Keep track of friends' adventures around the world

July 9, 2017 10:35 AM

One friend moved to germany, another to portland. What are some handy methods to keep connected in an immersive experience beyond status updates and text chat?

I'm looking for any ideas or stories about what has worked for you and your friends. Some things I would enjoy would be:

- an app that lets me specify locations, and it will display weather, local time, news headlines, and etc. from those locations on one dashboard.

- a way to show and share map locations, to talk about where we have been and where we should go -- collaboratively plan and review adventures.

- What is a good way to "have dinner / coffee / drinks" together? is one service better than others? why?

posted by rebent to Grab Bag (3 answers total)

This might not be what you're after, but I find that leaving friends Whatsapp voice messages is fantastic — they're more than texts or updates, but much less work/commitment than any sort of dashboard or other content management. I basically have several rolling conversations with friends all over the world at any given time. At some point during the day I leave a 2-5min voice message on their whatsapp about *anything* at all (but usually there's some sort of ongoing flow of topics) and then I often find that when i wake up in the morning there are a couple voice messages to respond to at some point during the day. Reply and repeat.

It's really fun, esp for group chats. Lots of hilarity, planning, advice, randomness happens. It feels funny to say this, but it's the low-tech version of staying in better touch, imho.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:17 PM on July 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Oh, another story of how I've used Whatsapp to stay in touch with more than just texts. A week before my my grandma died last December, my parents and cousins had unrelatedly joined Whatsapp. Because of this, however, we were able to stay in touch in mostly real-time, easily and for free. It was the best way for my dad — who is not very technical — to let us all know the moment when she passed (several of us were in an airport, with an 8-hour time difference). We were able to respond immediately and I think it helped to make us all feel heard and closer together.

After grandma died, the group chats were invaluable. Occasional messages would pop up with bittersweet memories from different family members as they remembered and shared random things. Later, when my cousin was going through my grandma's jewellery, she gave me a picture tour — cousin was 6,500 miles away but I felt like I was right there with her every time she took a new pic on her phone and shared it, "Do you remember this necklace in the top right corner? That's sooo her, isn't it! She got that in Hawaii with mom. Would you like it, I think she'd want you to have it."

It was so, so lovely. It wouldn't have been possible to have such connections a few years ago, I feel really lucky and grateful.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:28 PM on July 9, 2017

Some things I do with my friends:

Send a "selfie of the day" - can be anything silly, serious, etc with a very short caption about yr day

Occasionally write/draw them a small picture, take a pic and text it about what's going on or just that I love them

Send out short lists of a few question prompts for friends to answer ala old LiveJournal surveys
posted by fairlynearlyready at 6:14 PM on July 15, 2017 [1 favorite]