Insights | 16/12/2015

Do You Want to Buy a Flat, Go to Rome or Love White Christmas? Our Top 5

Every year during the countdown to Christmas, the question arises wether there will be snow or not. We will help you to get an answer. And we will prove, that not all, but many roads lead to Rome. Our top 5 links of the week also could help you to decide, wether you by a flat in Germany or not and give you an idea of how visually impaired are able to receive art. 

How long you have to pay for your flat

Rents are increasing all over Germany. What is more obvious, than to think about buying a flat for your own? Before taking this step it could be very helpful to calculate how much time it will take to pay off the mortgage. This interactive map by Berliner Morgenpost will give you an impression and may support your decision making.  

Almost 500.000 routes lead to Rome

All roads lead to Rome? These are no empty words: “You can reach the eternal city on almost 500.000 routes from all across the continent”, states the Moovellab. A team aligned starting points in a 26.503.452 km² grid covering all of Europe. Every cell of this grid contains the starting point to one journey to Rome. From 486.713 starting points they wanted to find out how they could reach Rome so they created an algorithm that calculates one route for every trip. Here is the result: The more often a single street segment is used, the stronger it is drawn on the map. Beautiful!

Catch insensitive writing with alex

Gender equality in written word is a must for political correct people. In order to prevent ‘unequalphrasing’, Titus Wermer, a developer from Holland developed “alex”. “alex” helps you find gender favouring, polarising, race related, religion inconsiderate or other  potentially insensitive language.

White Christmas in Europe? Depends on where you are

Every end of the year there is one major question (next to: “What to do on New Year’s Eve?): Will there be snow? Since we are kids we are dreaming of a white Christmas. Here are your chances for 2015. You should go to Innsbruck, Stockholm – and best: Moscow. The map was created by the Finish reddit user Haayoaie who states: “When I started doing this map, I was really surprised that a white Christmas is so rare in most of Europe. Only less than 10 % of Europeans live in an area where the Christmas is usually white.”

Unseen Art helps visually impaired to receive art

Unseen Art aims to make classical art paintings touchable. They started a crowdfunding campaign to re-create classical art paintings in 3D for exhibitions and people’s homes. Their passion is to create equal access for art globally, no matter if you are able to see or not. Do you want to know, what Mona Lisa feels like?