Other than being awesome adventurers, one of the biggest things my parents did to feed my wanderlust as a kid was to keep around a giant National Geographic Atlas. I would spend hours just flipping through that thing realizing just how much world there is to explore.

National Geographic is still putting out their atlas, but in the days of Google Earth, I’m sure it doesn’t sell as well as it once did. So now they’ve put it online as well. It will remind you of Google Maps, but it loads very quickly and marks neighborhoods and landmarks without lots of other clutter. Well worth checking out.

Though really, I prefer the old book to this system. If I ever have kids, you can bet your boots that they’ll have a National Geographic Atlas.

h/t Adventure Blog via Intelligent Travel

TravBuddy is a fantastic social networking site that I am fairly embarrassed that I didn’t join until just this week. Generally I’m hesitant to jump into a new social network as I still have MySpace, Friendster, Orkut, Bebo, etc etc profiles that I never log into. However, after a little poking around it was clear that TravBuddy offers a number of services you just don’t find elsewhere.

Here’s the rundown on highlights I’ve encountered so far:

Pairing with other travelers. After my cheap ski trip to France this winter, I think I’m going to swing north and check out Switzerland for a week or so. I plugged that in as my travel plans and suddenly I have a link to other folks that are looking to go there at the same time. Couldn’t be easier.

Great use of Google Maps. I can’t deny that I love Google Maps, and TravBuddy puts them to better use than I can. When you create a profile, you also create a map of where you’ve been and where you want to go. Their interface for browsing destinations is essentially a large Google Map with markers of blog posts and pictures that users have submitted. This could keep me browsing for hours.

Energetic community. As soon as I joined, a slew of people started commenting on my profile welcoming me to the network. Before I had a single friend (er, wait, I still don’t have any), I had 8 comments welcoming me and 10 people had “smiled” at me. That warm welcome has made me that much more interested in the site, and trying to meet up with some of these folks for travels.

Other than the lack of privacy, I’m not sure I’ve found a low point that really bugs me. It’s a good site, and I’ll let you know how things go with finding a buddy for travelling in Switzerland using the site.

If you’re not a member yet, join on up. And if you are a member, go ahead and ad me as a friend.