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Comment by rbol | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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...).

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.

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.

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