My Favourite Websites for Travel Statistics and Visualisation
Posted on Jan 29, 2018 by
Floh Tags:
statistics, maps, visualisation |
As a German I have an innate affinity for statistics, especially when it comes to travelling. As a passionate lover of maps I like to visualise the roads I have travelled and the places I have been to. I like to be able to see statistics on how many kilometres I have travelled, by plane, by boat, or by hitchhiking. To create a personalised map of the world would be an ultimate goal for me, but unfortunately that isn’t possible yet. However, there are plenty of websites on the internet that achieve at least some aspects of this goal.
Here are my favourite websites for travel statistics and visualisation:
Travellerspoint is a community-like platform with a big variety of useful aspects for travellers, including travel guides, blogs, photos, a forum, a travel planer, and for me most interesting, a map.
What I especially like about Travellerspoint is its
map function which gives you the opportunity to create different trips consisting of all the places you have visited or passed through during a journey. However, the option of choosing a matter of transport between two destinations is Travellerspoint's biggest advantage compared to similar websites. Accordingly, connections between two city won’t get shown as direct connecting lines, but will follow rails, roads, or curved lines if you have been flying. Like this you have a good overview of the parts of the world you have been travelling through.
There are quite a few websites out there where you can mark the countries you have travelled to on a map of the world. I think that most of these websites have one big flaw: once you have visited a single city in a country, the whole territory gets marked as visited. For small countries this might make sense, but not for big states like Russia or Canada. This flaw becomes especially irritating when you look at a country like France. Despite having most of its territory in Europe, the integral regions that constitute France are located on four different continents. As a result, territories like La Guayane in South America or Reunion in the Indian Ocean appear as visited once you have been to the European part of France.
Nomadmania has a different approach. Unlike other websites, Nomadmania is not about countries but about regions. Where other pages give you only the possibility to mark a whole country as ‚visited‘, Nomadmania has devided the world into 1281 regions that usually comply with political sub-devisions of a country, or places that are geographically separated from the motherland.
Nomadmania gives you the opportunity to create your own personalised map with all the regions you have visited. Moreover, you have the possibility to add some other travel statistics, e.g. listing all the UNESCO World Heritage Sites you have visited or a list of all the transportation systems you have used in the world.
As a passionate hitchhiker I was very happy when I discovered
Hitchlog years ago. Hitchlog has a simple concept: log your own hitchhike in detail, including the number of cars, travel times and waiting times. Besides, users have the possibility to write about their personal experiences and to add photos. Once you have entered your starting point and your final destination, a map shows you the fastest connection between these two cities. However, Hitchlog also provides a possibility to change the suggested route to exactly the way you have travelled.
On your personal profile you are able to see an overview with all your trips, all counties you have hitchhiked in and the total number of kilometres travelled in each country. Unfortunately, there is no map overview, yet.
I first became aware of
Flightmemory through my friend
Andras. Andras collects airports - or, better said, he tries to visit as many airports in the world as possible. Quite a strange hobby, but the website he uses for statistics and visualisation of his trips is quite special.
With Flightmemory you can save easily all the information around all the flights you have ever taken, including airlines, flight number, seat number, type of airplane and much more. A lot of this data is nothing I am really keen on memorising. I really appreciate, however, some core features of this website. Flightmemory lists all the flights I have taken in a simple overview, including dates, distance and duration.
Another feature is a map of your flight history. You can order a print of your map from Flightmemory and hang it on the wall in your living room.
Many websites I once used to love have changed over the time so much, that many features which were essential for me have vanished. Instagram, for example, got rid of its map overview. It was one of the most exiting features which automatically populated a map of the world with all my geo-tagged Instagram photos. Whenever I wanted to find a certain picture, I just had to to go to my map and zoom in to the right region. Like this I was not only able to find the photo I was looking for, but also all other photos I had taken in the same area.
After Instagram had deleted the map entirely, I had to go back through my entire photo feed, to finally find that one picture I wanted. Very disappointing.
Then, I discovered
The Data Pack, a social data workshop by Nick Drake.
Nick has created several gadgets for an easier use of Instagram. Embeddable Instagram map was among those.
It not only places your photos on the map according to the geo-tags, but also lets you choose a date range for your photos or filter your map with hashtags. Your personal Instagram map can also be displayed in different styles.
Polly | Hiking With Kids:
Jan 30, 2018 at 10:08 AM
mmmmm the first one looks good for long distances!
I`m using for short treks, as a mountain hike two applications: Strava which records the route and then Relive with visualizes recorded route.
You may check it out in my last video, beginning from 0:30 sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ-khkD6TOo&t=8s
Inga and Floh:
Feb 04, 2018 at 08:21 PM
Hi Polly!
Thanks for your comment. First of all it helped me realise that our comment function was not properly functioning. Now I fixed it :D
And cool tips. We don't go hiking that often, but if we do, we'll definitely check out how these apps work.
Cool video. We also want to start doing videos! But it's a looot of work..
Polly | Hiking With Kids:
Feb 08, 2018 at 10:49 AM
I was wondering where is my comment :P Glad to read your reply)))