Well, here's what I've been doing with most of my spare time recently.

Basically, I'm attempting to identify every single region in every country on earth according to political and/or administrative boundaries. Then I'm organising them in a hierarchical fashion so that you can browse them and search through them.

I'll then add actual locations within the appropriate regions, and maybe, just maybe, make a scrolling map applet that'll allow you to see where anywhere on the earth is. Using latitudes and longitudes, you can then see how far away anywhere else is.

So, for example, you might search for Edmonton, which would display, perhaps with a map of the locale:

North America

 Canada

  Alberta

   Edmonton [Lat: 53deg 34min N, Long: 113deg 31min W]

Why? you ask.

Well, I figure that the categorisation of places in h2g2 might need a geographical index of sorts, so I took it upon myself to make one. I'm into cartography generally, and I also thought that the net could do with a free-to-use hierarchical index of places and locations. Not to mention maps, but that might take quite some time. I'm now up to over 15,000 distinct regions, including all the islands that I can find, and more appear every day as I trawl the net. I think I now have the whole of the USA sorted - mostly thanks to the US Census pages on the web. Seeing as these places are, quite literally, 'public domain', I thought I'd make them that way.

Maybe, if the Powers That Be think it's of any real use, it might get incorporated as an integral part of the guide... that would be nice!