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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Dell’s much bragged-about skinny 23-incher just got put through its paces by the bods at HotHardware. Their conclusion? The 1080p display sports glossily good aesthetics and scores major points for its lumbar-loving 8.3-pound weight and 0.4-inch waistline (which burgeons to 1.19-inches around the ports). The twisted nematic panel isn’t up to to IPS standards and won’t satisfy graphics or photography pros, but the LED backlighting produces good brightness and better-than-average black levels. Gaming was held back by minor streaking despite the 2ms response time, while Blu-ray movies suffered slightly in darker scenes. All in, a “relatively good buy” at 0 — although you might want to check out the source link to see if the S2330MX meets your exact requirements.

Dell S2330MX ultra-slim monitor reckons it’s gorgeous, actually just ‘above average’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• import photos and videos from a digital camera: using your cameras USB cable or directly from an SD card
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• Compatible with ONLY iPad

With the iPad Camera Connection Kit, it’s incredibly easy to download photos from your digital camera to your iPad so you can view them on the gorgeous iPad display and share them with family and friends. The kit includes two connectors, each with a different interface: The Camera Connector features a USB interface. Just plug it into the dock connector port on your iPad, then attach your digital camera or iPhone using a USB cable (not included). Use the SD Card Reader to import photos directly from your camera’s SD card. Connect it to your iPad, then insert your digital camera’s SD card into the slot. After you make the connection, your iPad automatically opens the Photos app, which lets you choose which pictures to import, then organizes the selected photos into albums. When you sync iPad to your PC or Mac, the photos on your iPad are added to your computer’s photo library. iPad and the Camera Connection Kit support standard photo formats, including JPEG and RAW.

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