I recently planned a trip to Dublin with some friends I haven’t see for about five years. The problem was, I’m sure, not an uncommon one. We were six people coming from Berlin, Godalming, Paris and Chamonix. We needed to find a weekend when we were free, get our flights booked and then make some plans for our trip to the Emerald Isle. Just the job for Phuser.
The first, choosing a date, was surprisingly easy. I created a Phuse and added the other five people to it. We immediately had a private place to put all of our chat. In the old days this would have been a whole bunch of emails. I added a Date Decider to the Phuse, suggested a date and asked for other date suggestions. A couple more were added by the others and we all said whether they were good or bad. It was obvious which one to go for and so our trip was underway:
Next I got some good tips on cheap flights from the others and after a bit of discussion over a few days (all in the Phuse) we had booked our tickets. The discussion continued as we decided what to do, where to stay and whether to hire a car. We were able to share the load as everyone booked either the rooms, car or the essential Guinness Brewery tour!
What would have been 88 emails over a couple of months was all on one page and really easy to refer to. I wanted to know when there was something to look at in the Phuse so I set Phuser to send me an SMS everytime there was a new update.
Phuser really came into itself once we were off and away from any computers. I set up Broadcast so that we could stay in touch easily by SMS. All any of us had to do was send an SMS to Phuser (+447624806185) and start the message with the keyword I had chosen (Dublin). Phuser then relayed the message to the other five phones (three French, two UK and one US). No fiddling and only billed for the one standard rate SMS to Phuser. This was great for meeting up as we all landed at different times as well as when we split up into groups. Try doing that privately in Twitter!
After we got back Phuser had one final task. I added a Photo Album to the Phuse and we all uploaded our pictures. My favourites are the ones of us jumping into the icy cold waterfall in the Wicklow Mountains. It was very inviting:
You won’t see us in our underwear on the internet though! Those photos are tucked up privately in our Phuse. This one sums up the trip nicely 
“You won’t see us in our underwear on the internet though! Those photos are tucked up privately in our Phuse.”
Thanks goodness