I often have trouble explaining to people why the Open Guide to London
is better than other London guide sites. So I set up this page so you
can all help me come up with articulate reasons. Please braindump.
http://openguides.org/dev/?node=Why+OpenGuides
Kake
(Apologies for those who see this twice or thrice.)
A plea for help sent to london.pm - having SVG in Mozilla would be
fantastic, very useful for OpenGuides. Can anyone help?
Kake
----- Forwarded message from Robin Berjon <robin.berjon(a)expway.fr> -----
From: Robin Berjon <robin.berjon(a)expway.fr>
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 16:36:52 +0100
To: london.pm(a)london.pm.org
Subject: spare boxes available?
Hi,
the Mozilla SVG project is currently working hard to get SVG support
natively and by default into the main Mozilla build, which would quite
frankly rock as I'm sure a bunch of you would agree, with SVG you can
make nice PIE (charts).
Unfortunately it's a small development team and one of the main
developers is currently stuck with a 700Mhz/128mb (non upgradable) box.
As you can imagine, that's not exactly the most productive way of
working when you have to very regularly recompile Mozilla :)
So, since he's close enough to London to be able to swing by, and since
I know there are nice people here (and ones that like SVG too), and also
since I've seen hardware give-aways here, I was wondering if anyone here
had any box they could spare (or perhaps enough bits of hardware that
one could be made) to help with the Good Cause? I don't think he needs
anything earth-shattering, a box onto which he could graft more RAM than
128 would certainly prove to be a solid improvement.
You can ping me offline (or on IRC, darobin on irc.perl.org) and I'll
put you in contact.
Thanks a lot!
--
Robin Berjon
----- End forwarded message -----
IvorW wrote:
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: openguides-london-bounces(a)openguides.org
>>[mailto:openguides-london-bounces@openguides.org]On Behalf Of Kake L
>>Pugh
>>Sent: 16 November 2004 12:44
>>To: openguides-london(a)openguides.org
>>Subject: [OpenGuides-London] Adverts on the London site
>>
>>
>>I see that the London OpenGuide now has Ads by Gooooogle on
>>it. Comments?
>>
>>Kake
>>
>>
>
>I agree with others that some discusion on the list was warranted.
>
>Can Earle please clarify if Lon.OG has entered into some contractual
>arrangement with Google, and if so, what the terms and conditions are.
>If the site was going to give some revenue kick-back, it would be nice
>to know how this is calculated. Also, is there a penalty for abandoning
>the adverts if we change our mind (which looks likely from this discussion)?
>
>
The ads are quite unobtrusive and I'm not too bothered about them. I'm
more bothered about the lack of previous discussion (or even
notification) - like some people said, if it's running costs to be dealt
with, then fund-raising might raise more.
Someone else did point out that the ads are easily blockable on Firefox.
Then again, people running Firefox with Adblock are probably in quite a
minority. (Firefox users are about 10% on my own site, which is much
more than the average, but still a minority).
>The alternative is a fork: "The Free guide to London". I'm not sure this
>would be such a good idea.
>
I think that would be pretty disastrous - future contributions would be
diluted across two sites, and a lot of contributors would probably just
choose the free site as it's more "morally acceptable". But then the
"free guide" might just come across the same funding troubles as the
current site. Better to sort it out at the source.
Dave
> -----Original Message-----
> From: openguides-london-bounces(a)openguides.org
> [mailto:openguides-london-bounces@openguides.org]On Behalf Of Kake L
> Pugh
> Sent: 16 November 2004 12:44
> To: openguides-london(a)openguides.org
> Subject: [OpenGuides-London] Adverts on the London site
>
>
> I see that the London OpenGuide now has Ads by Gooooogle on
> it. Comments?
>
> Kake
I agree with others that some discusion on the list was warranted.
Can Earle please clarify if Lon.OG has entered into some contractual
arrangement with Google, and if so, what the terms and conditions are.
If the site was going to give some revenue kick-back, it would be nice
to know how this is calculated. Also, is there a penalty for abandoning
the adverts if we change our mind (which looks likely from this discussion)?
The alternative is a fork: "The Free guide to London". I'm not sure this
would be such a good idea.
Here's an interesting mail I received. I'm not sure if Mr. Denny thinks
there's just one OG for the whole UK, but anyway, what do you all think? I'm
a little unsure about the idea of autosubmitting things from a network of
search sites, and even less sure about using someone else's business
listings database.
