Bucket is a service that converts any text-based piece of travel content into a card-based layout of things to do for a particular trip.
When the user is faced with a long article listing multiple places to eat and drink, Bucket parses that text, pulls out the locations mentioned in the article and places them into the user’s account to access later.
The buckets end up as curated lists of a specific activity — such as the New Orleans trip collected by a user below.
Originally launched in beta earlier this year covering only locations in Northern California, the startup can now take text mentioning any US location and pull it into specific buckets.
These buckets can then be pulled up on mobile phones during a journey, ensuring that travelers don’t miss must-do activities.
In a post on Medium co-founder Julia Lam explains further:
“This now means that you'll be able to add places to bucket from any online text source for any city in the USA (ie: New York Times 36 hours, Frommer's, Tripadvisor, Lonely Planet, etc. etc. etc.).
Before we were limited to Northern California for this functionality, so this is a big expansion and just in time for all the trips people are taking over the holidays. You can take those places with you on any mobile device.”
After installing the Chrome extension, users can bring any text source into a bucket, including ratings, reviews, photos and map location.
While the tool will recognize a whole page, highlighting the relevant text is the recommended way to port the information into a relevant list. The tool works on any US-based text source and there’s basic support internationally for content on Foursquare, Tripadvisor, Airbnb, and Facebook Pages.
Bucket’s structure allows for easy collaboration since multiple users can place items in a bucket for group travel planning. Buckets can also be followed and shared with others, so locals can offer up recommendations to visiting friends or brides can build buckets to share with their wedding parties.
Travelers might also check out the Nearby Buckets to see content bookmarked in the area near them.
There have been some bookmarklet-style services in the past that aimed to bring various content pieces into a centralized place. Many of those services were pre-mobile and didn’t provide an easy, actionable way to use the info.
One indie brand that does it well is Passported which offers a bookmarklet for users to save content directly to a travel itinerary while browsing the web.
Other services, such as Pinterest, Evernote and Pocket, offer browser extensions that allow web clippings to be pulled into their services. Many travelers created specific Notebooks for a trip and then collect all relevant content in a separate notebook.
Bucket’s interface is a clear differentiation from those general-purpose services, as the service is specifically targeted towards making travel planning more accessible via mobile devices.
By bringing text into the card format, Bucket makes it far easier to consume that content later. Rather than scanning through a bunch of text saved to another service, the buckets simply show images of the places of interest to be acted on while traveling.
Check out the new Bucket, here and install the Bucket Chrome extension, here.
See Tnooz's profile of the company from earlier this year: Startup pitch: Bucket expands its text-parsing travel planner for Millennials