It’s been a long while since I’ve seen a really good iPhone web app. Ever since the App Store came along (and really starting back with the first jailbreak native apps) web apps have been considered the ugly stepchildren in the iPhone apps arena.
Well … nextstop is ‘just’ a web app, but it’s a web app that kicks ass – and it actually does give and take names, in the sense that it offers up a guide to the best places to go and things to do round the world, and let’s you add to it.
Here’s a little Intro to nextstop itself:
nextstop is a community effort to build a catalog of all the best things to do, places to go, and experiences to try anywhere in the world based entirely on contributions from local experts and passionate travelers. Since the company’s launch in June 2009, nextstop users have contributed high quality recommendations in over 1000 locations around the world, including in-depth guides that highlight hidden gems in London, walking tours in San Francisco, or cheap eats in NYC.
Today marks the launch of the beta of nextstop mobile for the iPhone – which is accessible now at nextstop.com.
I’ve been playing around with nextstop quite a lot this morning, and have just been super impressed with it. Here’s some of what I’ve been seeing from it:
When you first open the nextstop.com page, it asks permission to use your location. Once you say OK, it very quickly presents a set of suggested places of interest nearby. These include places that are divided into (and can be filtered by) three main categories: Do or Explore, Eat or Drink, and Stay.
I live in Austin, and specifically in Southwest Austin – and nextstop had a great set of selections for me straight away. From ‘Austin Legend’ sort of restaurants …
To an excellent veloway right down the road from where I live …
And the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center …
All the recommended spots in nextstop have a photo and a very concise description. Tapping on the photo takes you to a ‘more details’ page where you’ll see a map image for the place, as well as more information. From this page you can also open the Maps app, call the place you’re looking at, and add your own recommendation for it.
You can also add a recommendation at any time in the app by simply tapping the ‘Add’ link at the top right of its screens. As soon as you do so, it very cleverly presents a list of likely spots near to you. It presented the one I had in mind to do a test run right within that initial list …
Another very handy feature here is that it offers up a selection of available photos for the place you’ve chosen to recommend. You simply choose one and type in your brief thoughts …
Coming soon is the ability to choose photos from within your photo library from within the app – apparently within the next couple of days.
As you are looking at any given place in nextstop, there are left and right arrows at either side of the image of that spot, which can be used to move back and forward amongst other spots of interest.
And of course you can search for places of interest anywhere – rather than just checking out those local to you. Nextstop currently covers 1,000 locations across the world.
One of my favorite features of the app is the Guides section. These are collections of recommendations centered around a location or theme. Here are just a few examples:
- Best Libraries in the World
- Best Beer Bars in the World!!
- Hidden London
- Chillin’ in Austin
I took a look through a few of these guides, and they look great – really helpful if you’re visiting a new city, planning a specific trip, or just exploring a subject that interests you and considering where to travel in future.
I lived in London for a number of years – so I found the Hidden London guide quite interesting. It lists lots of great spots, though I’m not sure that so many of them are really ‘hidden’ kind of places.
My favorite guide I’ve found so far is one for my current hometown – the Chillin’ in Austin offering by KellyGirl. Anything that leads off with the Dog and Duck pub is a damn fine guide in my book 
The Tech Behind nextstop – why it’s a web app that kicks ass
I’ve been hearing for some time that HTML5 technology was going to allow for richer, better web apps – but I have to admit I really have no clue exactly what HTML5 offers. So I was happy to see a blog post from nextstop detailing some of the methods they’ve used to power up their app.
If you’re not at all interested in the techie stuff that’s behind this new web app, you probably want to skip this section.
Here is a little slice of technical info from the nextstop blog post:
For the technically inclined (and if you’re not, you can stop reading here), we’ve been able to build a browser based application that rivals a native application experience (with a far faster and easier development experience) by leveraging the latest HTML5 technology that’s available on the iPhone.
To help other developers learn from our experience, we wanted to explain in some detail the technologies we’re using to make this application possible.
The technologies we’re using include:
* ApplicationCache: We’ve built our application using Javascript to manage page transitions, so the core HTML, Javascript, and CSS is only loaded once. We’re using the HTML5 ApplicationCache to speed startup time on subsequent loads by caching Javascript and CSS so that these resources are cached for subsequent application loads.
* Geolocation: We’re utilizing Geolocation to get your current physical position in the browser to show nearby content.
* localStorage: As you browse the application, we try to prefetch content aggressively so that any time you click, the content needed for the next page has already been downloaded. This is possible because we store all prefetched content locally on the phone using the localStorage object. This also means that as you browse to content you’ve already seen, no additional network requests are needed because that content has already been stored.
* Google maps v3: Google has been working on a new version of the Maps API, specifically optimized for performance on mobile devices. We’ve found this to be a substantial improvement over Maps 2, and a reasonable alternative for a native maps implementation.
* iphone-photo-picker: One of the key capabilities of the iPhone that isn’t yet available through the browser is access to the camera and local photo library. To bridge this gap, we’ve built (and are open sourcing) a small helper application that exposes a urlscheme (photopicker://) that can be called from any web application to invoke the camera or photo library, and then will POST the selected image to a URL you specify.
All I can say is that all the under-the-hood stuff is working very well in nextstop. It is easily the best looking, best performing web app I’ve seen on the iPhone yet. Everything about it is fast so far – page loads, refreshes, interaction with the app – from scrolling through places of interest or keying in text while adding a recommendation – and it’s well-designed and extremely easy, and pleasant, to use.
I’ve used Yelp, Earthcomber and a number of other native apps that cover the same sort of territory as nextstop. Right now, I’d take nextstop over any of those. It’s ‘just’ a web app, but it also just became my go-to app for finding cool places to go and things to do.
No App Store link needed for this one of course – to enjoy nextstop, just go to nextstop.com on your iPhone.
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great app! i just have one little big issue: how can i use this abroad where i really need it when i turn off data roaming so i don t get any heart attack looking at my phone bill?
this app typically requires offline browsing and caching otherwise no one will use it
Thanks Patrick for the really detailed review — glad to hear you found some good recommendations with nextstop!
Ouriel — supporting a really great offline experience is definitely on our roadmap. We do some pretty extensive local caching already, but want to give users more control over what they take offline with them.
Looks like a PERFECT app when vacationing! Bookmarked it for this summer's travels! Thanks Carl & crew!
I think it's got great potential even for finding local places as well.
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