landed in London. That is, the message didn’t match the location.

Uh oh.

Plnkx has never been to Spain before. Does GPS work the same in Europe? Is the app caching the coordinates? Does it work at all? How would we know?

The Proof

My guess was the coordinates were getting cached in the app. That is, if you save a new note before new coordinates are obtained, then your new note is saved at your old location.

Theory aside, the way to find out was to try it. So I posted a note, and waited.

Five days later, half-way around the world, they arrived at the hotel. But of course I had no way of knowing.

Until I got this email:

So it worked!

The plnkx app is currently in BETA release.

What else can it do?