OT: website suggestions?

chris said:

I have to build an interactive website for a module I'm taking at uni. The
technical side I don't have a problem with, but I'm stuck for ideas on what
to build.

I'd prefer to make something people will find useful and use rather than
example "hotel reservation website" you see in text books.

any suggestions for cycling related sites?

Bulid your own virtual bike, then order and buy it.

Don't forget the schmidt/schlumpf/rohloff combination as an option.

In article <[email hidden]>

chris said:

I have to build an interactive website for a module I'm taking at uni. The
technical side I don't have a problem with, but I'm stuck for ideas on what
to build.

I'd prefer to make something people will find useful and use rather than
example "hotel reservation website" you see in text books.

any suggestions for cycling related sites?

Obvious (probably too obvious) ones are gear ratio, spoke length, frame
geometry calculators. You could do a "build your own bike" type thing -
select a component on a picture of a bike, choose the component you want
and get a price for the whole thing, making sure that everything
necessary has been selected and the bits will work with each other. For
extra credit get it to do a live lookup of prices from various
suppliers.

chris said:

I have to build an interactive website for a module I'm taking at uni. The
technical side I don't have a problem with, but I'm stuck for ideas on what
to build.

I'd prefer to make something people will find useful and use rather than
example "hotel reservation website" you see in text books.

any suggestions for cycling related sites?

How about a ride-arranger? You say what area of the country you are in,
and where/when you want to do a ride.
The site does a lookup for others interested in the same ride, or lets
you publish yours. You can then meet up with other people to do the ride.

e.g. You do a search for 50 mile rides starting out in Chester on
Saturday 18th, you find somebody who is intending riding up the coast to
Flint or somebody else looking for a ride-buddy who is off to Llangollen.
If you want to join a ride, the site will add you in and mail the ride
arranger.

From a technical point of view you are then dealing with databases, user
accounts, emails, possibly interfacing to mapping sites, etc.

Matt

Rob Morley said:

In article <[email hidden]>

chris said:

I have to build an interactive website for a module I'm taking at uni. The
technical side I don't have a problem with, but I'm stuck for ideas on what
to build.

I'd prefer to make something people will find useful and use rather than
example "hotel reservation website" you see in text books.

any suggestions for cycling related sites?

Obvious (probably too obvious) ones are gear ratio, spoke length, frame
geometry calculators. You could do a "build your own bike" type thing -
select a component on a picture of a bike, choose the component you want
and get a price for the whole thing, making sure that everything
necessary has been selected and the bits will work with each other. For
extra credit get it to do a live lookup of prices from various
suppliers.

Cracking idea Grommit!

--
Don Whybrow

Sequi Bonum Non Time

The media finally figured out that their "paying customers" (i.e.
advertisers) don't WANT an intelligent, thoughtful audience. And they
no longer have one." (Rich Tietjens)

Here's a gear ratio spreadsheet I put together for my two bikes -
http://ttu.spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?id=o05762537996433037497.9172121147310197724.10371304444840245000.8855857701196924597
I was going to make it more dynamic (variable number of gears, etc.),
but I don;t think google spreadsheets has a scripting language behind
it yet.

The ride-arranger is a good idea, if you don't mind plumbing in some
MySQL and PHP you could set up a MediaWiki so people could add their
own comments - even embedding a mediawiki in Mambo or Joomla! if you
want it to look really polished.

Or how about an interactive repair manual, ParkTool's 'Find Repair Help
by Region' http://www.parktool.com/repair/ is quite good.

Good luck!

Duncan.

On Nov 16, 7:26 pm, Matthew Haigh <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

chris said:

I have to build an interactive website for a module I'm taking at uni. The
technical side I don't have a problem with, but I'm stuck for ideas on what
to build.

Quoted message said:

I'd prefer to make something people will find useful and use rather than
example "hotel reservation website" you see in text books.

