Tag: maps

Every pub in the United Kingdom

This Reddit thread shares the map of all the pubs in the UK.  The Poke picked it up and wrapped it into some more links and quotes.  Apparently, not even all the pubs are covered:

“Nope. There’s at least 12 pubs missing from the north coast of Scotland. Thurso alone has more than 6, 2 in Bettyhill, Tongue and Melvich plus a few others all missing”, writes shaidy64

The source of the map is here referencing 24,727 UK pubs.  And I’ve only been to like, what, 3?  This situation urgently needs correction.

How the Internet works

cable

Ars Technica runs a nice overview article “How the Internet works: Submarine fiber, brains in jars, and coaxial cables“.  It features plenty of cool images, statistics, and details of the Internet wiring from under the sea to the last mile to the last 100 meters.  It’s mostly focused on UK, but it provides a good understanding of what’s involved in the modern day connectivity.

P.S.: On a less serious note, here’s The IT Crowd take on how the Internet works.  Thanks to Maxym Balabaev for a reminder.

what3words – addressing the world

what3words is an interesting solution to the problem of the global addresses.  What’s the problem, you ask?  Well, according to their website:

  • Poor addressing costs businesses billions of dollars and hampers the growth and development of entire nations.
  • Around 75% of the world (135+ countries) suffers from inadequate addressing.
  • 4 billion people are invisible, unable to get deliveries or receive aid, and unable to exercise their rights as citizens.

That doesn’t sound too far from the truth.  So, how do they solve it?

what3words_converter

what3words is a global grid of 57 trillion 3mx3m squares.

Each square has a 3 word address that can be communicated quickly, easily and with no ambiguity.

Our geocoder turns geographic coordinates into these 3 word addresses and vice-versa.

Using words means non-technical people can accurately find any location and communicate it more quickly, more easily and with less ambiguity than any other system like street addresses, postcodes, latitude & longitude or mobile short-links.

It’s a very elegant solution.  Obviously, it doesn’t solve all of the problems (for example, it does not take height into account, so if you have a 50-floor high apartment block, all 50 floors will share the same squares).  But this solution is still valuable and super easy to use.

And it’s fun too!  I live around crowbar.land.premises, and I work close to simply.approve.pretty.  See, I told you.

By the way, what3words has been recently in the news:

Mongol Post, the country’s largest mail provider, has licensed the system from What3Words, and starting in September it will offer customers the option of using the three-word codes. (The company added Mongolian to its first 10 languages; 14 more are coming.)

If that’s not cool, I don’t know what is.

Global Internet Map 2012

internet map

I came across “Global Internet Map 2012” – an interactive map by TeleGeography, via this article (in Russian).  If you read the language, check the article for more maps and resources on the subject.  Also check my previous posts here and here.

Apart from the absolute visual awesomeness, one thing that struck me in particular is how weird the world looks if you just rotate the map a bit.