Cartina, or why "I visited the United States" means nothing
The first Nidello app is on the App Store. Where it comes from, why it goes down to regions, and what is behind the figure of 141,810 places.
Cartina is on the App Store as of today. It is the first Nidello app to ship, and I wanted to tell you where it comes from.
An idea born in the Alps
The idea came to us on a trip in the Alps, with my youngest son. One of those moments when you take the time to think, far from everything. We were talking about the places we had been, and the ones still ahead. We looked at each other and said we just had to do it.
Further than borders
The travel maps I tried all had the same flaw: they stopped at the country. A few days in Tokyo, and all of Japan lit up, from Hokkaido to Okinawa. A stopover in Reykjavik, and it was the whole of Iceland, glaciers and fjords included.
Cartina goes one level down. It knows 3,649 regions across 239 countries: provinces, states, regions, prefectures. You do not tick off Canada, you tick off Quebec, New Brunswick and British Columbia. The map gets more honest, and frankly more motivating: there is always another corner left to light up.
141,810 places to tick off
A map that lights up is nice. A reason to go again is better. Cartina has eighteen collections: mountains, lakes, waterfalls, volcanoes, national parks, capitals, trails and great treks, World Heritage sites, dream islands, extreme points… and now dive sites and golf courses. 141,810 places in all.
The big collections are ticked off from the shore, the foot of the mountain or the lookout: no need to reach the summit. You can also set yourself a goal (50 countries, every Canadian province, ten summits) and earn badges along the way.
Ten years of travel in a single tap
Nobody wants to type in ten years of travel by hand. Your photos remember it all. Cartina reads their location, works out the countries and regions, finds the right dates and groups everything into trips. The photos never leave the phone: it is all worked out on the device.
For people who travel a lot, there is also a day counter: how many days abroad this year, how many are left in the Schengen Area, and your last allowed day if you are there.
A use I did not see coming
When you give blood or plasma, they ask where you have travelled, and when. Usually you dig through your memory. With Cartina, every stay is there, with its countries, regions and dates: the answer is ready.
No server, for real
Cartina does not go through any server of ours: no account, no ads, no tracking. The maps are inside the app, so you can tick off a country in mid-flight. Your data stays on your iPhone and, if you want, in your iCloud, which I have no access to. Your places go wherever you want: as pins in Apple Maps, as a KML file for Google Earth and Google Maps, or as a full JSON export.
Cartina speaks thirteen languages and runs on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. In the U.S. and Italy, look for "Cartina Atlas": the short name was already taken.
Download Cartina on the App Store
Tell me which country, or which region, you lit up first: [email protected].
— Daniel