Mashable: The northern lights cam just turned on and it’s the perfect season for ghostly skies. “The same live webcam site that brings you Alaska’s glorious, salmon-hungry fat bears just turned on its webcam in the northern reaches of Churchill, Canada. This town, famous for the polar bears who regularly stroll down its streets, is ideally situated to watch the glowing, emerald northern lights, aka the Aurora borealis.”
outdoors
Route Fifty: Using Data to Ensure Equitable Funding for Parks
Route Fifty: Using Data to Ensure Equitable Funding for Parks. “Tactics vary from place to place, but each municipality highlighted in the report relied on data to make impartial decisions about funding. During the budget process in Detroit, for example, city officials use multiple data points—including housing prices, rates of childhood obesity, minority households, foreclosure rates and high rates of violent crime—to identify parks in every corner of the city that haven’t seen capital improvements in years, sometimes decades.”
The Ashahi Shimbun: Sublime scenes in Oze National Park on Google Street View
The Asahi Shimbun: Sublime scenes in Oze National Park on Google Street View. “Not everybody is able to visit Oze National Park straddling Gunma, Fukushima, Niigata and Tochigi prefectures, but now the magnificent landscape of two popular destinations there is available on Google Street View. The service allows viewers to take in the sights as if they were actually on site. They can also take a virtual stroll on a wooden causeway by switching images on the website.”
HeraldNet: Explore more than 100 Washington state parks at new website
HeraldNet: Explore more than 100 Washington state parks at new website. “Forks of the Sky State Park, along U.S. 2, is one of more than 100 state parks with virtual tours at [the new park site.] The tours provide 360-degree views of trails, lakes, rivers, mountains, coastal land, campgrounds, interpretive centers and vacation houses at state parks. You’ll also find an interactive map, trip reports and park information.”
Sierra News Online: New Web Site Offers ‘Virtual’ Tour of Yosemite
Sierra News Online: New Web Site Offers ‘Virtual’ Tour of Yosemite. “A new web site — Virtual Yosemite — is now offering a virtual reality (VR) tour of Yosemite National Park and its surrounding areas. The new site, which went live this summer, provides high resolution, 360-degree panoramic views from over 200 locations throughout the sprawling park.”
What3words: The app that can save your life (BBC)
BBC: What3words: The app that can save your life. “Kicked. Converged. Soccer. These three randomly chosen words saved Jess Tinsley and her friends after they got lost in a forest on a dark, wet night. They had planned a five-mile circular stroll through the 4,900 acre (2,000 hectare) woodland Hamsterley Forest, in County Durham, on Sunday evening, but after three hours they were hopelessly lost.”
Bloomberg: Sandee Wants to Be the Yelp of Beaches
Bloomberg: Sandee Wants to Be the Yelp of Beaches. “Does it have to be on an ocean? Is a sandy shore on a lake a beach? What about a peaceful river bank? For… a new site dedicated to cataloguing and rating every beach in the world, the answer is: all of the above. Its goal is to help users find the right beach—no matter their definition of the word. Its growing database includes more than 50,000 beaches in 178 countries and territories around the world, says founder Randall Kaplan.”
