The best way at the moment -- and we know we need to improve this -- is to create two trips with the same date.

Not quite yet. But we're working on a manual "override" -- a way to enter the city yourself -- as part of a process that helps you and provides valuable feedback to GeoNames, which in turn will provide valuable data for other Dopplr users (and others who use the data).

The reason it happens is that any time we don't recognise a place we throw it to Google's geocoder. Google sends back a point in the world. We then look at our own database and see what we do know that's nearby the real place. It's a bit like a "snap to grid" feature in a graphics application (and is both as useful and as irritating as such a feature).

Yes. When you use the IATA airport code, Dopplr recognises this and adds the nearest big city. For example, a trip to SFO will show up as San Francisco, and CDG (Charles De Gaulle) becomes a trip to Paris.

There are a few ways you can do this:

• You can use the search box near the top of the page to search for them by name.
• We can tell you which of your contacts (from Gmail, Flickr, Twitter etc) are already using Dopplr. All you need to do is use the 'find and invite' page.
• You can also browse the 'others you might know' section of the Manage Connections page.

Go to "Manage connections" at the top of the page and select the "Whose trips you can see" tab. Then click on "Mute" and you'll stop seeing their trips. (They will not be notified - their trips will simply stop appearing on your list of travellers.)

No, you're not obliged to share your trips with anyone. Of course, at some point they may decide to stop sharing their trips with you.

Click on your home city from your home page. Dopplr will tell you which of your travellers are visiting, and will also note if you'll be away during the entire time that one or more of them are going to around.

Yes. At the bottom of a fellow traveller's trips -- someone who has shared his or her trips with you -- you'll see a link that says 'Subscribe to their trips in iCal'. Clicking on that gives you a link that you can import into your calendar.

Not yet, but we will be adding this as soon as we can.

Currently you can send an email to fellow travellers whose trip overlaps with yours. You can find this option on the particular trip's page, under "Coincidences". We're looking for ways to expand this in the future.

We don't import contacts from LinkedIn and Yahoo at the moment. We'd like to, though, and so it's a possibility for inclusion in future releases. In the meantime, perhaps importing from one of the other networks might help.

Yes. Go to this page (http://m.dopplr.com) for our mobile site. It works with any XHTML-compatible mobile web browser.

You can. Once you've signed up, you need to use some simple formatting, as shown below.

These instructions are included in the email you receive when you sign up for the mobile service.

Adding a New Trip

@cityname ddmm ddmm

e.g.
@kyoto 1505 1805
adds a trip to Kyoto from May 15 to May 18

Adding a Note to Your Trips

whatevertext youwant
adds a note to your next trip (or your ongoing trip if you're travelling)

e.g.
Staying at the W Hotel, free for dinner when I arrive
adds the note "Staying at the W Hotel, free for dinner when I arrive" to your next trip (or your ongoing trip if you're travelling)

cityname whatevertext youwant
adds a note to your next trip to that city

e.g.
london Gilbert & George exhibit at Tate Modern
adds the note "Gilbert & George exhibit at Tate Modern" to your next trip to London

Sometimes the return date of your trip may appear to be incorrect on Facebook. We're going to add a way for you to specify the time of day you're returning, which will fix this problem.

Yes, you can do whatever you like with CSS on your site, and it will override the default badge choices.

Yes we do. Here's a blog post about our API, and here's the direct link.

Type the name of a place into the text-entry box near the top of the page, and see if the city is listed. If it is, click on it. You'll see a link that says "Change your home city to {whatever you've selected}". Click that, then click the confirmation button ("Yes") and your home city will be changed.

Yes. But we don't have a form to do this on the site, because it changes all your Dopplr URLs (homepage, bookmarks, feed subscriptions etc). If you're like to change your screen name, please send us a note.

Not yet, but this is something we're going to be adding in the near future.

What we show to strangers is minimal now, but you can set it to zero. You'll find options for this on our privacy settings page.

This is an RSS issue. Some "feed readers" let you make the RSS feed public, and these feeds are then picked up by search engines. We don't username/password protect the feeds because Google Reader doesn't support username/password protection, and so it would mean that Dopplr users couldn't use Google Reader.

The bottom line is that there is no simple fix to this. However, if you are having the problem, it means that someone you know is accidentally disclosing their feed. You could try tracking down who they are and asking them to make sure their feed is private.