Trey Ratcliff is best known for his widely renowned photography work — his blog Stuck in Customs is massively popular (every day the site’s photos receive more than 150,000 views) and and the HDR (high dynamic range) photo techniques he helped to popularize are now practically ubiquitous.

Ratcliff is now setting his sights on disrupting a closely related but very separate space: Travel guides. And he’s just unveiled a gorgeous new iPad app called “Stuck on Earth” to do it.

Screenshot of Stuck on Earth (click to enlarge)

An app born out of necessity

“I spend my life traveling and finding places and taking photos, and I have cobbled together five or six different tools from the web and apps to research my trips, but I’ve still never found the best way to find places to go when building an itinerary,” the Austin, Texas-based Ratcliff told me in a phone interview Tuesday evening. “I built this app for myself. I’m an edge case because I travel and take photos all the time, but I also developed it for the bulk of the bell curve.”

I’ve been playing with Stuck on Earth for several hours, and it really is gorgeous and very fun to use.  It overlays photos sourced from the Stuck in Customs blog and Flickr group, and overlays them on a map of the world that you can zoom in on, giving you a high quality, visual way to get a glimpse of the places you might want to visit. The app lets you save favorite photos in lists you create such as “Places I’ve Seen” or “Trip to Spain in December.” It also includes curated lists such as “Top 50 Beaches on Earth” written by editors Ratcliff has sourced through his Stuck in Customs contacts.

Stuck on Earth Screenshot (click to enlarge)

Seeing the world from your iPad

On the surface it reminds me a bit of Panoramio, the Spain-based geolocation photo sharing site acquired by Google back in 2007. But Stuck on Earth goes way past that in lots of ways, though its design, the quality of the photos, and the cool features surrounding the map and geo-tagging elements. Stuck on Earth has a very Indiana Jones mixed with Carmen Sandiego feel: It talks to you in a Siri-like voice, and the design hearkens to old explorer and adventurer themes. Basically, it’s inspiring: The app makes you excited about seeing the world and discovering new things.

What’s especially impressive is that Ratcliff has made this app with a very tiny team: He did the design (his background is in computer science and mathematics), an Austin-based “rock star programmer” did the coding, and a graphic designer did contract work remotely from Serbia. “We don’t have to do design by committee, so it was basically just the three of us that cranked the thing out.”

Growth, and maybe funding, ahead

And since Ratcliff’s website is quite profitable, he was able to make the app without worrying about incorporating ways to make money from it right now. But going forward, he may be interested in taking on outside funding to really seize the opportunity to properly disrupt the travel space. “Our next step is to make a bigger team. There are a ton of features we want to add, and we’d like to bring the app to Android,” Ratcliff said. “We’re not actively looking for money and we’re doing just fine financially, but we wouldn’t mind talking to a few financial partners. This thing could have a big life of its own.” Here’s hoping that it does.

Here’s a video of Stuck on Earth at work:

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iPhone insurance

Flickr is just about the most widely used photo sharing site today. It is a place for photography enthusiasts to express all their work for free. Anyone can be a part of and sign-up to upload their pictures and brag their utmost pictures to many other photography enthusiasts around the world. There’s no qualification for anybody who wants to be part of the social photo networking website, you need not be a specialist photographer to have all of your captured photos in the circulation of the internet site. Any photographer with or without knowledge, provided that their image has something meaningful to tell all of the viewers, then you are surely in.

When Flickr started as a nice photo resource and sharing site, most photograph entries had been shared by professional photographers, some, if not skilled technically, are experienced photographers who have a that natural eye for good high quality images. These pros typically capture their photos using top quality cameras or digital single- lens reflex cameras typically referred to as DSLR. These digital cameras enable an accurate preview of framing close to the moment of exposure. That’s the reason why they’re mainly preferred by lots of photography lovers.

On the other hand, with all the freedom Flickr provides its subscribers, numerous digicams are actually becoming sources of great pictures contributed on their website. Best of all is cellphone digital cameras also have paved their way in proving that they are capable of capturing breath- taking sceneries using their very simple yet modern specifications as to still photo capturing is concerned.

Moreover, as reviews were given over Flickr, it’s been reported that the Apple iPhone 4 is the greatest camera used by many, along with the most common camera used to capture attractive images, and to my surprise, besting out the high end DSLR Nikon D90 camera.

It’s without doubt that this 5- mega-pixel camera on the iPhone 4 can catch great and smooth images. Images that are sufficiently good to be mistaken as DSLR quality. You will find of course third party programs that greatly enhance graphic quality of captured photos as they feature filter systems that can give a various twist on your photograph. Not just that, with all the coming of iOS 5, improvements indeed has a lot to provide. It is merely proper that its integrity be protected constantly with the iPhone 4 insurance.

The iPhone insurance secures your mobile phone from numerous effects of nature’s elements. It covers your Apple iPhone from accidental damage and fluid or water damage in any event that your gadget is subjected to them. What more could be greater than defense against loss or thievery, including a 90- day international coverage that could ensure your iPhone is covered any place in and outside of UK. The iPhone insurance plan certainly makes your thoughts more comfortable and your mood for photography intact at all times. – iPhoneIns5310p51vg54n9_MyAN

Comcast says it added 144,000 new broadband subscribers during the second quarter of 2011. Thanks to growing demand for higher-speed tiers, the company saw its revenues jump almost 10 percent to .2 billion for the quarter. According to Leichtman Research Group, a Durham, N.H.-based market research firm, Comcast had 17.406 million subscribers at the end of the first quarter. At the end of the second quarter, it had 17.55 million broadband subscribers.

However, compared to the first quarter of 2011, net new broadband additions are abysmal. During the first quarter of 2011, Comcast added 418,000 new high-speed Internet customers. I would like to point out that Comcast’s broadband business — Comcast is the largest broadband provider in the U.S. – is seasonal and the new broadband additions ebb and flow during the year.

In addition, Comcast logged voice revenues of 8 million as it added 193,000 new voice customers in comparison with 230,000 customers it added during the second quarter of 2010. Comcast’s Business Services, a relatively young division, saw its revenue jump 41.7 percent from the second quarter of 2010 to 5 million.

Photo of Comcast Tower courtesy of Flickr/Kevin Burkett

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