intric8

Trip Advisor acquired EveryTrail today – see press release below.  EveryTrail, based in Palo Alto, is “a GPS travel community and interactive trip sharing service.”

These guys have been on my “radar” since I first heard about them in late 2009.  They originally focused on GPS location data being imported into their community-based trail-sharing site, which seemed niche at best.  But EveryTrail soon expanded to GPS/location capable smartphones (therefore, Compete showing them with only 41K uniques should be taken with a grain of salt).

EveryTrail partnered with Fodors last summer to release EveryTrail Guides, which are interactive travel itineraries available for purchase online via ET’s iPhone app.

“While there is a plethora of travel information online, it can be a challenge to keep this information organized and portable when traveling. EveryTrail’s Guides aim to solve that problem by partnering with travel content creators, such as Fodors, offer these customized travel guides to consumers than can be easily accessed from a mobile device.”

It was an interesting pivot for them, as they were originally all about recording and sharing GPS data and discussing one’s hike/trail/whatever.  I played with the iPhone tracking app during some of my cycling routes, not the Guides.

No word on the acquisition price at this time.

If you ever need to create a semi-decent flowchart (woo hoo!) or perform a similar white-boarding exercise with your colleagues, Google Docs now allows you to do this a bit more seamlessly with Google Drawings.

The nice thing about this is that you can chat with everyone you’ve invited to view the Drawing. That being said, the phone (or video chat) seems to be a more practical form of communication when discussing images.

In addition, Google revamped the entire Google Docs foundation, “all built with an even greater focus on speed and collaboration.” What this means is document collaborators should see edits in real-time now, which is a huge advancement for the suite.

As Google Docs relentlessly marches deeper into Microsoft Office’s territory, the smart people in Redmond seem more and more oddly out of step with their static desktop apps.

If Google were to take the same approach to data creation and syncing as, say, Evernote (offline and online), the game would already be over.

New Media Campaigns, a small boutique Web technology studio in North Carolina, has released code for a very nice Flickr feed plug-in.

The plug-in has several options available to adjust what is displayed and is flexible enough to be used with other products (e.g. colorbox).

Hunch’s Chris Dixon (abbreviated):

- Don’t take seed money from big VCs – It doesn’t matter if the big VC invests under a different name or merely provides space and mentoring.

- Don’t try to be clever and get an auction going (and don’t shop your term sheet).

- Don’t be perceived as being “on the market” too long.

- If you get a great investor to lead a follow-on round, expect your existing investors to want to invest pro-rata or more, even if they previously indicated otherwise.

Read the full post.

I’ve always wanted to attend the TED Conference, but it was generally too expensive ($3,750/$6,000) or inconvenient (Palm Springs for a simulcast or Long Beach, CA, to attend in person).  However, the speakers and topics of discussion always left me placing the event on a pedestal in my mind, hoping to aspire to it some day.

Well, now I can at the local level, which has the potential to have more direct impact on my life.  TED has created a new event called TEDx that, “enables local communities such as schools, businesses, libraries, neighborhoods or just groups of friends to organize, design and host their own independent, TED-like events..”

My application to TEDxSF was accepted today. If you’re going, hit me up at the event.