What I shipped this week
- Chris
- May 3
- 2 min read
Kon-Tiki, a new iOS travel widget, De Haar Castle, Antwerp, and still looking for travel bloggers
Issue 7 of the Weekend History Hunt went out Thursday.
This one is about exploration, the real kind, before GPS and satellite maps, when crossing an ocean meant trusting stars and ocean swells and the flight path of birds.
It starts with Thor Heyerdahl, who in 1947 built a balsa wood raft with five men who had never sailed and crossed 4,300 miles of open Pacific in 101 days to prove a theory the scientific establishment thought was nonsense.
Then it goes further back, to the Polynesian navigators who had already mapped the Pacific a thousand years earlier, and to Zheng He, who was sailing fleets of 317 ships across the Indian Ocean 87 years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic with three.
It's one of my favorite issues so far.
New iOS travel widget
This is the biggest app update this week.
The latest iOS update includes a new home screen widget that cycles through three views: a country welcome card with local language, currency, and foods worth trying; a US state card if you're somewhere in the States; and a nearby adventures view showing the closest DuckAbroad destinations with distances. One widget, rotating through all three as you travel.
More widget types are coming. Update the app on the App Store to get it.
New destinations
Added De Haar Castle to the app this week. It's the largest castle in the Netherlands and it's on our itinerary. Another one where I'm writing the description with our trip in mind, which makes it easier to get right.
Also added Antwerp as a new city sticker. Belgium is coming together in the app alongside the trip planning.
Still looking for family travel bloggers
A few weeks ago I mentioned I'm building a way for family travel bloggers to add their own content to DuckAbroad: quests, walking tours, and blog posts tied to specific destinations.
I'm still looking for a small group to test it before I open it up more widely. If you write about family travel and want your content in front of families actively planning trips, get in touch.
Under the hood
Performance and security improvements went out this week. The unglamorous stuff that has to happen.
DuckAbroad turns family travel into an adventure for kids 7-10. Stamps, scavenger hunts, travel journals, and 350+ destinations across 6 continents. Try it free on the App Store and Google Play.
Comments