Great feedback. I will add search to this minimal version. The non-minimal version comes with search. Filter by language is something neither has and will be a great addition.
Want to put local history on a map, so when I go somewhere I could ideally just open this webapp and immediately get presented with cool or interesting history that happened close by.
Currently spending time establishing relationships with historical societies, as I really need them to contribute points of interest, and stories. Many of these societies are run on a voluntary basis by 70+ year olds, so it's a long process. Getting some good responses eventually though, so it might actually go somewhere, just a lot slower than I want.
Also still doing https://wheretodrink.beer, but haven't added anything of note since playing on this other project.
Oh, thanks for the interest, but I'm not that far along yet. I have a bare bones alpha, but it's not ready for the internet just yet. I also haven't secured the domain names so I won't be sharing any code names :)
This is so very silly, but the only way I have to collect emails for people interested in the progress, beta testing or final version, is on my beer page.. So I created a page for the world's most obscure / smallest city and if you want to be updated you can register there - https://wheretodrink.beer/in/croatia/hum-75gkn - The registration is under "Stay informed about updates in Hum?"
If anyone signs up I'll manually move you out of that list and into the "local history" waitlist.
Doing something similar for a non-public project. How do you deal with remixing feeds, and the potential mix of formats (rss, atom, etc)? I need to create new feeds as well, and if its done by normalizing, sanitizing content, etc. I feel I misrepresent the original content, and probably breach the implicit license granted by syndicating via feed.
Probably very few creators care one way or another, as the links are going to the original content. Just interested if people had an opinion on the matter.
It’s honestly a bit of a pain. I’m using a library to help parse different formats, but there are many custom cases to handle. Dates are a good example. I’m parsing more than a dozen formats, and there’s no real pattern in how sites display their published dates. Some blogs even use unusual formats that aren’t common anywhere else.
I try to avoid altering the original content as much as possible. I do need to sanitize and adjust parts of it to produce clean text on my site, but I’m careful not to change anything in a way that misrepresents the source. Only a few short phrases appear on GreatReads, and users cannot read the full article without visiting the original source.
Want to put local history on a map, so when I go somewhere I could ideally just open this webapp and immediately get presented with cool or interesting history that happened close by.
Currently spending time establishing relationships with historical societies, as I really need them to contribute points of interest, and stories. Many of these societies are run on a voluntary basis by 70+ year olds, so it's a long process. Getting some good responses eventually though, so it might actually go somewhere, just a lot slower than I want.
Also still doing https://wheretodrink.beer, but haven't added anything of note since playing on this other project.
Started work on a project to put local history on a map. If I go somewhere I would ideally want to just open this webapp and immediately get presented with cool or interesting history that happened close by.
Maybe it's a story about named local fishermen from the early 1900s, with pictures, the history of a statue and videos of the process, or the state of a graffiti wall over time.
Currently in a phase of UI development and testing, and historical societies outreach for collaboration. It might stall and just fizzle into nothing, or it might be something cool.
Also still doing https://wheretodrink.beer, but haven't added anything of note since playing on this other project.
Ever since I discovered Gypspy nearly a decade ago (now Guidealong https://guidealong.com/) - I've been dreaming of an open source app that'd pull local history from sources like Wikipedia, those roadside historical signs, etc., and narrate as you drive.
https://autio.com/ is similar - but obviously not open source, and more limited.
It seems like it could even tailor itself to what an individual user is interested in, and with AI - could turn more "dry" encyclopedia-type information into more compelling narratives. With some kind of route planning software, you could even pre-plan your trips ahead of time and select the things you're interested in.
Obviously not what you're building, but something related that's been clunking around in the back of my head for a while.
Yeah, that's cool. Currently tangential, but conceptually not something that would be completely out of scope in the end. I'm planning to use machine translations, text-to-speech, and multi modal generative models for accessibility already. There's also an idea for baking in GPS audio tours. Obviously depends on sourcing some quality content first
When you say open source is it so you could self host it, use your "own" models, and curate your own datasets? or some other reasons? I could see a future where a lot of the project could potentially be open sourced and work with any defined geojson API.
Open source was the wrong term (though that would be fine).
I meant community-sourced. Some kind of community where local "experts" or history enthusiasts could contribute info.
AKA - invite a local or regional historical society to contribute data for their region, with the benefit that they could then easily generate a regional tour map/route/recommendation.
Built something similar almost a year ago during the holidays [1]. Open-source if you want to check it out [2]. I use the mobile app version from time to time when I'm going on walking adventures around the city.
Related to wheretodrink.beer, I just launched a rough version of: https://www.nomnominees.com/. A site focused on finding award-winning breweries/restaurants to check out.
