Filetypes / Airports is an interactive map of every overlap between file extensions and IATA airport codes. A lot of file extensions are three letters long. So are airport codes. Some of them match. Each match gets an authentic software icon from the original program, placed onto a world map.
The Map
We started with ~75,000 airport records and hundreds of legacy file extensions, matching them by their 3-letter codes. 293 airports matched 320 file extensions. Each one gets an icon ripped from its original software: Windows 95/98 classics, Linux variants, and modern ones.
The icons on the map spin in 3D. We packed all the thumbnails into a single sprite sheet and use a shader to render them, with each airport spinning slightly out of phase based on its code. All the icon assets are also available on GitHub.
The map also features a different filetype / airport each day, picked from an MD5 hash of the current date. Every visitor sees the same one at a given day.
"Convert" Your Files
We also provide a proprietary "file conversion" service. You can select two of any supported filetypes and convert between them freely. For example, let's go from a boring .DAT data file to a fancy .SVG image.
The conversion is irreversible so we warn you with a confirmation dialog.
Then the algorithm does its work, and tells you it'll cost 998 USD (or 4,211 USD) and 30 hours to convert a .DAT to .SVG, with two stops.
Data Sources
We collected the airport codes in a Google Spreadsheet (raw TSV). File extensions come from a curated list and NirSoft's extension database.
Not all IATA codes are available on Google Flights. We went through every matched airport and flagged which ones Google Flights actually supports (see the full list), which is what makes the "Convert" feature work (or not work, for some airports).
Acknowledgments
This project is a collaboration with Richard Lewei Huang as Switcheristic Telecommunications.
