About the Author:  Kevin Burke is a member of the FortiusOne analysis team. Read more from this author

As someone who loves to travel (even though I don’t travel enough) I love seeing the many natural wonders across our world that provide spectacular views and sights. Rivers, Lakes, Mountains, Volcanoes, and other natural forms are scattered throughout the globe showing the natural beauty of the planet that we live on. I recently came across a website that is holding a worldwide vote to see what locations around the World will be voted as the New 7 Wonders of Nature.

The Contest is heading into its final stages. It started with 440 locations around the world. The first round of voting chopped the number down to 77. From 77 it has been dropped to the final 28 finalists. Now votes are being tallied up from the final 28 to determine where the final New 7 Wonders of Nature will be. I made the map below using Finder! and Maker! The map provides the locations of all the nominees for the contest. The grey circles represent all the 440 nominees, the green squares represent the 77 second round nominees, and the orange circles represent the 28 finalists.

View full map

I decided that I wanted to vote for this contest, but I was discouraged that I had not been to any of these final 28 places. Also, the website only provides a single picture of the location. This made me feel that I did not have a good idea of what I should vote for. I wanted to make my vote really count by getting a good picture of what all the locations really looked like so I decided to do this through the use of Finder! and Maker!

As I viewed the map in Maker! I went to the upper right hand corner of the map and clicked on the details box. By opening this up I have the option to download this map into Google Earth as a KML file. (click on the photo for a larger, clearer view)

I went ahead and did this and I was then able to view my newly created Maker! map in Google Earth.

In Google Earth you have the ability to open up a program called Panaramio. In the layers section on the left hand side of Google Earth click on Geographic Web. In this section you will see a tool called Panaramio. Click on that box to enable it.

So what is Panaramio? Wikipedia says, “Panoramio is a geolocation-oriented photo sharing website. Currently, some of the photos uploaded to the site can be accessed as a layer in Google Earth and Google Maps, with new photos being added at the end of every month. The site’s goal is to allow Google Earth users to learn more about a given area by viewing the photos that other users have taken at that place. The website is available in several languages.”

By using Panaramio I am able to go to the orange dots on my map and view many different pictures that were taken around the location of the voting nominee. I can easily do this by clicking on any of the blue squares that can be found near the orange dots that I have already mapped.

By seeing all these photos I am able to get a clearer vision of what these locations really look like. Now with this clear picture I can select the 7 I like most. I will then wait to see if those will be the same seven that are finally selected when the voting ends and the winners are announced in 2011. So which 7 did I choose? I will keep that to myself so I do not sway the opinion of everyone that reads this.

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