Show HN: Learn about a new country every day (my side project)(countryaday.org) |
Show HN: Learn about a new country every day (my side project)(countryaday.org) |
I found myself wanting to learn more about history/culture/politics/etc of more countries throughout the world, so I built a little web app that provides you with one country to learn about each day.
The information provided is intended to just be a starting point; I see the using this as a study guide.
Any feedback is welcome. This is the first personal project that I've shipped!
Edit: I hope you guys don't mind if I add a personal plug. I'm not a full time web developer, and I would very much like to be (I currently design and maintain safety systems for commuter transit). I'm especially interested in Ruby/Rails, but I can generally pick anything up quickly. If anyone would be willing to help me out (advice, job recommendations, resume tips, etc) I would be very grateful. My email can be found in my profile.
And your country presentation pages start with history, that is irrelevant to most and doesn't have much to do with the current state of the countries.
Le me give you an example: the page about Romania (http://countryaday.org/#/country/romania) starts with lots of historical information that is irrelevant to any potential travelers and to the current economical and political state of the country. A summary for someone wanting to learn more should rather start with something like this: "R. is a democratic East European country part of the EU located .... . The country is safe to travel in and if you are an EU citizen you don't need a travel visa. It is a latin country like Italy, France and Spain and unlike all its neighboring countries, and this is a basic thing that every explorer should understand before learning more about its culture and history."
My advice is to make it into a "travelers' wiki" curated by regional experts. But even if you don't do it this way, don't start a presentation about a country with its history - its both extremely boring and prone to create misconceptions (because it's basically impossible for a non-historian to figure out what parts of a country's history are relevant, by relevant meaning "connected to the current state of affairs and present-day culture of the country", and what is just meaningless historical trivia that not even the educated citizens of the country itself know...).
Mostly AngularJS and Sinatra
- I start with some travel show or a foodalogue to see what people look like there, what is their ethnic makeup, what do they eat, how rich/happy are they, how advanced is their society. I would probably watch gordon ramsey's kitchen nightmares to get the first glace at britain.
- then I watch something about the current affairs of the country. Putin's russia ( Aljazeera documentary) /Khodorkovsky on netflix
- Read a book or two , both fiction and non fiction. Russia: Snowdrops (Fiction) , Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin.
- Then I dig deeper and try to see how the people there got to be like what they are now. Eg: Battle of Russia on Fandor, National Geographic's Engineering an empire( Russia).
[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ ?
However, why have you broken the back button? This should never be allowed to happen except in very carefully decided situations (say, preventing a user from going backward in a workflow that could provide undesired results).
Is this intentional or an accident?
Edit: I see what you mean. I'm looking into a solution.
Unfortunately it leads to a slight UX regression in that you are no longer automatically routed to your country of the day.
It's still very alpha, but I was able to learn all the world and US state capitals in just a few sessions.
I'll have to play with it more before I can give you any feedback.
BTW, am I wrong or some small countries are missing? Just to name few: Vatican City, Mauritius, San Marino