On Fri 06 Aug 2004, Rev Simon Rumble simon@rumble.net wrote:
What I'm talking about is a geek/engineer tourism site. I'm one of those sad types who, when touring around Vietnam, stops and gawks at big (http://www.rumble.net/travel/photos/vietnam/nw/thumb/nwdamfish-9-0.html) and small (http://www.rumble.net/travel/photos/vietnam/nw/thumb/nwhydro3-9-0.html) engineering marvels.
Neat. I can't work out what the second photo is though.
So I'd like to have a site that collects information about this kind of thing. Power stations, significant dams, historic sewage system features, giant tunnels, spy stations, bomb shelters, architectural marvels and follies, engineering accidents, atomic bomb test sites etc etc. The site would include photos, historical information, transport information, opening hours and prices, details of preferred viewing sites and GPS coordinates.
That sounds great.
So it occurred to me that Openguides has already achieved much of this in a suitably open and geek-ready format. However, it doesn't fit your ontology. Your site gives guides for a particular city or region, whereas this idea would work best as an integrated, global site. That way you could look at a meta-topic on an area of interest (say, atomic test sites).
So, what sort of thing do you need from us? Are you wanting a way to customise the openguides software to your needs, or are you wondering about ways to connect up the guides a bit more, so say the London guide would automatically have links to the London bits of your guide in the right places and vice versa?
I can see this cross-guide linking is probably a problem you've already encountered (compare the tube networks of London and New York) and discussed, so I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
From the start I've wanted different Open Guides to be able to talk to
each other - the ordinary Oxford Guide and the vegan one, and the London and Oxford ones for example (say you search for something in the Oxford guide and it isn't there, London may be close enough).
Tell me more about what you're thinking of.
Kake