Still working on cataloging a curated list of craft beer venues across the world at https://wheretodrink.beer
Unsure what the plan is going forward with it, apart from adding more venues and more countries. As long as it's fun for me I'll just keep adding things.
Just added health inspection data from countries that have that in open datasets (UK and Denmark). If anyone know of others I'd be appreciative of hints.
Thinking of focusing on another idea for the rest of the year, have a rough idea for a map based ui to structure history by geofences or lat / lng points for small local museums
Still working on cataloging a curated list of craft beer venues across the world at https://wheretodrink.beer
Unsure what the plan is going forward with it, apart from adding more venues and more countries. As long as it's fun for me I'll just keep adding things.
Next addition will be to add health inspection data from countries that have that in open datasets or APIs, so if anyone know of that I'd be appreciative of hints (know of UK, Norway and might have found for France).
The number and the fire icons are popularity ratings, and shouldn't be expected to say a lot about quality. That value is derived from a set of automated signals that can be considered proxies for popularity. For most markets we typically see a couple of stand outs, and "the rest". One major flaw is also that we don't know venue capacity, so this probably does bias towards bigger venues
For NYC specifically it could be many factors playing in.. Perhaps we don't really have the right venues listed? Maybe the city favors small neighborhood bars over bigger destinations? etc..
I just recently added the number behind the icons, but one of my concerns was that it would then be interpreted as a review rating. Might re-consider the UX of this now. Thanks for feedback!
That sucks. I see the value in that, and I can add a tag for it. Imagine maintaining a consistent status for that automatically would be hard though. So the meaning of such a tag would likely become "They had at least one gluten free option at one time".
For venues publishing their drafts, cans or bottles publicly it could be possible to create some confidence interval if we scrape the data and keep history of it.
Thanks for checking it out and leaving a suggestion for improvement!
They are becoming more common, as it's very simple to make them GF- you can simply add an enzyme that eats up the gluten. Bristol Beer Factory's whole range is GF and very tasty (my local brewery).
Working on cataloging a curated list of craft beer venues across the world at https://wheretodrink.beer
Unsure what the plan is going forward with it, apart from adding more venues and more countries. As long as it's fun for me I'll just keep going, but it does probably need a differentiator to be interesting.
The idea came from me wanting a curated up to date list for myself. I thought the alternatives are/were outdated, poorly maintained and/or pay-to-rank. When ratebeer shut down earlier this year I thought I might as well offer this as a potential replacement for the venue listings.
The data is initially crowd sourced, or researched by me when I'm bored. Keeping things updated is done with various automated (and some manual) alive checks for each venue.
I know you're right about the landing page. Would be nice to show the closest venues or locations there immediately, but I absolutely loathe pages that ask for positional data right off the bat (could do some geoip stuff maybe).
One of these again.. love to see all the projects, but man time flies when you're not doing much
Still slowly expanding https://wheretodrink.beer with new mini-features I want (like the obscurely hidden https://wheretodrink.beer/near-me - it probably need an interactive map), and adding on new venues. Struggling with getting any sort of organic traffic, but not sure that's even something I want..
Been toying with creating some other projects; one for helping with lost+found for SMBs in hospitality, and another with administrating "co-operatives" (collecting dues, coms, automating legal requirements).. So naturally you start building all the scaffolding that you could have bought, like gdpr-compliant privacy first multi tenant authentication.. That's fun, but I should know better.
Still on a sabbatical building things I enjoy, but it's summer here so have also spent much time in my hammock with cold beers.
Most effort on https://wheretodrink.beer, collecting and cataloging craft beer venues from around the world.
No ambition of being exhaustive, but aiming for a curated and substantial list. Since last month I've added a couple of minor things like maps and "where to go next" sections for each venue.
I'm debating whether or not I should add user accounts, and let people maintain venue bucket lists, venue endorsements.
Also planning to reach out to the venues and ask if they agree to monthly or quarterly one-click information verification emails from us.
Other projects that receive less love are:
- https://drnk.beer, a small side project offering beer-related linkpages, and @handles for Bluesky (AT Protocol)
- https://misplacy.com, just a dumb and wrong AI landing page for now but was thinking to work towards a drop-in solution for SMBs around lost/found management.
- A platform for helping voluntary associations with repetitive administrative tasks (non-english so not linking. Trying to rank the pain points currently)
- A platform for structuring national soccer club history (initial brain dump idea phase)
- A platform for structuring writing prompts and collaborative fiction writing (initial brain dump / mockups)
For the next month or so I think I need to prioritize what to focus on after summer
Always interesting to see what others are building and doing. So thanks for sharing!
