OpenGuides

[Christopher Schmidt]

Recently, in the b0st0n LiveJournal community [1], a request was made
for a wiki to annotate the common questions asked by the community. In
general, I find wikis as content management systems to be overrated,
especially without a very dedicated user base of contributors. They are
not the pancea that so many people seem to think they should be. 

However, I think that for structred storage of user-editable metadata,
a wiki solution can sometimes be useful in a way that others can't. For
this reason, I had previously set up the Open Guide to Boston [2], using
the OpenGuides [3]  software. 

OpenGuides is a project dedicated to free and open collaboration on data
which is similar to CitySearch or other directory type applications. All
data is stored in a local database, but also exported in RDF/XML,
offering processing oppourtunities for other extran applications which
may wish to take advantage of the data. This "open source" directory is
similar in intention to Wikipedia, with its free documentation license
designed to allow other people to use the information as they see fit,
including full reproduction if that is neccesary for some use.

Of special note over more general packages is the structured metadata
stored with each object. Information like address and zip code are
stored with each node, and this information can be edited by the user..

My additions to the OpenGuides codebase for the purpose of serving
Boston specifically are:

 * Addition of geocoding addresses to Lat/Long automatically, using 
   Geocoder [4], a free US address mapping service.
 * Addition of Google Maps views of several aspects of the data,
   including:
     * Map display on node pages, such as the Full Moon page [5]
     * Maps of all Nodes in a given category [6]
     * Maps of all nodes in the guide, in a Google Local like format. [7]
 * Adding links to the header (most guides don't do this)

I think this is an example of what can be done with relatively limited
information -- simply put in a street address and a town, and the map is
generated for you, using public domain data and free for non-commercial
use services.

I would love to see anyone who knows about things going on or places in
Boston to add them to the wiki, or other sources of information that
locals or visitors to the town or surrounding towns might find
interesting or useful. I think an open source, open data alternative to
Citysearch would be a cool thing to have, and I'd love to have some help
in making it.

[1] http://www.livejournal.com/community/b0st0n/
[2] http://boston.openguides.org/
[3] http://openguides.org/
[4] http://geocoder.us/
[5] http://boston.openguides.org/?Full_Moon
[6]
http://boston.openguides.org/?action=index;index_type=category;index_value=Restaurants
[7] http://boston.openguides.org/?action=index;format=map

-- 
Christopher SChmidt
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