Worldmapper

by Erik Olsen on

Here is a very interesting new way to look at the world. A site called Worldmapper allows you to view the various countries of the world in relative size according to factors other than actual geography. Consider, for example, the map I chose here which shows population. Now, everyone knows that India and China are the most populated nations in the world. But in this image you can see how much larger their populations are than other countries like the US by the size they represent on the map.

Wee countries like Panama and Chile and Norway and, well, Guinea-Bissau, just kind of disappear. But population is kind of the obvious one. You can also view countries by private health spending (where the US looks as bloated as a mid-western teen with a fast food addiction) and HIV prevalence. Pretty neat new view of the world, eh?

Couch Surfing Travel

by Erik Olsen on

Many many moons ago, I traveled to Europe with a program called Servas that essentially set yo up with people in other countries and allowed you to stay with them for a few days. A quick Google effort reveals that, indeed, the organization is still around. This was pre-widespread-Internet days, and so what the group did was give you a stack of books with people’s names and numbers, and you had to arrange the stay via the telephone and a archaic system of communicating whereby word were written on paper and actually sent in an”envelope” to another person, thus conveying a message. Anyway, Servas was cool, and offered me, a fresh-faced kid right out of college, the opportunity to meet and stay with other people who I am sure I would never have met otherwise. It got me out of the hostel system, too, which can be both hectic, over-crowded and annoying.

Well, in the modern age we have the Internet and we have enterprising people eager to make these types of connections easier. And we have a new program called the Couch Surfing Project, a Web site that lets travelers and adventurers get a unique taste of local life. The project is the brainchild of Casey Fenton, who got hold of a university list serve and e-mailed hundreds of local students asking for a place to crash. Rather soon after, he received scads of e-mails from students offering their couches and their friendship him. Very nice. And so for now, Couch Surfing is a free, nonprofit service with more than 60,000 members. Some seven continents are represented (although we haven’t confirmed this and wonder where in Antarctica one can find a couch….and close to 200 countries.

Could be a very cool opportunity not just to reduce the cost of travel, but to get in with the locals.

Diving Antarctica Video

by Erik Olsen on

It’s a cold, forbidding place where the sun shines all day round in summer and penguins (NOT polar bears) gawk and stare at new arrivals with sardonic curiosity. I am talking about, of course, Antarctica, the seventh continent, that massive hunk of land and ice down at the bottom of the planet where few (but increasingly more and more), people go. And while most visitors take trips on large steel vessels that take them through the icy seas where they stand on deck snapping pictures, National Geographic Traveler’s Boyd Matson decides to suit up in a dry suit and check out the scene underwater.

In this series of videos, you can see what Matsen sees as he plunges into 30-degree waters to check out the bizarre creatures that live in the surprisingly rich Antarctic underwater environment. And bizarre they are. We’re not talking the typical fare here of Great Whites roaming about with hungry stares (although there are killer whales), but about the wee little creatures that make up the nourishing net of life down there. Having been to Antarctica myself, but have NOT dived it, I found these rather satisfying little video bits, especially for the scuba fans out there.

More on the Ugly American

by Erik Olsen on

Borat is far from the first person to make a name for himself by skewering Americans and American culture…but he is one of the best to do so in recent memory. But the whole Borat phenomenon is just comedy, it’s show business, and no one really takes what Hollywood does very seriously. But one thing people DO take seriously in this country is business. The business of America is business said one sage President (if I correctly recall my Roget’s, that is). And so when anti-Americanism starts to affect the country’s bottom line, well, folks start to take notice.

This piece in the Chicago Tribune takes a look at a relatively new movement of business people who are concerned that anti-American attitudes are causing American businesses to lose business overseas .And so they have taken action to try and turn things around. The problem is not just the perception of American businesses as purveyors of obesity-inducing, LCD garbage, the problem too is that Americans who travel abroad help promote stereotypes of Americans as bumbling ignoramuses with pre-Copernican views of self.

And so, to combat these problems, several business-folk founded the Business for Diplomatic Action, a group of educators, executives and citizens working to combat the spread of anti-American sentiment. As mentioned here a while back, the BDA extended its efforts to all Americans traveling abroad via its World Citizens Guide…basically just a series of booklets and pamphlets that offer a crash course in other nations’ histories, religions, traditions, peoples and language.

Personally, I think all you need to be an aware and thoughtful global citizen is an avid desire to travel, a nice book collection and a subscription to the New York Times. A couple of pamphlets are only for the worst off cases, IMHO. But I salute this group’s effort, none the lees, sine any press given to this topic helps make people aware that it’s important. And it is.

Photo Tips

by Erik Olsen on

If there’s one thing most every person brings with them when they travel these days, it’s a digital camera. Sure, there are some oddball holdouts, people who still use film, but most of us have not just graduated to digital, but to mega-mega-pixel video.

Of course, that being said, how many people with these fabulous, no-brainer new cameras actually know how to use them? If you take a trip around Flickr (excepting the Gadling Flickr site, of course, which features prodigious talents ;-)) you see that there are a LOT of amateur shooters out there, people who just pint and shoot without much concern for composition or depth of field .that’s fine. Shoot and be happy. I’m all for it. But if you want the best pics possible, the fact is you have to work at it. All of which brings me to a couple of sites that might help you take better pictures.

First of all, Photosecrets offers tips for all sorts of travel photogs from how to get the beset shots to how to get your pictures into the hands of stock photo sites, a potentially lucrative avenue, though one that is very competitive.

Here is a brief list from about.com with links to tips like how to turn day into night and how to use Photoshop (a no-no with many mags and newspapers, tho)

Photographytips offers articles on how to understand light and how to make the best use of your flash…something many people do NOT do.

Finally, if you want to shoot like a master, you should heed the advice of the masters, and there is no better resource for shooting great photos than National Geographic. Nat Geo has put together a superb site helping you learn the techniques that Nat Geo photographers have employed to craft some of the most memorable photos of all time.

And if you are interested in taking a trip with the explicit purpose of learning how to shoot, take a look at this piece over at Frommer’s which offers a list of trips and companies that take people on photo safaris. Heading out with actual travel photographers who know what they’re doing is a great way to get some real experience with your camera.

Happy shooting!