If you’ve ever wanted to capture and share those great moments or photos throughout your vacations or trips, then travel app HipGeo (Free, App Store link) is the perfect solution. HipGeo has created an app which tracks your location as you travel, displays the places you go, and how you get there.
Overview
As soon as you launch HipGeo, if you’ve already signed up or signed in that is, the activity screen appears with three separate columns; Closest, which has the activity near by; Popular, which of course shows the most trendy or crowd-pleasing photos; and Featured, which has more beautiful and attractive photos from other users. Below that are four other options such as auto, camera, post, and ‘my blog’. If you choose ‘auto’, then turn recording on, it creates private posts, which you can then turn on later and make public.
If you would like, you can choose to take a photo right from the app. Under posts you have three different options, which are text, location, and camera roll. With any of these three choices you have the ability to share through Facebook, Twitter, or email. You can also keep them private and just insert your post into your blog and make public later on if you choose to.
If you create a new post under Location, a list of your nearest places comes up, although if the location you’re currently at isn’t listed, you can search for a place or add a place by typing the address in. If you post a photo, you can choose from your camera roll or your photo stream. Once you choose a photo, the photo editor comes up with plenty of options. Under effects, you can choose from 12 Instagram like filters that you can apply to your photo.
There are also other options to edit your photos such as enhance, text, contrast, and saturation. There’s no shortage of options to edit your photos. I love the fact the HipGeo has a photo editing feature so you don’t have to use multiple apps when your posting something to you blog. HipGeo is an all-in-one app that blends its different options in features really well. It’s sort of like Instagram, Tumblr, or Blogger, and Twitter all in one great app.
Under ‘My Blog’ are all your blog posts which you can share through Twitter, Facebook, or email. Also under ‘My Blog’, you can also make a certain post public if it’s currently private, add a comment, delete your post, and view all of your followers and people who you are also following. Under the settings are a few different options to save battery power and data charges.
If you have Automatic Posts Public, HipGeo automatically saves and creates locations. and makes all your travels public and in real time. So, anywhere you go HipGeo will be working in the background to save all your locations which can drain your battery significantly unless you have it off, which it does at default. You also have the option to post with WiFi only, so if you have a lot of locations or posts saved and you don’t want to waste your data, HipGeo waits until you’re connected to a WifI spot and then posts everything yo your blog which it saves from your caches.
Verdict
HipGeo does a lot of things well. It takes the best parts of some apps such as Instagram or FourSquare and makes it into one quick and easy to use format. It doesn’t hurt either, that the UI design is nice and smooth itself. I think for someone who may not be a blogger, HipGeo would be really easy to use just because the UI design is so effective and user friendly.
If you’re someone who doesn’t like to check-in all the time with FourSquare or any other similar app, HipGeo does it for you automatically, so it makes it a lot easier and less time-consuming. I didn’t see a lot of users around where I live, or not too many when I looked at closest activity. I think this will change soon. I imagine a lot more people will be introduced to HipGeo in the near future. With the ability to do multiple things that only one app has the ability to do, there really isn’t anything not to like about HipGeo.
Price: (Free, App Store Link)
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