On Fri 06 Aug 2004, Rev Simon Rumble <simon(a)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