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Firef.ly
p/firef-lyAn app that's your local guide and intimate travel journal.
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Shawn Low

Firef.ly - An app that's your local guide and intimate travel journal.

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Firef.ly is a smart, location-based mobile app that distills the best of trip planning, travel guides, journalling, sharing and personalised mementos, designed for today’s smartphone-enabled traveller.

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Shawn Low
Maker
So we've been tinkering away at a travel app that got a number of nifty features. Firef.ly is a smart, location-aware travel app which acts as your local guide and intimate travel journal. We remember where you go so you won’t forget! Firef.ly passively and actively stitches together the most important moments of any trip into a digital story of your travels. We integrate the best of trip planning, travel guides, journaling and mementos in a beautiful experience, designed for today’s smartphone-enabled traveller. We believe travel is about new experiences in your backyard and out in the world. We believe that these experiences should be recommended, captured and shared with the world. Firef.ly is here to help you do just that.
Aziz Morsly
@shawnlow nice to see Firef.ly here. When you say "passively" does it mean it will suck my battery?
Shawn Low
Maker
@azizmorsly Hey Aziz! Great question! We use a combination of GPS, cell signal, wifi signal and broad location updates to work out where you are. While use of the GPS does strain the battery a little, we've work hard to ensure that users can get a day's use out of the phone. I believe that Pokemon Go drains the phone more than Firef.ly does! :)
Ruzbeh Bacha
I've been using the app for some time now, and love it!
Shawn Low
Maker
@ruzbehb Thanks! Thank you like it. Look out for updates that add even better functionality. #happytrails
Stephen Smith
Maker
Hey everyone, I designed the maps for Firef.ly. The app was already gorgeous, but once they plugged in a @mapbox basemap it really shined! I was really impressed with the care and thought the team put into the design of the app. Every experience was carefully thought out and beautifully designed with a bold, opinionated style. If you have any questions about the map I'd be happy to answer them!
Shawn Low
Maker
@themapsmith @mapbox Thanks Stephen. Yes, the team worked closely with @themapsmith in order to get our 'look and feel' for our maps the way we wanted it. You'll noticed we have a 'day' map and a 'night' map. And various elements to denote roads, parks and other fun cartography-related goodness. Feel free to ping us if you've any questions about the maps.
Alex Marshall
Just downloading this now :-) There's quite a few apps in this space that track locations or photos or notes, but it looks like you guys handle everything! Whats do you think your coolest /biggest / best / most unique feature is? I'm also wondering how you plan to monetise?
Shawn Low
Maker
@marsh931 Hey Alex. Thanks for the download. Much appreciated. Some great questions too. 1) Our coolest feature? It's akin to asking a parent which one of their children is their favourite! Right now, we aren't 100% fully featured....but when we do get there, we believe that using contextually relevant information to make recommendations will be key for us and our users. For example, if we know that you're on vacation in London and it's 3pm in the afternoon, the skies are grey and threatening to rain. We know that you love contemporary art: we'll ping you and recommend that you walk over to the Tate Modern. We also like that we connect the dots in a typical travel life cycle; from planning to booking to making decisions on what to see/eat to capturing and sharing moments. 2) As for monetisation, on the consumer side of things we will have in-app purchases to come (travel tools as well as the ability to generate posters/postcards/photo books). The core app as it stands will always be free though. On the B2B side of things, we plan to analyse travel patterns, all anonymized of course, in order to offer insights to marketers, tourism boards, city councils and such. Please give us your feedback so we can improve Firef.ly!
Alex Marshall
@shawnlow Thanks for your response. I look forward to seeing it fully featured! I really like the posters / postcards / photo books idea! I've seen postcards and photo books elsewhere, but posters is something I'm yet to see (and the thing I would want the most!)
Shawn Low
Maker
@marsh931 That really helps validate our ideas. Our first memento-related product out the gate will be posters. :) Happy to get feedback on our early iterations. @chadcribbins
Johnathan Butler
This is neat!
Shawn Low
Maker
@jbutlerxviii Thanks! We think so too. Please do download it, give it a spin and give us some feedback so we can make a better app!
Alex Weber
This looks so awesome and I would love to give it my Vote for Android but for some reason, after having tried at least three times to submit my sign-up info, it gives me an ei Error :-( Can you help?
Shawn Low
Maker
@lecanardmalade Hey Alex! Thanks for the kind words and apologies! Seems like there are some gremlins hiding out in our website and they ate that feature. Can you send me an email (shawn@firef.ly) and I'll make sure you're on the Android list. And we are looking into getting the site fixed up!
Shawn Low
Maker
We've pushed a small but important update. For those of you who downloaded the app, we thank you! Do update as one of our important backend services has shut down and we needed to migrate to a new one! You'll need to log in after updating but all will be well after! :) http://app.firefly