Aberdeen, SD, is an orchestra

A strangely effective, beautiful interactive map project from the Northern State University in South Dakota. Marker/Music is a collection of videos with audio pinned on a map that, oddly, work together when you play them simultaneously. Hat tip to Google Maps Mania, who found it.

A meeting with El País

While on another superb TwiTrip in Madrid a few weeks ago, I met the El País blogger Patricia Gosálvez, who has just published this very nice interview with me.

You’ll notice it’s in Spanish. Below, however, is a translation, thanks to the amazing Ben Cooper. Heroic.

A Travel Writer of Only 140 Characters

A ‘Twitrip’ is the act of touching down in a place with nothing but the clothes on your back and being guided only by the recommendations of your followers on Twitter. ‘The clothes’ have to include a phone with access to the internet, obviously… The journalist Benji Lanyado has been ‘Twitriping’ since 2009 and giving accounts of his experience in The Guardian. Two weeks ago, his travels took him to Madrid where we caught up with him on the road in La Venencia (a top recommendation).

“Nothing has changed my way of working more than Twitter: for starters, it put an end to doing any research – I come with nothing at all!” explains with Lanyado in one of the most authentic old bars in Madrid. Here he takes a photo of a sign that reads: “Spitting on the floor is forbidden” and remarks (in fewer than 140 characters) that it’s got cecina (air-cured beef) “the Jew-friendly Jamon Serrano”. “It’s pure reporting, live – the tip-offs that people give you are specifically for the time and place in which you find yourself”, he says.

The idea of putting together travel stories using Twitter occurred to him in Berlin, when an airline left him stranded. He complained about it on the microblog site and someone recommended him a hotel. Then a cafe, then a shop… Delighted with all the tip-offs, he decided to experiment. His first ‘Twitrip’ was to Paris. He had to wait 20 minutes at the gate of the Gare du Nord before his first tip-off came in. But from there it was relentless.

Krakow TwiTrip

Another superb TwiTrip.. this time, to Krakow.

Chievo – Sampdoria fix?

11:00am

As noted by @AlexWPoker on last week’s post on the possibly pre-ordained 1-1 draw between Padova and Atalanta, there have been some very odd odds available on today’s game between Chievo and Sampdoria in Serie A. A huge amount of money has been staked on the draw, with the price currently at a ridiculous 1.6.

@Bet72 sent me this interesting screengrab on the distribution of betting on the games, noting that by Thursday, £339K had already been placed on the draw. To put this into perspective, the West Ham – Man Utd game yesterday had just £2.8K matched at the same time.

There’s even been some pickup in the mainstream press on this one, with Goal reporting that a large number of bookmakers have suspended betting on the game, and the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast discussing the issue on Thursday.

Let’s see what happens…

UPDATE: 6.30 pm

Well waddayaknow. A draw. Two weeks in a row, distinctively dodgy stuff in Italian football. See you next week, probably….