Little update with big things to come

I know its been a couple of weeks since one of us posted, but don't think we've gone AWOL. Yes the travel for turkey day was good (mini vacations are always nice to keep us focused on what this is all about Travel, Travel, Travel), but we've been incognito not because of vacation but because we are burning the midnight oil on a big release.

You see in a lot of ways, what we have publicly available is only a "test" release of sorts. It begins to tease at some of the great things you can do with a user focused travel platform, but it doesn't go so far as to really exemplify our vision of what a total integrated "one stop shop" for travel information looks like (or how its so much better than a "normal" travel site). Clearly when you go explore a new destination there's a lot of things to check out. We've begun by integrating our airfare comparison shopping engine with wiki style travel guides and community built restaurant reviews, but this really just scratches the surface.

In just a couple weeks (basically mid December) we will be releasing some major new stuff that will finally get us to "stage 1". Something beyond our current test release, taking us to a place that we think will finally do some justice to the game changing travel platform we envision. Stay tuned, it will be an exciting ride.

Can I get restaurants for my city?

Well the answer to that question is of course yes! We have been getting quite a few requests from people all over (literally Jakarta to Toronto) for Travature to add data to restaurant reviews. As it stands now we have well over 100,000 restaurants in the database, and we are adding more daily. However if you have a city that you want restaurants added for just tell us and we will do our best to accommodate everyone. Thank you for the interest and remember you can use our Facebook application Restaurant Wars when reviewing restaurants!

restaurants@travature.com

Travature Users Abroad

Of course there are many Travature users abroad, but I write this blog to just give you a heads up on a Travature user's blog which may be of some interest. It comes from one of our avid users that regularly contributes to the Central America guides (remember guides are all open and editable or wiki-style).

She has been living in in Mexico and Central America for sometime now and has a blog of her own which offers a very personal, professional, and artistic account of living abroad in Mexico and Central America. So check it out at Conversations On All Continents and get a little more acquainted with your fellow Travature user.

On an analogous note to getting closer with fellow Travature users, we are very close to unleashing our social network, so be excited and stay tuned!

More Reviews on Travature!

It seems people are starting to notice some of the stuff going on around the office here and we couldn't be happier. Earlier in the week we had a startup review site you can check it out here! And if you haven't already vote for us on that site (vote by clicking on the "+" sign below where it says "Killers" in the blue box...upper left of your screen)

Second up our Facebook application "Restaurant Wars," has just been reviewed on a Facebook application review site and you can check out that review here!

Travature review on Killer Startup

I'm not really sure how they stumbled onto Travature, but an online news site of sorts that reviews web 2.0 ish startup companies reviewed Travature yesterday. We got basically a favorable review, so it's nice to see even at this early stage that people think our vision of free integrated travel information is headed in the right direction. What also was nice is that the things they found Travature lacking (stronger social community features) are exactly what we are working on right now. So stay tuned for some big changes in the coming month or two related to that.
Also in the spirit of crowdsourcing, ala digg, besides the review that killerstartup gave us, they also allow people to "vote" for us. We'd love to be in the Top 10 startups list, so if you guys could go to: http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/travature--Resources-For-Planning-Your-Adventure/ and click on the bluish button on the top left that says "killer", we would most appreciate it!

Press Release for Restaurant Wars!

Our first Facebook application went live yesterday and just this morning we released our first press release about the Facebook application. We look forward to any feedback you can give us about the application, just shoot us an email; talktous@travature.com

Check out the Press Release Here!

Travature's Facebook Application Restaurant Wars goes live!

Our first Facebook application went live today. The application, "Restaurant Wars," enables Facebook users to review restaurants and challenge their friends taste in food at the same time.

In the process of creating Restaurant Wars we have really spruced up the Restaurant Review tool in Travature by adding well over 100,000 restaurants for our users to review. So hopefully this will calm some of the Travature users who have been requesting us to add their favorite restaurant to our system.

Add Restaurant Wars to your Facebook account here!