EntrepreneurNovember 22, 2009

Printable local data sheet for visitors?

By Ian

Here’s a simple idea to help visitors to a new area.  Maybe it’s been done before and someone can leave a comment about it?

The problem – when you visit a place you don’t know you have no idea what you need to see, where to get a map, which pubs and cafes are nice, where the worthy landmarks are etc.

Possible solution – visit a site that gives you 1-2 pages of printable (or iPhoneable) data culled from WikiPedia, OpenStreetMap/GMaps, OpenPlaques, Flickr, Twitter and more.  The pages would give you a summary of what’s there to see, some history, maps and also some recent information (probably via Twitter).

The printable option would be useful, iPhone coverage still isn’t great in the UK in the smaller and more interesting towns.

Personally I’d use this – we go walking to places that we don’t know every weekend and some background, a map and some topical info (e.g. are there any fairs or events happening today?) would be super useful.  I’d guess that this would be useful for anyone visiting an area, even just for parents coming to visit for the weekend.

Does anything like this already exist?

Ian is a Chief Interim Data Scientist via his Mor Consulting. Sign-up for Data Science tutorials in London and to hear about his data science thoughts and jobs. He lives in London, is walked by his high energy Springer Spaniel and is a consumer of fine coffees.
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2 Comments

  • Josh Russell
    @dsifry's project is basically what you're after... http://www.offbeatguides.com get a pdf, or they'll even send you a printed JIT book. i saw the prototype before they launched, they're pretty good!
  • Ian
    Josh - thanks for the link. This is sort of what I'm after. I requested a guide for London->Brighton this week and I got a 50 page guide telling me about all sorts of stuff including all the lovely things that run in the summer. The list of main destinations is great, the 'what happens in Brighton when you're not here' doesn't seem so useful. The cost would be $25USD for the printed guide, it says it includes weather, maps, parking guides and more. The recommendations for bars/cafes/hotels would be useful if I was going somewhere new, the lack of recent news/events (i.e. the twitter feed) is a pity (but maybe that part of my idea would just be noise?). I definitely still want something that's probably machine generated and can run on an iPhone or be printed in 1-2 pages.