Trover launches lists today, a new way to highlight the rich, guided tours its pioneer users create for the places they live. At its core, Trover is a location-based photo browser, putting its users' photos on a map you can explore. It uses social networks to help with discoveries, but its emphasis is on the things found by its users. In addition to lists, which will help highlight individual users more, today's update also adds @-mentions and redesigns the news feed to be more about the people. Trover has positioned itself as a "browser" for places, but when you talk to CEO Jason Karas, you hear that Trover is learning that the people are part of those places. The new version of Trover is still about discovering places, but it provides the authentic flavor that only the local folks can offer. World-Browsers Feel Like the Future Trover (available for iPhone and Read More

With the App Store flourishing with hundreds of thousands of apps, it sure is getting hard for developers to make their apps stand out. An app either has to receive a large amount of funding, or have plenty of style and just work well. Trover is the latter. Trover is like a micro social network that allows you to take geotagged photos and share them with your friends/followers and the surrounding community. When you open the app you will see its great UI thrown together on the main screen. It uses your location and finds all the photos that were taken in your close proximity… Scrolling down reveals more Trover discoveries with a distance calculator growing with each scroll down from your location. From here you can tap on a photo to see it larger, thank it, leave a comment, or just see on a map where it was taken. The second tab is Read More

It’s no secret that smartphones make travel much less painful and way more fun–from reducing our chances of getting hopelessly lost to helping us find an ATM or even update Twitter in-flight. More and more travelers already pack them along on their work and business trips, and we have a pretty good idea of what devices they’re carrying, too. Gogo, which provides in-flight Wi-Fi for eight major North American airlines, revealed Tuesday that 65 percent of those using Gogo to log on to the web mid-flight do so with an iPhone and 15 percent with an iPod touch. By contrast, 12 percent of Gogo use is by Android device users, and 6 percent by BlackBerry owners. I’m one of those people who keeps my iPhone close at hand when I travel. And there aren’t many things I love more than planning and going on trips. So for you fellow iPhone-toting travelers, Read More

It’s no secret that smartphones make travel much less painful and way more fun–from reducing our chances of getting hopelessly lost to helping us find an ATM or even update Twitter in-flight. More and more travelers already pack them along on their work and business trips, and we have a pretty good idea of what devices they’re carrying, too. Gogo, which provides in-flight Wi-Fi for eight major North American airlines, revealed Tuesday that 65 percent of those using Gogo to log on to the web mid-flight do so with an iPhone and 15 percent with an iPod touch. By contrast, 12 percent of Gogo use is by Android device users, and 6 percent by BlackBerry owners. I’m one of those people who keeps my iPhone close at hand when I travel. And there aren’t many things I love more than planning and going on trips. So for you fellow iPhone-toting travelers, Read More

It’s no secret that smartphones make travel much less painful and way more fun–from reducing our chances of getting hopelessly lost to helping us find an ATM or even update Twitter in-flight. More and more travelers already pack them along on their work and business trips, and we have a pretty good idea of what devices they’re carrying, too. Gogo, which provides in-flight Wi-Fi for eight major North American airlines, revealed Tuesday that 65 percent of those using Gogo to log on to the web mid-flight do so with an iPhone and 15 percent with an iPod touch. By contrast, 12 percent of Gogo use is by Android device users, and 6 percent by BlackBerry owners. I’m one of those people who keeps my iPhone close at hand when I travel. And there aren’t many things I love more than planning and going on trips. So for you fellow iPhone-toting travelers, Read More

Trover joins the ranks of free GPS-powered apps for the iPhone that can guide you intelligently to places of interest near you or while traveling the world. It has some interesting twists that make it unique, giving it kind of a feel of Instagram meets Yelp. Trover had a limited release that required a Facebook login, but an update allows you to sign up using email or Twitter. Developer Rich Barton told me the app tries to simulate the experience of walking around a neighborhood looking for food, or retail stores, or even a park as you discover things you might not otherwise notice. When you open the app you'll see thumbnails of pictures listed in order of distance to you. You can also take a picture yourself, add a description and comments, and it will be uploaded for the world to see. If you find friends or users who have Read More

The idea of discovering items, products and locations around you is a challenge that a number of startups and companies are trying to solve, including Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and many others. Today, Trover, a start-up that is the brainchild of Expedia and Zillow co-founder Rich Barton, Jason Karas and Andrew Coldham; is launching today as a mobile discovery network where people can share location-specific discoveries of places and things in a visual way. You can download Trover’s iOS app here. Barton and Karas tell me that the app aims to replicate the feeling of strolling around neighborhood, window shopping, and discovering new things in your location. When you open the app, you can sign in with Facebook, and the app will show you a gris of photographs based on your location. The first photographs in the grid are those of objects or locations closest to you. The mosaic gives users thumbnails Read More