Show HN: Learn about a new country every day (my side project) | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Learn about a new country every day (my side project)

countryaday.org

73 pointsrbol34 comments

Author here.

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.

Would be great if you shared the tech stack with HN crowd.

Of course! It's open source and available here: https://github.com/bolandrm/countryaday

Mostly AngularJS and Sinatra

Source code is up on Github.

I think it looks great. It would be nice to see a few pictures from the countries.

Good idea! Any APIs that you have in mind?

I'm sure you could manage to put something together with Google Images. Perhaps you could even do something with the images Google has tied in with areas on Google Maps.

Good one. I have used the more comprehensive CIA world fact book before but this one is helpful for quick info.

Don't mind asking, but why would it be better than just reading the wikipedia or CIA world "fact book" or anything similar?

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...).

This looks neat. Here is how discover the world online.

- 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).

This is such a good post for the OP if he wants to extend the functionality of his site.

The CIA The World Factbook [1] is also really cool. Just pick and country and away you go.

[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

Consider meshing in the facts from the CIA's Worldbook -

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ ?

I like the idea and intent.

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?

Where are you at that it's breaking? What browser? It seems to be working ok for me (chrome). Anyone else experiencing this problem?

Edit: I see what you mean. I'm looking into a solution.

Chrome 27 on Snow Leopard: clicking the link from HN takes me to the page, but hitting the back button doesn't bring me back to HN, it looks like it tries to takes me back to countryaday.org which then redirects to countryaday.org/#/welcome

Same on Chrome/Linux. Looks like you're using push/popState slightly incorrectly. To the parent: if you long-click the back button, you can jump to an arbitrary point in your history.

Same issue using FF 21 and Ubuntu. I hit the back button and nothing happens.

I pushed a temporary fix that (I believe) corrects this.

Unfortunately it leads to a slight UX regression in that you are no longer automatically routed to your country of the day.

Hmm, seems like Singapore is missing in the map?

ROFL? 没有! Bwahahahah!

Looks like Malaysia got its wish :(

here's the pull request: https://github.com/bolandrm/countryaday/pull/6

Nice! Also if anyone wants to learn the world capitals, I'm working on user-friendly spaced repetition software to do just that:

http://cardflashapp.com

It's still very alpha, but I was able to learn all the world and US state capitals in just a few sessions.

I'd find this useful if you sent an email every other day. The short text on the first country Namibia was interesting and about as much as I have time to read on a near-daily interest-email. I didn't sign up as I don't have the time but I'm interested to learn.

I second this as well, as a guard against forgetting about a site that I'm really excited to use :)

With a big large unsubscribe button just so people can opt-out easily.

I had an idea for something similar awhile back. I love learning about places I haven't been before and I especially enjoy looking at those places on a map.

I'll have to play with it more before I can give you any feedback.

I don't like being redirected to Wikipedia on read more. When you do that, there is good chance that visitor is not coming back. I think you should display rest of the content on your site as well.

This is a really neat idea. It also gives me a few ideas for iOS apps. Gamifying and speeding up the learning process is crucial to teaching this generation new things. Thanks for building this.

wow this is so awesome for a omnivorous compulsive reader like myself. I've actually never been this excited about a show hen before! thanks for making this!

No problem! Glad you're enjoying it!

Cool idea!

Nice!

BTW, am I wrong or some small countries are missing? Just to name few: Vatican City, Mauritius, San Marino

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