I did actually get around to upgrading the OpenID libraries on Wikitravel, so it's now possible to log into the site (Special:OpenIDLogin) using an i-name. Yes, those are all real things. I'm not making that up. As I mentioned before, I got gratis i-names to give away; try http://xri.net/@gratis .
tags: openid inames wikitravel login
UN/LOCODE
One of the difficult things on Wikitravel has been using public-domain lists of cities, states, and countries to automatically build a geographical hierarchy. There are some good lists out there, like the ones from geonames.org, but they have too much information -- every hill, bush and pond. Other sources of info have too little information -- just countries, like the CIA World Factbook, or just some major cities.
The best list I've found so far is the UN/LOCODE list. It's built in a hierarchy -- country, sub-divisions, then cities -- and since it's principally for business applications, it only lists cities that have important businesses (for a fairly light definition of "important") or a transportation depot (like a bus stop, a train station, or an airport). These turn out to be just about the smallest types of cities that you'd want to write a travel guide about, so it's a pretty useful list.
After a lot of hacking, testing, and review by Wikitravel users, I've now got a LOCODEbot adding LOCODE locations to our shared site (used by all the different language versions). It's going pretty slow and steady, but it should be done in a couple of days.
tags: unlocode toponymy cia world factbook wikitravel
Parallel distribution, again, again
So, Benjamin "Mako" Hill and James Grimmelman have done an excellent position paper on parallel distribution in the Creative Commons 3.0 licenses. I could try to describe the process, but I think they've done a great job with it. I heartily recommend this for anyone interested in DRM and Open Source and Open Content licenses.
tags: cc mako james grimmelman parallel distribution drm
Too competitive
So, I started watching my site creep up the Alexa listings of most popular personal sites in Montreal. Kind of sad, isn't it?