We’ve been joined by many of our favorite bloggers: Anja Mutic from EvertTheNomad, Ellen Fields from Yucatan Living, Chrishette from Two Jetset Divas, Nora Dunn from The Professional Hobo, the “tacogirl” Laurie Norton from Taco Girl, and the guys from Spotted by Locals are already part of the team, and you’ll see their posts appearing on the magazine in the next days.

If you’re an expert and you want to join the team, it’s pretty easy: give us your details, we’ll take a look at profile, and get back to you as soon as possible. Everything you need to know before applying is written in our guidelines.

Oh and hey, we are still cleaning around, so if you find anything that doesn’t work, please let us know.

That’s why we thought you could use a pressroom: we built a new shiny one at http://press.tripshake.com, and we invite you to take a look to see who’s talking about us, the next upcoming events we’ll be partecipating to (if you are coming too and want to schedule a meeting, drop us an email!), and our press releases and announcements.

The wait is finally over. We are very happy to announce that TripShake alpha is out for you to try!

How? Just type www.tripshake.com and create your account. You can start right away by asking questions and plan your next trip! We will keep introducing new features as the time goes, to make your experience more and more compelling and useful.

We decided to keep it open for people to try, rather than go with the invitation formula. That’s why we are really craving to get your feedback: there is a “Help” button up there on the top-right corner that you can use from any page of TripShake to send us a message with new ideas or bugs (yes, there might even be some of those).

We’re waiting for you on TripShake: so, shake it!

So here’s a short explanation: we’re working like maniacs to fix the last kinks for the launch of the alpha testing phase of TripShake, your already favorite travel website. We are counting to be up and running in a few days, so stay tuned and keep refreshing the homepage until the annoying “Forbidden” message disappears.

See you on TripShake in a few days. We can’t wait to see you there!

We didn’t have much time to tour the city yet, as we’re pitching TripShake when we can, and following the conference sessions.

In fact, we had the great opportunity to be partecipating at PitchCamp, one of the great sessions organized in the conference that gave a selected few startups (12 out of the 50 that sent the application) the chance to be coached by one of the experts in the panel. We were paired with Jens Redmer from Google, who helped us a lot refine our pitch and got us ready to present TripShake to a panel of investors and experts. Thanks Jens, and thanks to Ted Shelton and Robert Goldberg for organizing the whole thing.

Yesterday the explosive Mike Butcher from TechCrunch organized an improvised up-the-stairs pitch on level C of the congress center: 10 startups showed up, and it was a fun time for all of us. Mike is a great showman and we all did our best to pitch the whole startup in 1 minute. You can listen to the results right on TechCrunch UK.

Coming to the fun stuff, one bit of advice from Berlin. If you happen to be in the city and you want to taste great German food, there is one place you should go: nicknamed StäV, the Ständige Vertretung sits on the banks of the Spree, at the Subway and S-Bahn Friedrichstrasse. The exact address is Schiffbauerdamm 8, Berlin: be sure to try the amazing Berlin meatballs, or the marinated roasted meat. You can end your dinner with a flambée apfel cake, but be sure to light up the fire right away, or they will add more Calvados, making it harder to get home straight after dinner. Tschüss!

Thanks to Emil Abirascid and the organization of Percorsi dell’Innovazione, we’ve partecipated to a selection of italian startups: a number of them were assigned a stand, and we were among the selected ones! So if you want to come and visit us, you can come at SMAU, at “Padiglione 1″, “Stand P15″. If you need a promotional code, we still have some left, just leave us a comment and we’ll mail you the code.

Here’s all the info you need to get in. We’ll be there for the full duration of the event, from the 15th to the 18th. If you are a reader of this blog and you are coming, let us know

So what are you waiting for? Get on www.tripshake.com, tell us your e-mail address and shake it. Be the first to know.

We’re doing that while presenting the product at great events here in Italy: the first one is Innovation Circus, one of the most important events dedicated to innovation in Italy and in Milan, that will take place this weekend. Our 5-minute slot is on Sunday afternoon, framed in the context of Milano in Progress Company Marathon, some kind of competition among innovative products based on how many people you actually manage to bring to the event. If you happen to be walking near the Duomo, come along and cast your vote for TripShake The precise address is “Palazzo dei Giureconsulti, Piazza Cordusio, Milano”

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The second event is SMAU, the most important business technology event in Italy and among the most attended in the industry. We are going to have our own stand there at SMAU for the full 4 days of the event – October 15 to 18. You can read more about SMAU on their website, and if you want to come and visit us, leave a comment on this post to have a promotional code to get in for free We are going to talk more about SMAU in a future post.

In any case, stay tuned for more news about TripShake’s public debut soon enough on your computer screens! \o/

That happened on June 20th, at an event called TechGarage, among the first events completely dedicated to start-ups and venture capitalists in Italy (after MiniBar and very few others), hosted by LUISS University and organized by dpixel. We were presenting in the section of the event dedicated to small, rampants, new start-ups, who are just now jumping in the scene of innovation to disrupt anything that’s been created before. HA!

We had a chance to present TripShake’s core chrachteristics to a few VC’s, a lot of tech enthusiasts, many journalists, bloggers and definetely a huge number of innovators overall. The event was quite crowded by Italian standards, about 350-400 people, and quite a success both in general and for us.

Here you can see some snapshots (thanks Stefano!) taken during the event, picturing both me and Giorgio explaining TripShake to those who came by our small desk.