When trying to explore a new place or make travel plans, some people like to read about it. Some, on the other hand, have to visualize everything and what better way to explore a new place than by actual colorful photos taken by other people.

TravelPhotoMosaic is an awesome interactive mosaic created by  Picturemosaics.com and LonelyPlanet that lets you roam the world without leaving your couch. It contains over 120,000 user submitted photos from around the world.

To browse the mosaic just pick the part of the world you want to explore on the interactive globe and zoom into the exact location. You can quickly drag the map to move around the world and see pictures associated with that location. Clicking on each picture gives you the exact name of the location, the name of the user who submitted that photo and a casual caption.

If you would rather search for something, just enter the keywords into the search box and the tool will take you to all the pictures tagged with those keywords, no matter where they are around the world.

Still feeling a bit unsure of what you want to see? Just click on any country name from the interactive tag cloud and sit back. The tool will then take you to a number of images from that country like a slideshow.

As it was mentioned above the mosaic was created by PictureMosaics who have recently created a number of dynamic and animated mosaics ranging from the famous Barack Obama Presidential Tour Mosaic to the AT&T Cotton Bowl Mosaic. If you really like these quality mosaics, PictureMosaics lets you create one with your own images. For more details go here.

Features:

• Explore the world with an interactive mosaic.
• Over 120,000 user submitted photos.
• Search by key word or explore by zooming on the maps.
• Use the tag cloud to get a slide show like photo tour of any country.
• Read who submitted the photo and what they had to say about it.
• Enlarge any photo for better viewing.

Visit TravelPhotoMosaic @ www.lonelyplanet.com/win