Ask HN: What was an interesting project you started and finished over a weekend?

Re:Ask HN: What was an interesting project you started and f... by CharlieDigital on Monday April 08, 2024 @08:40AM (#39969098)

Last year, my wife and I were planning a 12 day trip and I was struggling with Google Docs moving days around while we planned our final route.

Told her to give me 2 days and ended up making a small app to help us plan our trip; the first version was built over New Years weekend:

https://turas.app

Kept working on it and it was good enough to share to Reddit 6 days later [0]. Got a good number of users and still keep it maintained/updated. Also have some videos showing the progress and major features over the last year [1]. It's been fun; my go-to project to tinker on when I feel bored.

Tried to monetize it, but didn't really find a market so just keep it free for the users that are on the platform :) The folks that come back to it tend to be obsessive planners (like my spouse).

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/TravelHacks/comments/105s90u/i_buil...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@turasapp/videos

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Re:Ask HN: What was an interesting project you started and f... by another-dave on Monday April 08, 2024 @08:54AM (#39969210)

Looks cool! Must try it out for our next trip coming up.

How did you land on the name Turas by the way? I was expecting an Irish connection as turas means 'trip' in Irish :)

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Re:Ask HN: What was an interesting project you started and f... by CharlieDigital on Monday April 08, 2024 @08:57AM (#39969242)

    > How did you land on the name Turas by the way

Google Translate :) I wanted something short that meant "trip" or "travel".

Give it a shot! It's not for everyone (definitely not casual planners). But if you budget, plan schedules, and especially if you plan multi-day trips with other travelers, it's a great tool!

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Re:Ask HN: What was an interesting project you started and f... by another-dave on Monday April 08, 2024 @03:33PM (#39972920)

Ah cool :)

yeah will check it out — we're already in the 'Google Sheets' mode of trip planning so sounds like we're in the target market!

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Re:Ask HN: What was an interesting project you started and f... by sunnybeetroot on Monday April 08, 2024 @10:09AM (#39969876)

Nice! I personally use wanderlog and am a paying user (even though the free plan gives me everything I need), maybe you could take inspiration from their monetisation strategy?

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Re:Ask HN: What was an interesting project you started and f... by CharlieDigital on Monday April 08, 2024 @12:04PM (#39971075)

Honestly don't know enough about their monetization strategy, but we did a user survey and -- at least the audience of users currently using Turas.app -- only a small % was interested in paying a subscription. So to make that scale, we'd have to invest heavily in marketing to get more users to make it sustainable.

Felt like it was better to just keep it free and ad-free :P

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Re:Ask HN: What was an interesting project you started and f... by throaweyprimy on Monday April 08, 2024 @09:44AM (#39969654)

This is cool. I’m not a super planner, but I’d use it.

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Re:Ask HN: What was an interesting project you started and f... by CharlieDigital on Monday April 08, 2024 @10:04AM (#39969831)

Thanks for the feedback!

Always open to input an ideas; still work on it a few weekends a month and make improvements (just added a timeline/history this past weekend).

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Re:Ask HN: What was an interesting project you started and f... by princemaple on Tuesday April 09, 2024 @01:25AM (#39976377)

This is so coooool!

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