Road trips, earthquakes, and volcanic islands

Do you seek out recommendations and suggestions before booking a holiday? Yes? Then a crowdsourced trip might just be the perfect getaway for you. A couple in the US have embarked on a mammoth travel project, partially dictated by friends, family and sociable randoms. The Democratic Travelers are spending a year travelling across America, stopping at destinations suggested by those who visit their website. The bright idea came after planning a standard road trip – friends and family kept making suggestions "Oh, you’re heading to Arizona…you must stop off at…". Cue clever website. Users who visit their page are able to add destinations to the map, other visitors to the site can then upvote or downvote the recommendation. They are funding the trip with freelance web development work and have so far visited nine states and 60 destinations – all since the beginning of February. So, if you’re planning a trip around the globe and you’re receiving multiple suggestions of where to go…why not set up a website (map included) – ask friends, family and the beyond to make recommendations and see where it gets you. It’s not one for those who like to be in control – but it once again highlights the every changing and developing social aspect of modern day travel.

After proving its worth as a fast, real-time messaging platform for both personal and professional uses, Twitter is now being eyed as a detection and warning tool against earthquakes. Scientists in Japan have developed a prototype tweet-based quake-reporting system dubbed Toretter, which they say works faster than their country’s own official earthquake warnings. Citing data and statistics from more than 1,000 earthquakes between 2009 and 2011, the researchers found that their system detected 93 per cent of Japan’s strong earthquakes by monitoring tweets. The system, which uses computer-based semantic analysis using keywords like "shaking" or "earthquake" has also been looked at as a low-cost observation tool to detect typhoons, tornados, tsunamis and even heavy traffic. Now if only Torreter could help us figure out the inevitable break downs on the district line..

Few have the opportunity to explore the remote volcanic islands of the Galapagos first hand, relying instead on glossy pictures in books and magazines. But very soon, thanks to Google’s Street View, the landscape that inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution will be just a click away for everyone. Google has ‘mapped’ the islands’ most remote areas, surrounding waters and unique creatures using a crew of trekkers armed with cameras in their backpacks to capture panoramic views of some inaccessible places on the Galapagos. These include a journey inside the crater of an active volcano as well as 360-degree views of selected underwater areas, so that virtual visitors can swim with sea lions, sharks and other marine animals. Google hopes to make the footage available on Google Maps later this year. When it first launched Street View in 2007, Google mainly offered views of easily accessible urban neighbourhoods but has since expanded its reach to include the ocean floor, the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic. Earlier this year it released images of the Grand Canyon. A brilliant tool for people to plan trips, scope out new destinations before committing to a visit, or for children researching classroom projects, but no virtual trip can replace the thrill of a trip of a lifetime and ticking something amazing off your bucket list…

Last weekend saw German football fans flock to London as Bayern Munich defeated Borussia Dortmund to lift the Champions League trophy at Wembley Stadium. But sharing the win, at least in social media, were the sponsoring brands. Wallblog created this infographic showing the volume of tweets throughout the game and how the brand mentions compared. There were more that 4.8 million tweets globally about the final, which at one point took eight of the top ten global trending topics. Sponsors Adidas and Ford hit the back of the net with almost 100,000 mentions between them.