From the swivellin' chair...

I was inspired by a post in the forum where Angela_ notices that Tenerife is 'missing' in our mapping software to do a quick post about mapping photos and trips.

I've noticed from mapping my own photos and trips that some destinations seem to be missing just because of how I/we commonly refer to them. Tenerife is a great example because that's how most of us would refer to it as a destination. Unfortunately, if the island doesn't also happen to be a country (like Australia), then it might just not be listed as a destination because it's an island and not EITHER a country OR a city OR town. We have around 2 million destinations mapped and with that I mean towns, cities and countries in well over 99.99% of the cases. There might be a handful of famous sites, but only those that we added manually ourselves out of sheer frustration (suggestions are always welcome for more!)

So how do you go about mapping a destination like Tenerife with the above knowledge in hand? That's right, try and map it to a city or town within the island itself. If you know the name, you would start just by typing it into the box and the autofill will probably find it for you, however in some cases you might not be able to remember the name or there might be several cities with the same name in the same country making it hard to find the right one this way. This is the perfect moment to actually use the zoom function that is part of the mapping system (the buttons at the top right of the map). I did some zooming in on the island of Tenerife and here's an initial selection of towns and cities our mapping system comes up with:

That's pretty detailed!! I'm guessing for most people that would actually be sufficient, but let's say you happen to be staying at "Buenavista del Norte" which you know to be somewhere on that left side of the island but still not showing. Even further zooming in and panning to the left will bring up the following shot:

Wow! There's a whole bunch more little towns showing up over there!

Okay, so what if that tree you are camping under doesn't show up as a destination but you know (roughly) where it's located? The system actually lets you create your own individual markers and give them your own name. To do this, after finding the right location on the map, just click on the 'select on map' button (next to the lat/long fields) and click whereever on the map you want. Type in the location name and you're good to go! The system will actually remember that name for the next photo or trip you are mapping, so you don't have to keep doing this. Just start typing the name you gave it next time around to find it listed or click on the little black icon and the system will put it in the right place. Yeah, it's pretty cool!

Here's an example of a destination I mapped myself because Lake's aren't always considered destinations (note: this is a live map so you can click/zoom in & out etc.):

Hope that helps someone!!

We've just put some updates to the video upload functionality live. The main difference is the increase in the amount of supported (video) formats. And boy, are there some formats supported!

Here's the list:

• .mov
  
• .avi
  
• .flv
  
• .mpeg
  
• .wmv
  
• .mpg
  
• .mp4
  
• .3gp
  
• .dv
  
• .qt
  
• .asf
  
• .mp3
  
• .wav
  
• .wma
  
• .qcelp
  
• .amr-nb
  
• .movieclip
  
• .mod
  
• .3g2
  

Now, if you're like me, you will have no clue what half these formats are for, but that's okay as the common ones are also listed there. A few of the new additions are mobile formats which should prove useful considering the day and age we live in Video uploading and hosting is provided by our partner Fliqz and I'm told there might be some minor issues with some of the less popular video formats at this time, so consider this beta software please (hey, everyone does that these days!).

There's also a bunch of more minor adjustments to make posting to your blogs easier and some clarification on how long it will take to transcode your videos as well as some reworking on the back end which isn't noticable. As always there's no limit to how many videos you can upload but there is a 300MB per file limit.

If you're not familiar with the video gallery and video upload areas, they can be found through your control panel on Travellerspoint (which is where pretty much where everything can be found!) or click on one of the screenshots below.

Last but not least, I will leave you with an mp3 that I uploaded. Instant Travel Guru status for the person that can pick out the singer (just kidding, I don't have that kind of power)!!

If you're one of those users of Travellerspoint that just likes spending countless hours looking through the magnificent travel photography that's been uploaded and featured by the brilliant photography moderator team (superlatives anyone?!), and you have one of those spiffy customized Google homepages, then this post is for you.

Did you know we have a featured travel photography google gadget that you can add to your personalized Google homepage? Well, we do and now you know It's conveniently located in Google's gadget directory, and if you want to go ahead and add it to your iGoogle page, then the direct link is http://www.google.com/ig/adde?moduleurl=http%3A//www.travellerspoint.com/googlegadgets/featuredphotos.xml

So now you can even get your featured travel photos fix if your boss has blocked off Travellerspoint because of your over usage (honestly, why else wouldn't you visit Travellerspoint every day?!)

The winners of the Travel Photographer of the Year 2007 competition have just been picked.

And among them was Timothy Allen, who I interviewed twice earlier this year (here and here).

You can check out Timothy's winning portfolio here, or take a look at the gallery of the ultimate winner, Cat Vinton.

The Blogger's Choice Awards is a cool competition aiming to uncover the best blogs out there. After browsing through the Travel category, I decided that some of our Travellerspoint members' blogs really ought to be up there competing. Here's a bunch I went ahead and nominated for Best Travel Blog:

* Gone East: nomination page

* Greg Wesson's Esoteric Globe: nomination page

* Kiwis Don't Fly: nomination page

* Travelling Right, Travelling Light: nomination page

If you want to nominate your blog, you can do so here. You will have to sign up for a Blogger's Choice Awards account though.

Once your site has been nominated, here are a few simple things you can do to increase your chances of winning:

* Tell your blog's readers.

* Add the badge to your blog: A while ago, we made it possible for you to add a collection of your favourite links to your blog. Recently, we also made it possible to add an image file to any of those links. So if your blog has been nominated, you can link to it and provide this image url: http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/images/bca_badges/bca_badge_besttravelblog.gif. That's a really easy way to remind your readers to vote for you.

* Leave a comment below: If you've nominated your blog, let us know! I'd love to check it out.