New Action Stream: TripIt Activity

As regular readers of Open Parenthesis know, I’ve been using Movable Type Open Source (and particularly the Action Streams plugin) on JohnEckman.com to create a life stream of activity.

It’s basically a roll-your-own lifestream, though for now at least it isn’t integrated to anyone else’s streams, as in Friendfeed or Socialthing.

This morning I posted a new plugin which picks up TripIt Activity Streams.

TripIt’s activity stream is a private Atom feed which posts an item whenever you begin a trip, complete a trip, or start planning a trip. For example, here’s a recent entry from my feed:

You can download the plugin from the MTAS page.

Automated Import to Dopplr from TripIt

I use both TripIt and Dopplr, as each is better at certain things than the other.

In my ideal world, the act of forwarding a travel confirmation to TripIt, which establishes a trip, would also create the same trip in Dopplr, which my Dopplr badge, news feed on Facebook, Fire Eagle account, and lifestream would then share with the public, abstracting the details of flights and hotels and such. (Not that I’m terribly worried one could discover them, but just to simplify as Dopplr does well, so that only those who actually want to connect need to get to the details).

That possible crept a bit closer as Dopplr announced the ability to subscribe to your Google Calendar and learn your trips from it.

For some time, Dopplr has been able to export trips to calendars; TripIt can also adds trips to a calendar, but does so in a much more precise fashion, actually adding the flight info and such.

[Update: I had originally posted that the format Dopplr expects is different enough from the one TripIt produces that the two cannot be linked. I was wrong - they can be.]

To link your TripIt account to your Dopplr account, log in to TripIt and locate your iCal feed on your “MyTrips” page (click on the green ICAL feed icon):

Then, log in to Dopplr, go to “Your Account” and choose “Import trips from external calendars.”

Paste in the address of your TripIt iCal feed and Voila! – automated import of TripIt trips into Dopplr.

The logic is smart enough to notice where you already have trips, and not double book you in Dopplr.

Very cool. Now all I need is an Action Stream plugin for Movable Type which notes actual travel segments, so that I can add “John flew from Boston to Austin” to a day like today on JohnEckman.com. I suppose I could write one that checks the iCal feed from TripIt once or twice a day, and creates an action only when the travel date matches today’s date?

Tripit To Me

Via the TripIt Blog comes the announcement of their mobile (email, really) offering called Tripit To Me.

(Not that I’m old enough to have watched Laugh In, but I keep seeing (in my head) the video of Richard Nixon’s deadpan “sock it to me” in the name of this feature)

This is genius – simple, clean access to the info I need without having to launch a web browser, navigate, etc:

TripIt To Me is an email interface to the trip information in TripIt. (This is better known in the tech world as a “command line interface.”) When you email simple commands like “get flight tomorrow” or “get trip 10/15/07” to plans [at] tripit.com, TripIt will email you the information you need whenever you need it. For the absent minded like me, TripIt To Me will be a lifesaver as I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve dashed off to the airport without my itinerary and had to call someone to remember the airline I’m flying on, or the hotel I’m staying at. Also, it will be great when picking someone up at the airport to be able to email “get flight” and see which flight they’re on.

They also took the time to create a “Tripit to me Wallet card” (PDF) so that you don’t have to remember all the potential commands.

If you don’t travel a lot for business, it might seem strange that you could arrive at the airport and not know which airline you’re on, but the reality is I’ve had that experience myself.

Tripit just keeps getting better.