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kottke.org posts about Alan Taylor

Photos of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami

Over at The Atlantic’s In Focus blog, Alan Taylor is compiling a selection of photos of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. You’ve seen many of these on other sites, but not at these sizes (1280 pixels wide).

Japan tsunami


In Focus

Alan Taylor, late of The Big Picture, is up and running at The Atlantic with his new site, In Focus.

In Focus is The Atlantic’s news photography blog. Several times a week, I’ll post entries featuring collections of images that tell a story. My goal is to use photography to do the kind of high-impact journalism readers have come to expect on other pages of this site. Along the way, I’ll cover a range of subjects, from breaking news and historical topics to culture high and low. Sometimes, I’ll just showcase amazing photography.


The Big Picture creator moves on

Two and a half years ago, Alan Taylor started The Big Picture at the Boston Globe; he basically ran the site in his spare work time as a web developer for the company. Now he’s moving on to The Atlantic, where he will edit a new photo site called In Focus.

I wanted the opportunity to do this โ€” telling news photo stories โ€” as a fulltime job, and the Atlantic has offered that to me, for which I am grateful. I also think the Atlantic is a better overall fit for the type of international, wide-ranging storytelling I’ve practiced over the years. The Globe has been a good home and a great platform for over 425 entries since 2008 and I am truly grateful, but I’ve chosen to move on now, and really hope you’ll come along and see what I’m up to. I feel very fortunate for what I’ve been able to accomplish to date, and for the opportunity given to me now. I really can’t believe this is going to be my fulltime gig!

Smart move by The Atlantic, which is increasingly looking like one of the media properties that may make a smooth-ish transistion from print to online/app media. As for The Globe, well, I don’t think they quite knew what they had there. Eight million page views per month out of nothing with a less-than-maximal effort…that’s the kind of thing you want to encourage if you’re in the media business.


Long drives on Google Maps

Alan Taylor has collected the longest drives that Google Maps will give driving directions for.

It turns out there are multiple “longest drives”, because the Google Maps World is partitioned (many countries don’t support driving directions), and sometimes ferries are included, and sometimes they are not.

The longest he’s found so far is from the Aleutian Islands to the tip of Newfoundland, a distance of over 7,200 miles. You can drag the path around to make it a lot longer (more than 11,000 miles) but that’s cheating.