I still remember I did profiled a travel review site called WHERE’S COOL last month, and it seemed that the travel review is a big niche and now a new one with a similar idea and a generic domain name called Nextstop is officially launching this month.

Nextstop’s main focus is to offer a solution to address some of the challenges when users come to share their authentic travel experience. At first glance, I was very impressed by its user-friendliness interface in building a travel guide. Since some of the founding members have a common background for working at Google, they have used Google APIs in building the local and image search results and successfully integrated them into the Nextstop site.

In fact, there are plenty of similar apps launched with the similar idea of travel review, and unfortunately I failed to recall them all, except the aforesaid WHERE’S COOL. However, the interface of Nextstop is probably one of the easiest to be used when a user want to add a travel recommendation to the site. Simply enter the name of the place to be shared, the country name will be rendered in below of the place, makes it abundantly clear that easy-to-use is the primary function of the site. Besides, users are allowed to upload or add a photo of the place if they find that they have a better photo instead of the few that pull from Google. I like the fact that one can add a quick text recommendation with the highlighted 160 characters, though the maximum limit one can post is beyond this 160.

Like most of the review sites, Nextstop has a strong community features. You can add comment to any of the quick text recommendations, also have the option to recommend any travel guide to friends, buddies, and etc. To encourage users in sharing the places, Nextstop has applied a badge system whereby different badge color carried with the different community status. Besides, browse the community leaderboard, you will come across a succinct list of top nextstoppers who are passionately want to share the local hotspots within the community, and Nextstop is making sure that their efforts will be awarded with their own “Reputation” system.

Also, the content of the Nextstop site plays smoothly, though the site have Challenges, Forum, and the interface is not clutter. For those who love adventure, the travel recommendation posted by Nextstop’s users is extensive as there are many travel guides, and each guide is comprising of several useful travel recommendations. For instance, this London travel guide will definitely offer some places of interest for other people who haven’t been to London a completely taste of London.

WHERE’S COOL is a new online community for travelers, with a specific focus on travel reviews of the places that your mom probably wouldn’t find useful, as mentioned on the front page. Though it’s in Alpha stage, but users are allowed to register with the site at this moment and start the travel reviews for some cool spots such as the record shops, dive bars, hostels, live music and underground local attractions, etc.

Currently, there are several destinations from Taipei, Taiwan to Kraków, Poland have been reviewed by the users, and each review is detailed with photos, text reviews, and geo-tagging in order to provide a comprehensive travel recommendations for other users who want to plan their next vacation to the same travel destination. Of course, users can also comment and rate others’ travel experiences. Nevertheless, if you are the type of person who is the free and easy traveler and like the local adventure, you’ll find this site most useful for this purpose.

In overall, WHERE’S COOL is a site for discovering local information. For instance, when I been in Taiwan and traveled as a free and easy traveler, some photos listed there urges me to go there for a second look such as this Shilin Night Market which I missed the food so much. As the site still in Alpha, I hope this site can make to the mainstream so that people can have another place to share their travel experiences and places of interest.