

Show HN: The most beautiful places on earth - thlt
http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/

======
steve8918
Nice, but you should change the rectangular boxes to rounded corners, the
corners look harsh and ugly.

Also, there's a distance underneath the link, but I have no idea what it means
nor how to change it.

~~~
nyellin
Namely:

    
    
      .overlay-label {
        border-radius: 5px;
      }

~~~
thlt
lol you guys seriously hate hard corners, i don't think there is anything
wrong with it.

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morsch
Hmm. You are only supposed to add pictures for new places. What happens when
the first picture added along with a new place is beautiful, but much more
beautiful photos exist? Worse yet, what if more representative photos exist?

E.g. arguably Mont Saint-Michel is a good candidate (in a similar vein as
Mdina/Malta). I've got a nice, prototypical photo of Mont Saint-Michel, but
I'm sure much, much better photos would be added -- the light was only okay,
there are people in the photo, my camera back then wasn't the greatest. I've
also got an image from within/on top of Mont Saint-Michel, which is also nice,
but arguably the photo chosen to represent Mont Saint-Michel should be the
classic "long shot" of the entire mountain/city/church.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Saint-Michel>

In the spirit of the site itself, maybe a community process could manage
existing places. E.g. a regular contest/vote for a better photo or simply a
wiki. And of course these are issues that only crop up when and if the site
takes off, so they don't need to be solved for the first iteration. Although
it does pose a problem even now, since I feel apprehensive about adding any of
my images since I don't want to prevent anybody else from adding theirs!

~~~
morsch
Heh, good thing I didn't add my Mont Saint-Michel photo, since it doesn't
remotely compare to the one someone added in the intervening 8 hours:
<http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/item/5291532>

Too bad the images aren't available in a higher res, btw.

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ThomPete
I wonder why we don't see more map apps like this.

Just of the top of my head:

Around the world route maps (people submit the trips they did)

Greatest explorers route maps (although I guess there might be some problems
with historical accuracy)

Geek Spots Around the world

Known Military Bases around the world (and perhaps a strategy game on top)

The use of large scale maps are IMHO still a very underutilized area because
most go for the location based stuff.

~~~
Ogre
I was sure I'd seen the Geek Spots one on HN before, so here, I found it:
<http://nerdydaytrips.com/>

Also though in tracking that down, I found this enormous (2300+!) catalog of
Google Maps mashups:

<http://www.programmableweb.com/api/google-maps/mashups>

~~~
nosignal
Thanks for that mashup link, I'm always on the lookout for web map references
so that's pretty useful. Cheers.

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japhyr
I just found a place I'd like to visit. I saw "Valley of the Ten Peaks" in
Canada. I visited Lake Louise on a road trip, but did not make it up to
Moraine Lake. This makes me want to go back.

How will you keep the map from getting too crowded?

~~~
thlt
We cluster them as how <http://cravify.com> works.

~~~
jawr
both are awesome sites. good work!

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PidGin128
The social media bar is interfering somehow on chrome 21.0.1157.0 (Developer
Build 139621 Windows) (with plugins set to click enable) and 1024*768 screen
on xp.

Mainly, all the page under the bar is blank. this affects where the overview
map thinks the center is, when you double click to zoom in. also, made the
individual site pages uselessly narrow.

edit: deleting this node "<div id="share_btns" class="panel">" makes it
usable.

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mwilcox
Similar: <http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/worldwonders/>

~~~
thlt
it is different in many terms like mostbeautifulplaces.org focuses on the true
beauty of that place, that's it. Also it is crowd-sourced, meaning that any
one from all over the world can help discover great places on earth.

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rickard
How come Christ Church Meadow, Oxford, is also in Venice? See
<http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/item/5291686> vs
<http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/item/5291685> ... Hackish indeed... ;-)

~~~
thlt
ooop how come there was such a mistake hmnnn. The Venice one is replaced by
the correct one now.

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afterburner
Looks really cluttered, despite not having a lot up yet. Maybe have the boxes
expand when the cursor is near?

~~~
whichdan
I agree. I think a transparent box with just the name would be great, and then
when you mouseover/click, it would open a tooltip similar to PadMapper. Right
now the distance and thumbnail don't really add much to the initial tooltip.

It would be great if each location had several pictures, and info on how to
travel there & other nearby attractions. For instance, maybe it could open a
link to HipMunk with the nearest airport already filled in, or it could just
tell you airline prices directly. Do that, add a few hundred more locations,
and this would actually be a really really cool site.

~~~
thlt
hi, thanks for the great ideas.

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conanite
Using safari (5.1.5) on mac, I can't click on any of the place links (works ok
in chrome)

~~~
thlt
hi thanks for the report, I'll investigate the issue soon.

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yureka
Good stuff!

I just added two new places (Niagara Falls and Yosemite Falls). I'm hoping for
this to catch on, that way It can help me plan my US-West_Coast trip in a few
months :D

~~~
thlt
thanks, they are awesome places ;)

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DIVx0
You have badlands national park located near Minneapolis MN. I don't know if
this was meant to be a joke or not but you're off by several hundred miles.

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reubensutton
This is a really cool idea, it would be nice if you worked out a way for the
boxes to not overlap though.

Where did you get your initial dataset from?

~~~
thlt
Hi thanks, we have collected data from different sources for bootstrapping.

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albertzeyer
Reminds me a bit of <http://www.where-is-this.com/>. Also a collection of very
nice places.

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antihero
You should make sure that the photos pass some sort of test for quality and
resolution. I want to see photos that make stuff look truly beautiful.

~~~
thlt
yeah we manually review them all.

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aw3c2
Using content from Wikipedia without kind of attribution is not cool and not
legal. All the descriptions seem to be verbatim copies. Boo!

~~~
thlt
Yeah all the content is from Wikipedia. Some very first places were not
attributed properly, the newest ones are. We'll fix them soon. Thanks for the
feedback.

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pthreads
So needed. Thanks.

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newobj
Brutal on mobile.

~~~
timrobinson
I'm on an iPad and I can't make any of the links work.

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Swizec
I want to share this on twitter and attribute it properly, but you don't share
your twitter handle anywhere on the site, or in your HN profile ...

Why don't people mention who they are when they make something awesome?

~~~
simonbrown
Speaking generally, surely having a link to the site is attribution?

~~~
Swizec
It's not the same. Attaching a person to the link is a much "warmer"
referral/introduction/what-you-want-to-call-it than just linking to a site.

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rokhayakebe
What makes a place beautiful? Is it the location or the scenery? If it is the
former than your website design should is spot on. If the latter than you
should get rid of the map as the helm and show users a beautiful grid of
images with location info at the bottom.

~~~
thlt
I bet both location and scenery are important as you'll consider where to
visit first. Wouldn't it great to know somewhere is very beautiful and just
close to you ? It is also very helpful when you travel as you don't want to
miss any beautiful places near your destinations.

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adrianwaj
It would indeed be a tragedy if Fukushima reactor 4 collapses.
[http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/06/01/fukushima-
nuclea...](http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/06/01/fukushima-nuclear-
reactor-4-lost-wall-sea-side-139651)

It already is a tragedy.

