by Vas Mylko, Roman Bilusiak
A new Curiosio version is out. It’s called Fine Tuning. You can tune your requests at the level of individual points’ and places’ properties. You could jump right away to https://curiosio.com to try it. We encourage you to keep reading to get information on what we made, how it works, how we thought, what the peculiarities of use, what curiosities were discovered during the making, and our next plans.
Tuning Form
Click on the point-tag or place-tag in the web form or a point on the route over the map for the gateway to fine-tune. Select Tune from the context menu. If you click/tap the same point in the web form or on the map, you will open the same tuning form for the point. It’s up to your convenience where to click or tap.
A Tuning Form will open. Below is a look and feel for the points. For the places, it will be slightly different but conceptually it’s the same. So far we implemented Importance and Environs tuning. Other tuning options — Curiosity, Duration, Style — are not implemented yet, they are scheduled for the future versions of Curiosio.
IMPORTANCE. You can mark a point as a Very Important Point so that Curiosio always keeps it in the proposed trip plans. If you want to avoid some point then you can mark it as Irrelevant Point. Then Curiosio will stay away from it unless there is no other way to drive [e.g. somewhere in the mountains or in the desert].
ENVIRONS. If you want to look beyond a point’s limits then you could tune in to Outskirts and Curiosio will look for the interesting See & Do at the outskirts of that city or town. For a bigger exploration area around the point, you could tune in to Environs. Then Curiosio will persist to squeeze more See & Do from the environment around. To stay within the city limits you could tune in to the Point option.
Let’s go through the use cases to see how the tuning works and how it helps you create more relevant and personal trip plans.
Very Important
There are VIPs — Very Important Points and Very Important Places. You could tune both points and places to signify their importance. VIPs are decorated with asterisks in the web form. There is no decoration of the VIPs on the map so far
Usually, Curiosio tries to build trip plans with all requested points and places, but when their number blows then some of them are lost for the sake of duration and budget. That’s when you need VIPs. Here are the proposed trip plans for this request. Both plans have the Catskills and Catskill Village as requested.
Irrelevant
Assuming that for some reason you want to avoid Hillside, NY. Type the name to get the point-tag in the web form, then click it to open the context menu, and click Tune in the menu. Then, in the Importance section toggle Irrelevant Point. Click [Save] in the Tuning Form. The name of the point will be stroke-thru to signify it’s irrelevant.
Curiosio doesn’t include irrelevant points in the proposed trip plans. Below is one of the possible plans, it doesn’t contain Hillside.
Environs
Let’s go to plan a road trip to Spain to explore another tuning option. We are going to take a cool signature trip and modify it to our liking. Here is a trip we are going to bend by the number of travelers, duration/dates, points, budget to fit our needs while staying very similar to the original itinerary [because we like it].
First off, click or tap [Supertrip] to fill out the web form with the original points. (Places are not auto-configured during Supertrip yet, only points.) Then, to ensure the MareNostrum is guaranteed in the plans we are adding it and tuning it to VIP. And finally, tune Cadaqués to Environs to look for more experience out there.
Below are some trip plans, created with MareNostrum as a very important place, Cadaqués with its environs, for 4 travelers, 1 week, $2000 budget, rental car option. The trips are very much based on the original signature trip by Curiosio.
Cadaqués’s environs are clearly visible in the right top corner of the maps. New trip plans are created for the requested 7 days, for 4 travelers, within the budget of $2000. This is a Curiosio magic.
Curious Geography
A separate section is needed to describe the Environs tuning. There are three options: Point, Outskirts, Environs. The first option Point means you want See & Do within the city limits. The second option Outskirts means you would like to look beyond the city limits, there could be a cool venue in the industrial zone with events, exhibitions, performances, and crazy graffiti. The third option Environs means you want to explore the area around the point. Other points in the area with their places should be proposed in the trip plans.
But the world is not flat — it’s not the same everywhere. There is a city in Australia that stretches for 100 km, it’s Perth — the capital of Western Australia. What’s the Outskirts of Perth? The Point of Perth is going to overshadow the Environs of Boston. Curiosio is trying to make the Point, Outskirts, Environs relative to the city or town or park. It’s a complicated task we must admit.
If you thought it was one off then here is another one, stretching for 50 km in Ukraine. It’s Kryvyi Rih. The current President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy was born there.
In the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Ruzzian forces approached the city’s outskirts from the occupied Crimea. In March 2022, their advance stalled some 50 km to the south. The city has since been a target of frequent missile strikes. Watch the consequences of one of their missile strikes two months ago.
Next
We are going to make Curious Japan and Curious Greece next. Both countries are travelers’ paradise. What other new countries to add?
We know which countries we will not add to Curiosio because they are united for killing our country and our people. We will not add Ruzzia as a direct atrocious aggressor. We will not add Belarus because they helped rashists to invade Ukraine from day one — gave the land and airfields, repaired weapons, gave fuel. We will not add Iran because of thousands of Shaheds. We will not add North Korea because of 1000 rail cars of weapons shipped to the war [as of today].
If you are from the democratic world then we appeal to you to push your governments for big military help for Ukraine. Thank you in advance!
Thank you for reading down here. Now it’s a good time to turn the knobs in the new Curiosio at https://curiosio.com. Stay tuned and always follow your curiosity.
