7 ms·

Show HN: The most beautiful places on earth

85 points by thlt 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- thlt 14y ago
  not yet, mb coming later.
mwilcox 14y ago
Similar: http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/worldwonders/ http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/worldwonders/
- thlt 14y ago
  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.
steve8918 14y ago
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.
- thlt 14y ago
  yeah it's pretty useless, I'll change it to district and country where the place belongs to.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- Caerus 14y ago
  The distances are relative to a blue marker on the map, which you can drag to your current location. For me, it was in the UK and completely hidden by one of the boxes. I just happened to notice it during the refresh after manipulating the map.
- superphil0 14y ago
  kilometers too pls :)
- nyellin 14y ago
  Namely: .overlay-label { border-radius: 5px; }
  - thlt 14y ago
    lol you guys seriously hate hard corners, i don't think there is anything wrong with it.
  - thlt 14y ago
    hmnn indeed looks better. Updated. Thanks.
japhyr 14y ago
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 14y ago
  We cluster them as how http://cravify.com http://cravify.com works.
  - jawr 14y ago
    both are awesome sites. good work!
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
rokhayakebe 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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.
reubensutton 14y ago
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 14y ago
  Hi thanks, we have collected data from different sources for bootstrapping.
conanite 14y ago
Using safari (5.1.5) on mac, I can't click on any of the place links (works ok in chrome)
- thlt 14y ago
  hi thanks for the report, I'll investigate the issue soon.
Swizec 14y ago
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?
- thlt 14y ago
  hey the site is made by @cravify :)
- simonbrown 14y ago
  Speaking generally, surely having a link to the site is attribution?
  - Swizec 14y ago
    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.
- MattJ100 14y ago
  You're assuming they have a Twitter account.
morsch 14y ago
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 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!
- thlt 14y ago
  yeah this is in the plan. There should be no limitation in order to get better.
- morsch 14y ago
  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 http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/item/5291532 Too bad the images aren't available in a higher res, btw.
adrianwaj 14y ago
It would indeed be a tragedy if Fukushima reactor 4 collapses. http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/06/01/fukushima-nuclear-reactor-4-lost-wall-sea-side-139651 http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/06/01/fukushima-nuclea... It already is a tragedy.
newobj 14y ago
Brutal on mobile.
- thlt 14y ago
  yup not mobile friendly yet :)
- timrobinson 14y ago
  I'm on an iPad and I can't make any of the links work.
afterburner 14y ago
Looks really cluttered, despite not having a lot up yet. Maybe have the boxes expand when the cursor is near?
- whichdan 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    hi, thanks for the great ideas.
ThomPete 14y ago
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 14y ago
  I was sure I'd seen the Geek Spots one on HN before, so here, I found it: http://nerdydaytrips.com/ 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 http://www.programmableweb.com/api/google-maps/mashups
  - nosignal 14y ago
    Thanks for that mashup link, I'm always on the lookout for web map references so that's pretty useful. Cheers.
  - ThomPete 14y ago
    Oh wow cool
aw3c2 14y ago
Using content from Wikipedia without kind of attribution is not cool and not legal. All the descriptions seem to be verbatim copies. Boo!
- thlt 14y ago
  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.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- thlt 14y ago
  ooop I didn't think about this, it should be fixed now. Thanks for the feedback.
rickard 14y ago
How come Christ Church Meadow, Oxford, is also in Venice? See http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/item/5291686 http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/item/5291686 vs http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/item/5291685 http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/item/5291685 ... Hackish indeed... ;-)
- thlt 14y ago
  ooop how come there was such a mistake hmnnn. The Venice one is replaced by the correct one now.
antihero 14y ago
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 14y ago
  yeah we manually review them all.
yureka 14y ago
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 14y ago
  thanks, they are awesome places ;)
pthreads 14y ago
So needed. Thanks.
albertzeyer 14y ago
Reminds me a bit of http://www.where-is-this.com/ http://www.where-is-this.com/. Also a collection of very nice places.
DIVx0 14y ago
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.
PidGin128 14y ago
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.

85 points by thlt 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

thlt 14y ago
not yet, mb coming later.

mwilcox 14y ago

Similar: http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/worldwonders/ http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/worldwonders/

thlt 14y ago
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.

steve8918 14y ago

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.

thlt 14y ago
yeah it's pretty useless, I'll change it to district and country where the place belongs to.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
Caerus 14y ago
The distances are relative to a blue marker on the map, which you can drag to your current location. For me, it was in the UK and completely hidden by one of the boxes. I just happened to notice it during the refresh after manipulating the map.
superphil0 14y ago
kilometers too pls :)
nyellin 14y ago
Namely: .overlay-label { border-radius: 5px; }
- thlt 14y ago
  lol you guys seriously hate hard corners, i don't think there is anything wrong with it.
- thlt 14y ago
  hmnn indeed looks better. Updated. Thanks.

japhyr 14y ago

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 14y ago
We cluster them as how http://cravify.com http://cravify.com works.
- jawr 14y ago
  both are awesome sites. good work!

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

rokhayakebe 14y ago

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 14y ago
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.

reubensutton 14y ago

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 14y ago
Hi thanks, we have collected data from different sources for bootstrapping.

conanite 14y ago

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

thlt 14y ago
hi thanks for the report, I'll investigate the issue soon.

Swizec 14y ago

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?

thlt 14y ago
hey the site is made by @cravify :)
simonbrown 14y ago
Speaking generally, surely having a link to the site is attribution?
- Swizec 14y ago
  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.
MattJ100 14y ago
You're assuming they have a Twitter account.

morsch 14y ago

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 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!

thlt 14y ago
yeah this is in the plan. There should be no limitation in order to get better.
morsch 14y ago
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 http://mostbeautifulplaces.org/item/5291532 Too bad the images aren't available in a higher res, btw.

adrianwaj 14y ago

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

newobj 14y ago

Brutal on mobile.

thlt 14y ago
yup not mobile friendly yet :)
timrobinson 14y ago
I'm on an iPad and I can't make any of the links work.

afterburner 14y ago

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

whichdan 14y ago
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 14y ago
  hi, thanks for the great ideas.

ThomPete 14y ago

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 14y ago
I was sure I'd seen the Geek Spots one on HN before, so here, I found it: http://nerdydaytrips.com/ 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 http://www.programmableweb.com/api/google-maps/mashups
- nosignal 14y ago
  Thanks for that mashup link, I'm always on the lookout for web map references so that's pretty useful. Cheers.
- ThomPete 14y ago
  Oh wow cool

aw3c2 14y ago

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

thlt 14y ago
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.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

thlt 14y ago
ooop I didn't think about this, it should be fixed now. Thanks for the feedback.

rickard 14y ago

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

thlt 14y ago
ooop how come there was such a mistake hmnnn. The Venice one is replaced by the correct one now.

antihero 14y ago

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 14y ago
yeah we manually review them all.

yureka 14y ago

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 14y ago
thanks, they are awesome places ;)

pthreads 14y ago

So needed. Thanks.

albertzeyer 14y ago

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

DIVx0 14y ago

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.

PidGin128 14y ago

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.