IT travel idea - 2011-09-20

Ankur Banerjee

14:20

Hola

hippietrail

que tal

Mark Mayo

como estas?

hippietrail

muy bien. tal vez el idea sera mas secreto si lo discutemos en español

Mark Mayo

lociento, mio internet tiene problemas

Ankur Banerjee

Ay everyone's here

Mark Mayo

14:24

jejejeje

Ankur Banerjee

Jaja

hippietrail

so i think i discussed it once with ankur but not with mark

its the idea for something like hostelworld/hostelbookers but for campsites

Mark Mayo

new to me

hippietrail

the main parts being 1) mashed up with mapping site such as google maps or openstreetmaps and 2) everybody can contribute both campsites and reviews

Mark Mayo

there are already some campsites on hostelbookers

ah so not like the hw/hb where site managers enlist their hostel?

hippietrail

14:26

yes but the aim of this one is all campsites and only campsites since most of them are not trivial to find in the case of looking for anywhere in the world from a single place

Ankur Banerjee

But AFAIK only campsite owners can add listings to Hostelworld/Hostelbookers

hippietrail

yes in that way more like tripadvisor

Ankur Banerjee

What hippietrail said

Mark Mayo

yeah, campsites listings are definitely more .... raw ... online than hostel/hotels

could do with some organisation

so you're stuck on the monetization

hippietrail

well maybe either way but the open way would require less investment to start up from nothing i think but would suffer from how to get it to at least pay for itself but we wouldnt be susceptible to pressure from campsite owners wanting to promote themselves over others

Mark Mayo

14:28

some advertising obviously could get some

hippietrail

hw/hb can monetize by middlemanning the bookings but that is even more difficult for campsites and would require huge startup effort

yes i have never done a site with advertising to know the profitiability math

Mark Mayo

one could offer 'promoted campsites' - say for Oktoberfest, there might be 30 campsites, but if a campsite was willing to pay a fee, they could be the 'Promoted Campsite' for Munich for all of September

hippietrail

i'm more interested in making something useful than making money by the way but i don't want to lose money

Mark Mayo

hah, I know the feeling

most I've ever made from a website is about 4 pounds, and the domain cost 15 ;)

I really should shove some adverts on my blog

hippietrail

i was thinking we could start up just with free listings done by contributions with a potential path to including a booking service later if the thing took off

Ankur Banerjee

14:31

Cheap hosting is cheap, startup costs won't be high

hippietrail

we might be able to do ads for campsites and reviews totally independently with strictly no favouritism

say when browsing by place you will see ads for that place but they can't affect the reviews or get mixed in with the reviews in a bad way

Ankur Banerjee

Time to code is more of an issue. Once it takes off, hosting can always be shifted to more robust hosts.

@MarkMayo This is Dragons' Den stuff right here ;)

Mark Mayo

there must be some sort of hostelworld opensource clone

hippietrail

i can do programming for a small site but i don't have much idea of scaling issues which i wouldn't expect to happen too quickly if at all anyway

Mark Mayo

things like that exist for betting, stackexchange clones exist, digg clones (pligg for example)

hippietrail

14:34

i also don't have much practical idea about website security such as XSS

maybe we could team up with openstreetmaps somehow

Mark Mayo

openstreetmaps is amazing

I used to dismiss them as a dull alternative to google

hippietrail

there would be some cross incentive that way. adding roads and stuff around campsites and campsites in to areas already mapped

Ankur Banerjee

Looking at SourceForge for clones

Mark Mayo

but in Kazakhstan etc they were fantastic, especially as an app on my Android phone :D

hippietrail

google now is wearing its kicker boots though )-:

google maps has some hideous rendering issues when running the unstable version of google chrome. bing maps has a slicker zoom feature

it might be nice to compeletely abstract the connection to the map provider so we could easily switch

Ankur Banerjee

14:37

Look at sourceforge.net/projects/e-campsite

Mark Mayo

Fx7.0 beta ftw ;)

Ankur Banerjee

Abandoned project

hippietrail

i have a project rotting on sourceforge now (-:

hah look at that!

Mark Mayo

found some other hotel management software but it's generally for individual hostels/hotels rather than a full website

for multiple locations

that project has no files :(

Ankur Banerjee

Yeah

All are individual sites

Technically, we need more of a map-based site than a booking engine

Mark Mayo

14:41

ukcampsite.co.uk (my eyes, my poor poor eyes)

Ankur Banerjee

Lol

hippietrail

well internally it would just be a plain old database. the map would be one "view" of the data

Ankur Banerjee

This isn't bad - campingninja.com

hippietrail

the other data would be reviews, seasons, prices, amenities, website URLs etc

the german guys i was travelling with were saying the german auto club has a pretty complete listing of campsites for most of europe

just in case, here is my original question:

6

Q: Is there a global online resource for campsites?

I'm wondering if there's any website which covers either the whole world or possibly a major part of Europe listing campsites, ideally with ratings, bookings, maps, pricing, availability. Something combining some features of Hostel World, Trip Advisor, Couch Surfing, but focused on camping. Doe...

Mark Mayo

campingninja is a pretty nice website

hippietrail

14:44

@AnkurBanerjee: you should submit ninja as an answer to my question

Mark Mayo

oh that's right

there was another question that had monetary value

hippietrail

looks like what i mad in mind

Mark Mayo

that I wondered if you were talking about

Ankur Banerjee

Will do that

Mark Mayo

it was the question about wifi in hotels

rating them

hippietrail

14:45

too bad it's only UK

no campsites in my ancestral homeland )-:

oh wifi in hotels is a bit limited d-; but my apartment wifi is crap hence i'm on my second cappucino down by the seaside instead (-:

Mark Mayo

conversation in coffee shop at table next to me is about a startup in stemcell research. other side of me is the toilet (and associates smells and sounds). Seat of contrasts.

haha

yeah it wouldn't be very monetiseable, but I'd love such a site to exist ;)

Ankur Banerjee

I just use Foursquare for now

campingninja.com/about-us

Mark Mayo

yes, same

Ankur Banerjee

Doesn't seem to be for profit

Although this is still a campsite-owners can list system

Mark Mayo

wonder why they've restricted it to the UK

hippietrail

14:49

i often add locations to google maps but sometimes i forget or can't find the exact address or lose the bit of paper i wrote it on

Ankur Banerjee

Maybe ask the ninja folk to open up to all?

hippietrail

yeah i was looking to see if they had anything like that in their faq

VMAtm

17:14

Aha! Secrets!

hippietrail

17:33

oi who invited you d-;

@VMAtm are you also in IT?

VMAtm

18:05

6 years of web development

@hippietrail C#

hippietrail

18:45

ha perfect well you're welcome too then!

Transcript for

♦ IT travel idea