

Touristiness heatmap by number of public photos - vl
http://maps.google.com/maps/mpl?moduleurl=http://www.bluemoon.ee/~ahti/touristiness-map/touristiness-map.xml

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0nly1ife
Cool idea, but I think the data is skewed by population density, for example,
the map shows Juarez as being more touristy than the Grand Canyon. A better
approach might be to map the ratio of photos to population density.

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techiferous
Agreed, it pretty much follows population density. Some notable exceptions are
Utah, Colorado, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, the Smoky Mountains (on the
border of Tennessee and North Carolina), the Carolina beaches, Vermont,
northern New Hampshire, and the Adirondacks of New York.

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kylemathews
Another exception is the Oregon Coast (where I grow up) It's bright yellow but
pretty much no one lives there (relatively speaking). For example, the county
I grew up, Lincoln County, is roughly the size of Rhode Island but has only
around 45,000 people (figures from memory).

But it is extremely touristy. Highway 101 grinds to a stand still most summer
days, especially when it's really hot inland in Portland / Salem / Eugene.

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brazzy
Great idea.

Wouldn't have expected the USA to be that much less touristy than Europe,
though. And within Europe, western France seems to attract fewer photographs
than even rurual Turkey.

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jacquesm
I think that it depends on what is being photographed. In rural Turkey, it
will be toursists photographing each other, in Western France it will be
tourists photographing the Eiffel tower.

Plenty of very highly visited areas are not that memorable by themselves other
than that they receive a large amount of sunshine and this alone will attract
large numbers of tourists from the North West of Europe.

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davidw
I don't think panoramio includes photos of people taking pictures of one
another.

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jacquesm
Would be nice to see this by time of the year so you can plan your trip when
everybody else is _not_ at your destination.

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jrockway
Winter.

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jacquesm
Not for the Alps :)

And not in the Southern hemisphere either.

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nostromo
They have winter in the southern hemisphere too. ;-)

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jacquesm
Tricky question, is winter when it is cold or is winter when it is December ?

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bmunro
Not tricky at all. Winter is in June, July, August

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arethuza
If you like that site then you may find the Geograph project interesting:

<http://www.geograph.org.uk/>

The have high resolution (100m x 100m) resolution photo heat maps of the UK.
(Note the amount of green in Scotland, meaning no pics at all of that grid
square).

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davidw
Why is yellow the 'hottest'? That sort of goes against every other map of this
type, no? Also, it seems to be in need of some calibration. The Alps get lots
of tourists, but Venice gets way more. Oodles of them.

That said, I love the concept and the clever use of public data to make a
guess about something else.

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arethuza
From December to April the Alps get a hell of a lot of visitors - the big ski
resorts (especially the French ones) are _huge_.

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davidw
Yeah, I know - I lived in Innsbruck. Nothing like any day of the year in
Venice, though.

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arethuza
3 Valleys, Espace Killy, Paradiski....

I'd go with the Alps

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tocomment
How about making it detect clusters of photos at locations. So I can look
within say 20 miles of my area and find certain locations where there are a
lot of photos?

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Vivtek
Dang. While it works well in Indiana (it detects the Metamora artists'
colony), it pretty much maxes the meter in Western Europe and Puerto Rico (the
latter basically looks like a glowing hot brick).

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nandemo
Surprisingly, Pyongyang looks pretty bright.

One could argue that North Korea is safer than (say) Thailand now, but I still
wonder why go there if you aren't a researcher or spy.

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stcredzero
I would've thought all Irerland to be colored in. What's with the stretch of
N60 between Ballyhaunis and Castlerea? The N5 just to the south and west of
Lough Gara as well.

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aw3c2
I'd like to know what this has to do with "touristiness". Were only photos
used that were tagged eg "vacation"? Germany is a land of spammers and
contribution-freaks (as in "I must add an photo here, I will be the first")
but I highly doubt it is such a popular holiday destination.

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lenni
I get your second point (although I think desire to 'level up' is nothing
particularly German) but 'land of spammers'?

