I recently went on a trip to Belgium and shared it with my friends back home in real-time. My extraordinary vacation of breweries and historical sites turned into a mobile experiment that was just as rewarding. Here's how it all began.

In the process of getting ready for Belgium, I was reading up on culture, things to do and, more importantly, what breweries to visit. I kept thinking about how I wanted to share the beauty of Belgium with my friends, so I decided to create a website to house all the photos I planned on taking. However, I had a dilemma. How was I going to get the photos uploaded to my site from my primary camera (my phone) during my travels? With only two days to build the site before I left, I chose to use Google Picasa — I used the API to grab all the photos from my trip and serve them up on my site.

Pieces of the puzzle were coming together, but my site needed a little sprucing up. Since my phone can output my location via Google latitude every hour, I used the API to get the latitude and longitude of where I'm taking photos. I displayed these coordinates on a Google map.

With only a few final touches left, I announced my new site to friends and coworkers. It was my coworker Tom Hudson who suggested I create a Twitter handle so people could tweet me to do something in Belgium. It was brilliant — now I could interact with users while I was overseas. I made the quick update and set off abroad. 

While in Belgium I documented my adventures (pictures uploaded to my site with a WIFI connection). I didn't have time to reply to my Twitter requests, but it all worked out in the end. Upon my return, I received good reviews on the site and analytics revealed I had a lot of hits. I plan on utilizing this more when I'm on vacation or at events I would want my friends to
check out.