Slashdot Mirror
The HitchHiker's Guide in Your Pocket
gilest was the first to tell us about Douglas Adams' newest development: a real life Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. The first version should be out next year, with a monster amount of content. Over the next couple years, they expect to incorporate GSM, and have a modem and Internet connection in the box. And, of course, they'll put the "Don't Panic" in large-friendly letters on the front of the machine.
Douglas Adams was a keynote speaker during the JavaOne conference last June. He addressed the web site version of the Guide during the course of his speach. It was interesting to find that he was spearheading this collaborative effort to gather information, and it is very exciting to learn that we are likely only a couple of years away from a usable Guide. Very cool.
Anyone may register and submit information for the database. The information is screened by a panel of editors before it is added to the Earth Edition of the Guide. The details regarding what qualifies as a "good" submission can be found at http://www.h2g2.com/A53209. cheers.
I really hope that the device does include some proportion of quirky commentary on Life, The Universe and Everything.
If it's too serious a tome, it will doubtless become a target for hackers who will make sure that there's a way for the universe to add a little bit of entertainment...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I think it would be of extreme use if the Creators of the Hitchiker's (HandHeld) Guidebook work together with the Let's Go Guidebook people. This would allow The device to become more than just a "toy". Which is what I believe the website version is. The Let's Go Guidebook is *the* perfect guidebook for the hitchiker mindset. In my travels abroad, and even at home, the Let's Go Guidebook always provided me with the most succint (but not necessarily budget oriented) information. Let's Go has never failed me yet, where many other guidebooks have - many guidebooks leave out nightlife and travel arrangements.
Joseph Elwell.
Quick intro - I work at TDV and I'm one of the people behind h2g2.com and douglasadams.com. (My h2g2 homepage is here) I've just spent most of the evening frantically running around with one of my colleagues trying to optimise bits of the site in the face of the Slashdot onslaught (and it's not just Slashdot... PR put out a press release earlier and we weren't adequately prepared for the results... several lessons learnt there...)
Anyway, time for some response to many of the points raised:
- Most of you seem to really like Douglas's stuff and h2g2 too. We're very glad - the Slashdot crowd are legendarily hard to please!
- Whilst there are lots of similarities between h2g2 and Everything, they're very different in many ways too. I like Everything a lot (I've got quite a few entries in there myself) and I like the way it's based on a single neat idea that's just expanded over a whole database. Everything is designed to be *without* editorial control - it's based entirely on user voting, so it looks and feels pretty random and organic, which is not a criticism - that's how it's meant to be. h2g2 has an editorial direction - to move it in that direction, it has a dedicated editorial team (most of whom are, like Slashdot's moderators, unpaid users). Another difference is that h2g2 has a whole load of community functionality much more akin to Slashdot than to Everything, along with quite unique features such as the user journals. (They're similar to the current fashion of "weblogs" like scripting.com and robotwisdom.com) And we're adding new features all the time - new ways of creating documents, new ways of using forums, and other entirely new sections.
- Some of you are complaining that most h2g2 entries aren't very funny - a valid complaint, but we have good reason for it. Firstly, as most of you are saying, the Guide should primarily be useful and secondarily entertaining. Secondly, we've had to go out of our way to tell people not to try and be funny, simply because so many users were trying to write like Douglas and failing miserably. Writing like Douglas Adams is hard. (That's why it takes him so bloody long to get a book out.) Also, humour is a much more subjective quality than usefulness, and we want the Guide to be as universal as possible. We're not saying that we don't want entries that are funny, just that it shouldn't be a researcher's primary focus. (It should be noted, though, that there's nothing stopping you sticking up loads of random, funny nonsense up on h2g2 - it'll be visible to everyone, just won't be part of the core Guide)
- As for the usefulness of the Guide's current content, we're working on that. The first problem we're tackling is streamlining the editorial process to get more of the huge submissions backlog into the Guide. Then there's a much bigger problem to tackle, which is how to classify all the information in such a way that it can be searched, linked and delivered intelligently. This is such a massive doozy of a problem that I'm not going to say much more, save to say that I can see information scientists featuring much more prominently in the web's future once the major sites have the simple problems of content management sorted out. But anyway: no, we don't have much content yet, but h2g2 is a young and rapidly expanding project with a universal subject domain. It'll take time and effort.
- As for the gadget itself, we can't say that much because a) of lots of secret behind-the-scenes stuff with potential hardware partners and b) we're concentrating much more on the design of the information services (i.e. h2g2.com) than the platform it's delivered to. Ideally, we shouldn't have to do much platform design at all, as it'll be open, existing standards most of the way, which is (as I'm sure you'd agree) the most sensible way of doing it. But, yeah, we like shiny toys and want one with our name on it soon as poss.
- h2g2 needs you. After all, don't say you never dreamed about being a Field Researcher for The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Now you can. Cool, huh?
-- YozI think the main advantage of this device over a Palm pilot with a city guide & maps on it is that it can have up-to-the-minute info. If you're in some place you've never been before & want to go to a movie, not only could this thing tell whenre the nearest cinema is but also tell you whats playing today at what times and what the ticket prices are. The idea of a constantly upgraded info base with user feed back is much much better than simply putting Fromers (or whatever) on a handheld
Question 1: Couldn't a similar thing be done with any connected organizer? Just paint "Don't Panic" on the cover and give it an encyclopedia that gets updated through a modem from time to time. I could probably do it with a Palm IIIx, but it would be even easier with one of the new Visors. If this takes off, will we see copycats?
