This version is a better expression for the way Zipalong really is. Solid and simple.
The logo comes to light together with other UI updates as a first step towards a more ‘organic’ look and feel of Zipalong.
Zipalong has a comprehensive and flexible privacy system that is simple and intuitive to use.
You can customize the privacy settings of your trips and pictures as much as you like. For example you can set your trips and pictures to be viewable only by your friends with one simple step.
What if you have a trip that you’re really proud of, and you want everybody to see it? Nothing simpler: just make that one trip public. You have some pictures in that trip that you want to keep private? Again, just set the picture privacy level of each picture to a level you feel comfortable with.
Good, but what if you want to show a trip to someone who is not your friend? Just send him or her a trip share. Can they request access to my private trip? Of course they can!
So if you’re interested in the technical details of how all this works read on.
To understand privacy we need to explain a bit the hierarchy of the various entities used on Zipalong. The top most entity would be the user profile. The user profile contains one or more trips which in turn contain an itinerary, journals entries, and pictures. You can control the privacy setting at each of the three levels.
The profile privacy is accessible through the settings link on your home page. It has three levels:
The trip privacy is accessible on the trip cover tab, under the settings link. It has five levels:
The picture privacy is available on the picture details bubble. It has six levels:
It is key that the same hierarchy that we identified for the entities above applies for the privacy levels. Therefore, the profile privacy level will be inherited by the trip privacy level, and the trip privacy level will be inherited by the picture privacy level. So if you set the profile privacy level at friends only, automatically all your trips and pictures will only be available to your friends.
Welcome to Zipalong - an online trip and itinerary planner, including unlimited picture storage, friends, sharing, and everything else you always wanted in a travel site but were afraid to ask for.
All the cool kids seem to be doing it, so we finally decided to give this blogging business a try. We’ll try to use this space to tell you what Zipalong is, what our plans are, and what we’re currently working on. And of course, whatever else you guys are interested in finding out.
But before we go any further, a bit of an introduction is in order.
We are inveterate travelers, and as luck has it, we’ve been in the software business longer than we care to admit. The traveler in us wasn’t quite comfortable co-habitating the same body with a geek, so the two kept a safe distance for a while.
Until one fine evening when we realized that we can join forces to try to come up with a site dedicated to people that like traveling. A site that’s well integrated, without annoying ads trying to sell you the next trip to Vegas. A site where we can plan our trips, store our memories, and share it with others away from the overbearing commercial pressure that seems to be top priority for other travel oriented sites.
That was 1.5 years ago.
So here we are, with a functional site that’s ready to be used by the public at large. And we are working hard at improving it every single day.
Of course, we were inspired by the amazing work that sites like Picasa, Flickr, or Facebook have done before us. And we wanted to bring the same quality, interactivity, and attention to details to people that want to remember or share more than just some pictures from their trips.