Britain On The Web

Whilst searching for pictures for my previous post I came across this little gem: geograph. The aim of the site is simple, to collect at least one photograph of the main geographical features of every 1km x 1km grid square in the UK ordinance survey maps. So far they have over 300,000 images covering almost 150,000 square km of the UK (or about 62% of the surface area of the UK). Whats cool about the site is that you can search by postcode/placename, or by clickable map and find any photograph taken within that area.

As you would expect most photographs in a given area tend to focus on the same areas, so the grid square for Durham City is of course dominated by pictures of the castle and cathedral. However there is also an attempt to show the real use of areas as well, so the Durham grid square has pictures of the annual miner parade, London has views of gridlocked cars etc.

The question now is whether or not Google already offers this, and if not how long until it does.

New Links.

I'm planning on periodically adding to the links section on the sidebar to the right, I'm not sure how often this will be, it all depends on how much work I have on. Anyway, here is the first set of new links, all to do with pictures of Science:

The Hubble Heritage site has a very good selection of some of the HST's greatest hits, many will be familiar but there are one or two new ones, and others that have changed slightly since they were first released. See them in all their glory here.

In a similar vein, but looking the other way, here is a link to the US Geological Survey's image gallery, check out the galleries called Earth As Art.

The Earth Science Picture of the Day, is set up along much the same lines as the Astro-Picture of the Day, in particular check out the archives for many spectacular pictures of the Earth and natural phenomena.

The National Geographic also has a picture of the day, the archive found here is again worth a look (its where the picture at the top comes from).