Pinlight

Pinlight is a new one on me. 

Thanks to Cameron from Pinlight for getting in touch. Pinlight gives everyone the same five street-level photos each day. Pin the map, score by distance, and you can paste a Wordle-style score card. 

It’s free to play this daily game, and no account is required. Similar to Mapcrunch.

GeoGuessr

I've just sorted a PRO subscription to the GeoGuessr site for the department. Several students requested it a while back.

I used to play this when it first came out in 2013. It was developed by Anton Wallén, and was originally free, but has moved to a subscription based model and now has a thriving community and a whole range of boards and challenges, including trying to identify countries in a streak as well as a daily challenge.

There is also the option to create your own map using the Map Maker tool.

There are lots of sites giving tips on how to identify countries from a range of clues.

It also makes use of Google Street View, which doesn't cover the whole world of course. A map of the coverage is here.

Interestingly, the game gained a lot of additional popularity during lockdown when people started playing it as a way of 'travelling the world'.

This article looks at the value of playing the game, particularly during lockdown.

There are some very sophisticated groups out there such as GeoTips, who have their own Discord server for keeping track of activity and World Record attempts.

There are also Twitch streamers who play the game live, perhaps in Battle Royale mode, where you compete against other players to identify locations the soonest.

Any other GeoGuessr tips and ideas welcome.