Using Gliider works via a Firefox installation file that adds a Gliider button to the browser toolbar. This is available for both Firefox and IE and worked on my Firefox running under Mac OS.  

Firing up Gliider I created a test trip to Jakarta, Indonesia. The UI was slightly confusing to begin with and I was getting strange error messages about invalid dates but it wasn’t long before I had my trip set up. Gliider then provides nine folders covering different aspects of trip planning. These included hotel, flights and transport etc and there were two user-defined files that I thought was a nice touch.

Gliider allows you to highlight and then drag and drop content from a webpage into the respective folder. This ‘web clipping’ functionality has been around for some time now and has been packaged into applications, some of which I have heard about but none has really caught my eye apart from perhaps Evernote which is more technology feature driven. Gliider has kept the functionally quite light focusing more on making web clipping make sense from an activity standpoint.

The clipping worked quite well and Gliider handled the formatting and the adding of images fairly slickly. It was a little ‘buggy’ with new clippings not showing up until I went out and then back into the folder, for example.  I also tried clipping just a URL link but subsequent clicking on that link didn’t seem to open the linked page. I’m niggling here a bit though because for simple clipping of text and images Gliider worked well.

An application wouldn’t really be an application nowadays if it didn’t pay its due homage to Facebook and Gliider is no exception. Using Facebook Connect (see photo), I can get travel advice from ‘people I know and trust’ as the text on the Gliider ‘Ask Around’ tab puts it. Gliider then asks me what question I want to ask and then posts this on my Facebook wall either for everyone to see or just selected friends. 

As well as sharing via the ubiquitous Facebook, I was able to share my trip details with up to four other people using plain old simple email. I tried this with another email address of mine and received an email notifying me that the other me was planning a trip and that I too should download Gliider. Incidentally the email subject line was ‘a funner trip’ which irked me again…

Anyway, collaborators are able to see the pooled content and add comments. Adding comments sort of makes sense but I’m guessing that in reality travel companions would simply chat about their trip face to face or over the phone. 

The third tab on the Gliider app is for deals and alerts.  Gliider has teamed up with at least two third party sites and for my New York trip that I’d added I had a load of hotel deals for New York from travelzoo.com. Gliider says that it plans to expand the ‘deal’ functionality into other trip components in addition to just hotels.

You wont be surprised to hear that Gliider has its own iPhone application that I downloaded for US$3.60 equivalent. I’m not sure what’s exactly de rigueur nowadays when pricing apps but I know that I have some great ones that cost me nothing and my paying for one that allows third parties to pump deals to me based on privileged travel itinerary information flew in the face of what I expect nowadays.

The iPhone application provided no additional functionality over and above the browser plug-in although the interface was well designed – good to look at and intuitive.  My initial reaction to the iPhone app was that having all the clipped information in my pocket when actually on my trip could be really useful, the visitor hours of the New York Botanic Gardens for example. It would be a bit like having my own personalized guide in my pocket that my collaborators and I had populated with relevant content before leaving for the trip. 

At the same time though I was thinking about all the missed opportunities around linking my hotel address in Gliider to my maps and GPS for example and Gliider proactively recommending me other stuff and talking me there based on my profile and the recommendation of others.

I think Gliider is a nice idea and it takes some technologies and functionality and packages then into an application area where the whole idea of clipping content around a subject really makes sense.  

The interface is generally good and the navigation reasonably intuitive. I think there is huge potential to take Gliider to somewhere really cool by incorporating location and context awareness and further integrating it’s communication with Facebook and other communities.  Let’s see how cool it gets.

Featured image credit (internet planned travel): iStock