website for travellers with laptops, can you help?

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

Greetings,

I’ve taken a break from writing Java games for just a few weeks to create a web site (using Java Servlets and JSP in Tomcat, partly to help build skills a future employer may seek) that I dreamed up while travelling recently with my laptop.

I don’t know how many people here take your laptops with you when you travel but I do because I can download photos off my camera as I go, and upload them to my web site for friends and family to see. I can also compose holiday emails if there is some “down” time. The only problem with wanting to send emails and photos is of course you must have an internet connection.

In New Zealand where I was recently travelling, and in my home country Australia - wireless access doesn’t grow on trees, nor does broadband if you are sufficiently outside the cities (as I was in NZ). I found it hard, but not impossible to find good internet locations in NZ which were happy to let me hook up my laptop (and some amusing responses from ones which did not).

With this in mind, I decided to create a web site both which could list such internet cafe’s (for the benefit of others and myself when I next travel) and sharpen my Servlet and JSP skills.

I have named the site “Geek Traveller” - and it is an open directory of internet cafe’s and locations which cater for travellers with above-average access requirements (such as people traveling with laptops and camera’s).

Why I am telling you all this is that I would really appreciate it if you know of an internet cafe in your area that lets you plug in laptops (or don’t mind dropping in and asking), and would be willing to add it to the database. I’m also interested in wireless sites - however there do already exist listings of those (not that I have used them). Help is especially appreciated if you live in an area where getting internet access from a laptop is harder than usual (for example in the tiny town of Franz Josef, New Zealand).

The site is http://geektraveller.com/ (and I also got the domain with only one ‘l’ for people who prefer that spelling).

Thanks in advance for your help :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Will.

#2

I can see this is going to be harder than expected :stuck_out_tongue:

To encourage submissions and to help launch the site, you now have the chance to win up to $50 if you submit a new internet cafe. Please see this page for more info.

Not bad for a few minutes effort, plus you help build a directory which if you go travelling with a laptop or digital camera in the future may be helpful to you.

Cheers,

Will.

#3

http://geektraveller.com/ seems to be blank. :frowning:

#4

crud, thanks for telling me. Working again :slight_smile:

Will.

#5

[quote]I can see this is going to be harder than expected :stuck_out_tongue:
[/quote]
Some thoughts:

  1. There’s nothing in it for us - this is a network-effect business, where the value to the user is exponentially proportional to the number who’ve already submitted info.

  2. Probably very very very few of the users of this board own cafes, and it’s the owners you ought to be getting on board first. I suggest you use directories (like yell.co.uk and scoot in the UK) to get a list of cafes, and mass BCC them or add their details yourself.

  3. It’s hard to add details if you don’t own the cafe or live over the road. There are a couple I could vouch for, but I don’t even know the name of their road, let alone address, shop name, etc (although I could point them out on a map!). Now, if you had already done 2 above and got lots of i-cafes, I could browse for ones that were obviously the right place for the ones I was thinking of, and add comments or confirm/deny their claims :slight_smile:

#6

thanks blar*3 I have learnt these things now. The site needs a critical mass before it will grow by itself. The main problem is that people don’t care about cafe’s in their home town - why would they need them after all?

I’ve also had a very poor responce rate from internet cafe’s I have emailed (I emailed just as a “customer” just asking questions).

I have started to phone them in order to build the directory - got myself a cheap calling card now too :slight_smile:

I’m considering creating an offline version as a JWS client, which downloads the data into a Java-based SQL database (probably: http://axion.tigris.org/).

Thanks for the pointer to Yell that will be useful. We have something like that in Oz which was handy.

Cheers,

Will.

#7

That’s an excellent idea - of course, once you’re on the move, you don’t have internet access to check the site to find out where you can get internet access ;).

#8

Once you’ve got the client (using swing! c.f. next sentence for why ;)), submit it to sun’s Swing Sightings and also to JavaDesktop.org (or whatever it is with all the java news run by Sun).

They like funky things using java, and will get you some extra attention.

However, I would suggesting having a fairly large DB of cafes first - even if they all have “unknown” status and just have an address for each. If you have a top-level branching of “unconfirmed/unknown status” and “confirmed OK” and “confirmed no laptops” for each country/continent then it might encourage people to edit their nearby cafes…or maybe not.

#9

My thoughts exactly :slight_smile:

thanks :slight_smile: that might just be the motivation I needed to go ahead and do it. It’s definitely going to be swing. I just hope I can get the lightweight SQL database I linked to working as I really want to reuse my code from the web site.

I added a few more cafe’s today so now I’ve got all the capital cities in Australia covered, and the major New Zealand cities as well.

Will.