----- Forwarded message from Bart Denny -----
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 16:50:54 +0100
From: Bart Denny
To: Earle Martin
Subject: Open Guides
Hi Earle,
I wanted to make contact preliminarily with you to discuss using the UK
Open Guide content with you. We run "Local Search" or internet yellow
pages sites, both for the UK and across Europe. We would like to start
augmenting the base directory content (we license BT's directory
database), adding in reviews, ratings, etc.
Your content will obviously fit well within this, and that is the first
reason for contact. At some point, Secondly, we'd like to have it set up
so that all reviews submitted through our search sites could make their
way back onto the Open Guide sites.
Finally, as we have all of the business listings for the UK, including
latitude and longitude, it may be easier for people to use our site to
search for and submit a review - no need for knowing postcodes, phone
numbers, X/Y coordinates. Just pop in the name, and click on the right
one.
We would put these up on some or all of our white label clients' sites.
These include www.118118.com and www.yellownet.co.uk.
Please let me know if you would like to have further discussions on
this.
Best Regards,
Bart
-------------------------------------------
Bart Denny
www.inspireinfrastructure.com
Tel. +46-8-30 36 43
Mob. +46-708 747 210
-------------------------------------------
�
----- End forwarded message -----
--
Earle Martin
http://downlode.org/http://purl.oclc.org/net/earlemartin/
----- Forwarded message from Sander Spek -----
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 07:46:32 +0000
From: Sander Spek
To: Earle Martin
Subject: Re: Vermelding Wikimaas
Organization: Cabal
Hello Earle.
* Earle Martin:
> I think a translation would be best. Thank you!
| Beste Open guides London,
Dear Open guides London,
| Sinds kort staat u, of uw organisatie/bedrijf,
| beschreven op het artikel Useful Links op
| WikiMaas. Deze WikiMaas (http://www.wikimaas.tk)
| is een alternatieve gids voor Maastricht, met
| daarin allerlei nuttige en leuke zaken die niet
| direct bij de VVV besproken worden. Iedere
| bezoeker kan informatie toevoegen en wijzigen.
Recently, your organisation/company has been added
to the article Useful Links on WikiMaas. This
website, WikiMaas (http://www.wikimaas.tk), is an
alternative guide to Maastricht (a city in the
Netherlands, known for the EU Maastricht Treaty).
WikiMaas contains useful and nice (alternative)
details of the city which cannot be found at the
Tourist Office. Every visitor can add and modify
the contents.
| Het staat u vrij om meer informatie aan het
| artikel Useful Links toe te voegen, of bepaalde
| teksten te wijzigen. Wel zouden we er u op willen
| wijzen dat we qua schrijfstijl een informeel
| karakter proberen te behouden, en dat we per
| definitie geen reclame-site zijn. Een beschrijving
| is prima, maar kreten als 'superleuk' en 'de beste
| van Maastricht' voegen we liever zelf toe.
| Als u iets toevoegd, probeert u dat dan
| alstublieft in het Engels. Maastricht ligt in de
| Euregio. Frans, Duits en Nederlands zijn hier
| gemeengoed. Om een ieder dezelfde drempel te
| geven, willen we de site helemaal in het Engels
| schrijven.
You are welcome to add more information to this
article (Useful Links), or to modify certain
texts. We do like to mention that we try to keep
an informal way of writing, and we are not an
advertising website. A description of the features
of your organisation/company is fine, but comments
like 'super duper fun' and 'the best in
Maastricht' we rather add them ourselves (if we
think they'll apply). Eventhough Maastricht is in
the Euroregio, and most people speak Dutch, French
and German, we do would like to keep the WikiMaas
in English, so please use this language.
(Now isn't it ironically that Daniel sent you a
Dutch message. :) )
| Wanneer u op uw website een link naar de WikiMaas
| zou willen plaatsen zouden we dit zeer waarderen.
| Het is echter geenszins verplicht en het heeft
| geen gevolgen voor uw vermelding op de WikiMaas.
We would appreciate a link from your website to
the WikiMaas, but you are in no means obliged to,
and not doing it will not affect your description
on the WikiMaas.
| Met vriendelijke groet,
Kind greetings,
| Dani?l
| WikiMaas
| http://www.wikimaas.tk
Dani?l, WikiMaas, blahblah.
Greetings,
Sander Spek
----- End forwarded message -----
--
Earle Martin
http://downlode.org/http://purl.oclc.org/net/earlemartin/
On Tue 09 Nov 2004, IvorW <ivorw-openguides(a)xemaps.com> wrote:
> I am getting "500" type errors when I go to http://london.openguides.org
Seems fine now.
Kake