App Review – Trip Journal

One of the most difficult things for scrapbookers is remembering what happened and when on trips and vacations. Do you take a notebook and write stuff down as it happens? Do you wait until you get back to your room and hope you remember everything (and still have the energy to record those memories) when you get back? Do you hope you can remember everything and write it down when you get home? Do you text yourself? Do you send yourself emails? What do you do?

Trip Journal is a highly rated (#1 by Google) travel application that is available for multiple platforms. It is available for both iPhone and Android, as well as several other options. It is not a free app and the cost does vary based on platform, although I have seen it on sale for as low as $0.99. The app can even automatically integrate with Facebook, Twitter, several web-based photo sharing sites and Google Earth.

With Trip Journal you can easily document your trip in real time while still having fun. Each time you post in the app it includes a geo-tag so you can view your trip progress using Google Earth. You can easily add photos and videos, along with text about each item. Even without adding media, you can still add text to document each little detail. Once home, you can easily look at your archived trip and recall each detail, and then use it to help with your journaling in your scrapbook pages. The app allows you to store endless trips, so you can always go back to them and remember all of the fun you had.

The biggest problem I had with the app was remembering to use it. In order to get the most out of the app, every time you go someplace new (airport, plane, rental car, hotel, restaurant, ride, etc) you should add what the app refers to as a “way-point.” Then you add your media and text to record  your trip and all of the details to the way-point. My husband and I would get so busy having fun that I would forget to open the app and start a new way-point. The next time we go to Disney I just need to be more disciplined about remembering to open the app and enter a new way-point. That being said, we look forward to using Trip Journal on our next vacation as we are very pleased with the app and the features it offers.