:)
Question 2: It struck me that www.h2g2.com is basically everything.blockstackers.com... Rob, why don't you go to work and make one of these! Everything is more complete and generally funnier than h2g2. If only you could use the name and logo, right?
Just a thought or two
-efisher
---
this
Personally, I'd rather have an expensive palm top device that dispenses meaningless trivia and advice on what cocktails can be made with the remnants of my smouldering, broken-down automobile/ laptop/ hotel room, than have an expensive palm top device that dispenses meaningless blather submitted by a bunch of jerks web-wide. The content on the Guide should be edited, not moderated. The editors should be a crack international team of dedicated lunatics and drunkards.
Any attempt to make the Guide more useful than amusing will Miss the Point. If you press the "Where Am I?" button, it should not give you lattitude and longitude. It should say "Earth," or possibly "Milky Way, western spiral arm."
It should also come with a (small and slightly worn) towel and a TI-81 reprogrammed to function as the I Ching Calculator from The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, which will cast your fortune, but reports any result that has an absolute value greater than 2 as "A Suffusion of Yellow."
I reached in the back seat and handed her...my towel.
"You keep a towel in your car?" she asked, incredulously. She was not a geek girl. Very pretty, but not a geek girl. I think she thought it was really strange to keep a towel in the car, despite the fact that it was right then an incredibly useful thing to have.
Hmmm, maybe in the personals ad I placed recently I should have said, "ISO a woman who knows where her towel is."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
That's neato. As a side note, I don't know if any of you have had a chance to check out www.douglasadams.com, but it's a really nice site. Also there's a web-board that Douglas reads. He's really a pretty nice guy and makes himself as available as possible, considering his busy schedule, although he can get kind of short with blithering idiots.
At one point he requested (publicly on the message forum) that a new "stupid crap" forum be created, and that all posts relating to: 1) tech support for Starship Titanic 2) "I'm writing a report for school and was wondering if you could answer this involved question which was not very well thought out in the first place." 3) Anything similar to some of the lesser AC posts here.
Also note that Mr. Adams has officially retired from answering any questions relating to the number 42.
GnrcMan
After poking around h2g2.com for a bit, I came across a great interview with Dougals Adams here at ZineZone.com. It is complete with images, audio clips from the interview and more. I would highly recommend stopping by there to take a look. Insite and more into the life of DNA.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
Ever since the advent of the web, I (and innumerable other Hitchhikers fans) have noted the similarities - a huge collection of data from countless contributors with incompetant editors, often faulty information, and a great deal of humor. The creation of a true hitchhikers guide using the web was pleasently inevitable. I've often thought /. would eventually come closest to approximating it.
/. could give Adams some pointers on building a community and group moderation - the "one cockroach" rumor that could screw a far flung restaurant doesn't work if the posters are rated and moderated.
Unfortunately, H2G2 has far too much of the incompetent editing and too little of the clever humor and actually useful information. Just witness the lengthy expositions on black helicopters, the CIA plot to kill Clinton, and wrong instructions on how to do things. One poster noted how great this would be if ones car broke down in the middle of nowhere and they could get instructions on how to fix it. Given the quality of the content, PANIC might be a better slogan.
That being said, a mobile device that always knows where it is and has access to all the information you could possible want (and more) is an exciting concept. Not only could it tell you about the local culture and architecture of the Turkish prison you're in (another post), but also how to bribe the judge, carve your way out with the side of the "Guide" case, or how to use your towel to prevent some unfortunate prison experiences.
Maybe the guys here at
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal...
Douglas Adams did the last keynote speech for the 99 JavaOne connference and he talked about this project. He is also a reallly funny guy. :)
Not only is this a going to be a sort of "electronic guide book" using spatial coords to look up information, users can also submit entries to to guide. Say you're traveling and when you come to a restraunt the guide recommends but it has gone out of business, you can update that information to the guide. You can write your own reviews for other people to read when they come to that place.
Imagine coupling this system with a Augmented Reality system. Virtual Graffiti drawn in 3d space!
I'm going to have to pick one of these bad boys up.
Ribo
I wear pants.
I can see a myriad of used for the Guide, if they implement it something like the literary equivalent. Imagine losing a fan belt out on US-71, and not knowing how to put it back on.. Not only will the Guide keep you from panicking, it could potentially tell you which service stations you could call, as well as how to put the belt back on yourself. You're having trouble finding your destination? Grab a map off of the Guide; it's easier than finding the Interstellar Spaceway. Can't get the firewall to cooperate? Pull the specs from the Guide, and then use it to SSH onto the box. Have a german engineer you need to communicate with? The Guide includes an electronic Babelfish. In a meeting and you NEED the 'netcat' manpage? Don't panic, the Guide has it! Some hints on beating a Sun boot PROM into submission? Hit the Guide first. Wake up on a strange spacecraft with a towel in your hand? Is the Tlaziam empire tightening her grip on the Acensus Cluster? Well, those may not be covered in the Guide, but I'm sure you see the point..
.sig: Now legally binding!
Of course, I still think digital watches are neat.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?