Quoted message said:

any suggestions for cycling related sites?How about a ride-arranger? You say what area of the country you are in,

and where/when you want to do a ride.
The site does a lookup for others interested in the same ride, or lets
you publish yours. You can then meet up with other people to do the ride.

e.g. You do a search for 50 mile rides starting out in Chester on
Saturday 18th, you find somebody who is intending riding up the coast to
Flint or somebody else looking for a ride-buddy who is off to Llangollen.
If you want to join a ride, the site will add you in and mail the ride
arranger.

From a technical point of view you are then dealing with databases, user
accounts, emails, possibly interfacing to mapping sites, etc.

Matt

"chris" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I have to build an interactive website for a module I'm taking at uni. The
technical side I don't have a problem with, but I'm stuck for ideas on
what
to build.

I'd prefer to make something people will find useful and use rather than
example "hotel reservation website" you see in text books.

any suggestions for cycling related sites?

What languages are you doing?

What skills are you trying to prove/build?

Want to help with http://cycle.ruutz.com?

Following on from chris's message. . .

Quoted message said:

I have to build an interactive website for a module I'm taking at uni. The
technical side I don't have a problem with, but I'm stuck for ideas on what
to build.

I'd prefer to make something people will find useful and use rather than
example "hotel reservation website" you see in text books.

any suggestions for cycling related sites?

How about something for the university's bicycle users group?

Perhaps a translator / multi-lingual reference covering
* Bike bits
* Road use
* Bike-related places

Or if that's too ambitious, a bike community forum based on a PHP? CMS
framework. Events, buy and sell, etc. You could get good results very
quickly.

(Other suggestions here have been good also but are a huge amount of
work.)

CMS = Content Management System : Google for comparison sites.

--
PETER FOX Not the same since the bookshop idea was shelved
[email hidden]
2 Tees Close, Witham, Essex.
Gravity beer in Essex <http://www.eminent.demon.co.uk>

chris said:

I have to build an interactive website for a module I'm taking at uni. The
technical side I don't have a problem with, but I'm stuck for ideas on
what to build.

I'd prefer to make something people will find useful and use rather than
example "hotel reservation website" you see in text books.

any suggestions for cycling related sites?

I started to put together something for creating GPS routes and plotting
recorded GPS tracks[1]. But I kind of lost interest half way through, so
it's kind of buggy and incomplete (oh, and probably only works in Firefox).

Anyway, I'm sure you can think of loads of ways you could improve on the
idea. There's plenty of opportunity for buzzword
compliance: 'user-generated' content (e.g. you could have "find other
routes near here"😉, AJAX, DHTML, etc. It also involves a healthy mix of
client side and server side programming.

Anthony

[1] http://antjones.ath.cx/gps/

in message <[email hidden]>, chris

(') said:

I have to build an interactive website for a module I'm taking at uni.
The technical side I don't have a problem with, but I'm stuck for ideas
on what to build.

I'd prefer to make something people will find useful and use rather than
example "hotel reservation website" you see in text books.

any suggestions for cycling related sites?

Route planner sites are good, both in the sense that they're actually
useful and that they let you play around with all sorts of interesting
algorithms at the back end. Particularly with cycling where the
energy/time cost of traversing an arc in one direction can be quite
different from the cost of traversing it in the reverse direction.

For off road routes you also get to label your arcs with technical
difficulty, scenery etc, and do route planning not simply on 'quickest
route' but 'maximum (or minimum) technical difficulty' and 'most scenic'.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

Morning had broken, and there was nothing we could do but wait
patiently for the RAC to arrive.

chris said:

any suggestions for cycling related sites?

I quite like the build-a-bike/fix-a-bike suggestions. Current sites have
lots of advice, but finding it can be difficult.

On the technical level, please follow the relevant standards, guidelines
and advice, such as http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml/ http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/
http://www.useit.com/ and so on. Not all cyclists are perfect-bodied
Microsoft customers, which seems to be ignored by certain current cycling
web sites.

--
MJR/slef http://mjr.towers.org.uk/