App Name: TapTrip
Developer: Kiheitai Inc.
Market: Google Play, iTunes
Cost: Free
Review:
With Taptrip, you can become a tour guide for your country and introduce others to your home or become a traveller and join various international chat groups from around the world. You will be able to make new “Trippal” friends, share photos and learn more about the culture and everyday lifestyle of people from other countries through group chat messaging and personal messages without worrying about airfare, pricy long distance phone calls and the difficulties of mastering a new language.
To get started, you will need Facebook account to log in. Once you have synced your account, you will be shown a brief tutorial on how to use the app and will be ready to depart to your first 30-hour trip from the virtual terminal of Taptrip Airlines. Upon visiting the app for the first time, you are given a starter pack of 100 coins and each trip ticket costs around 5 coins.
One of the selling points of Taptrip is the app breaks down the language barriers by automatically translating chat messages into your primary language based on your location whether it’s English, Spanish, French, etc. Although you can use Facebook chat to talk to anybody, Facebook does not always translate other languages well.
Also, when you first log in, you will only be limited to only one choice in country to travel to in the beginning of your simulated global adventure. My first “trip” was in Ecuador and I am not sure if that will be the default country for all first-time users. After your first trip, more countries will become available to you to choose from. I have also noticed that users are only limited to one trip every 30 hours. Being a social networking app, which spans on an international level, Taptrip needs to allow its users to take multiple “trips” at a time instead of just one in case of a lack of active users on a particular trip.
Nevertheless, I can see the potential of this app being helpful to students who might be studying International Relations and globetrotters who may want to know about the country they are traveling to from a local resident. With this app, you will have the ability to travel from Australia to Zanzibar from the comfort of your own couch. Taptrip is free to download and little less than 2MB large.
