Video Of The Day: ‘Tune Up’ With San Francisco’s Pianobike

by Libby Zay on

Earlier this month I posted a video about a street performer who travels around France showing off his affectionate house cats. Well, the weird and wacky antics of buskers are far from limited to just France, so today we’re traveling to San Francisco where a man has turned his tricycle into a roving piano. Gary Skaggs says his girlfriend gave him a lot of flack while he was building the piano/bike combo, but he now makes his living wheeling around the Embarcadero and other tourist-packed places in San Francisco. If you’re planning to go to The City by the Bay any time soon, keep an eye out for Skaggs (and save a few bucks by checking out this budget guide).

[via San Francisco Chronicle]

Hyperlapse Tool Takes Google Street View To A Whole New Level

by Adam Hodge on

Google Street View was a boon to desk- and couch-bound wanderers when it debuted back in 2007, but even the most fervent Street View explorers would agree that the endless clicking is a bit of a chore.

Enter a free online tool that uses Street View images to create a personalized animated road trip. The Hyperlapse tool, created by a Toronto design company, lets you choose any two drivable points on the map, and then stitches together the Google Street View images to create an animation that you can pan around in real time.

The above video demonstrates the hyperlapse tool’s remarkable capabilities. The montage includes drives past major American landmarks and through other countries like Denmark Slovakia, Canada and Australia.

The online interface currently only provides basic point-to-point animation with a locked frame rate, so a two-hour drive like the one I animated from Montreal to Ottawa will take but a couple seconds. However, the featured hyperlapses, which show custom-made drives through the places like the Australian outback and Yosemite National Park are well worth a look. No word yet on when we will be able to animate trips to Street View’s more unique destinations, like up Everest or down the Amazon.

Video Of The Day: Quiet Time In France

by Libby Zay on

The words “city” and “quiet” don’t usually go hand in hand. Cities are, by their very nature, synonymous with hustle and bustle. But in the short film above, Andrew Julian challenges this notion. He offers a glimpse of Paris that shows the exact opposite of a metropolis – in fact, people rarely appear in the video, and when they do they’re seen taking in their surroundings instead of blindly rushing by. What results is a slow, peaceful montage of France‘s famous architecture and landmarks. It’s a nice change of pace from the fast-paced time-lapse videos we often post, and a good reminder that sometimes you need to step back from the travel to-do lists and spend some time slowly soaking cities in.

Video: The Stunning Landscapes Of New Zealand In Timelapse

by Kraig Becker on

Considered one of the great adventure travel destinations on Earth, New Zealand is a country known for its stunning landscapes and breathtaking vistas. Nowhere is that more evident than in the video below, which simply put is 5+ minutes of jaw-dropping imagery. Shot entirely on the North Island, the video offers enticing shots of snow-capped mountains, beautiful shorelines and verdant forests.

Warning: the contents of this video may inspire you to board a plane to New Zealand. Gadling is not responsible for the sudden onset of terminal wanderlust (although we do wholeheartedly support it!).


Video Of The Day: New York City In 3 Words

by Elizabeth Seward on

“3 words for NYC” from Cokau on Vimeo.

New York City might be polarizing in that love/hate kind of way, but in the end, the reasons to love the city seem limitless. One could use thousands of words to describe what’s to love about NYC, but the more difficult thing to do is to break the appeal of New York down into just three words. Vimeo user Cokau (which represents filmmakers Achille Coquerel and Thomas Kauffmann) asked New Yorkers to describe what they love about the city in just three words and the resulting footage has made this cool video titled “3 Words For NYC.” It’s worth the watch.