h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi! I am Abi and I am the Deputy Community Editor here at h2g2. I see that you have already been mobbed by the ACEs! If you have any questions feel free to drop by their home page which is .... http://www.h2g2.com/A214796.

Or you can drop in and see either me or Peta who is the Community Editor. Her page can be found at http://www.h2g2.com/u24.

Welcome!

Hi,

It's nice to be here. I'm having a great time trying to figure out guideML, having no HTML experience. So hopefully it will be easier to learn HTML after using some guideML. I want to make a good web page and it would be nice to know.

I had no experience of either when I started as a researcher - but we do have Bruce on hand if you need any help. Have you seen his Guide ML Clinic page? If not I will find you the URL.

Yes, that's a big help, I've seen it. Right now I'm too busy trying to get a good chat in because I'm wired from too much coffee and too little sleep.

I know the feeling! I have that slighty nauseous feeling from coffee excess.

i'm thinking about going to town for beer so i can get to sleep. One beer and a bong hit and I'll be ready.

ooh... GuideML before HTML? I wouldn't reccomend it... I'm a web developer, and I'm havng problems with GuideML.... although it looks simple, the parser seems to hate every tag that I write when I try to update my page...

If you want to know anything about HTML, there are a whole load of wonderfullysimply tutorials at www.htmlgoodies.com ... and there are also some on JavaScript, DHTML, etc, as well.

- Njan.

Thanks, but I'm really just dabbling for now. I will check that site out when I'm a little more coherent.

Well, there's a lot of undetstandable stuff on there. There _are_ complicated tutorials, but the simple ones are really simple... they go rightfro the very beginning. :-p

- Njan

Gotcha!
Am I too late to be one of the ACEs mobbing you?
Oh darn.
Still come to my site, it has lots of great links, and all the best threads on it.
Have fun!

Njan, you don't understand. I've been awake for over 28 hours and i'm on my 3rd beer of the morning.(it's 11AM here). This place is addictive! I can't wait til I get my satellite internet system installed next week so I can zip from page to page (I live in the country and the phone lines only allow me a 26Kbps connection - SLOW!). I'll see you in a few, Hatman. Thanks for the advice Njan and Abi.

No, it's never too late. *is at site at the moment*

- Njan.

Sorry to be a bringer of (semi-)bad news, but fast connections (I have 1/2 Megabit cable, soon to go to 3 Megabit) don't help a great deal with the h2g2 experience.

Yet.

There are new servers on the way, I think at the end of the month the servers are being put in *makes a mental note to ask Mark*, and I think (although I have very, very little evidence) that they have a shiny new connection that will make things very, very fast as soon as the servers are upgraded.

So, yeah, the short version is it's going to get better, just as soon as the delivery companies figure out where they're supposed to deliver to.

As you seem to be someone in the know, could I just ask what the deal with H2G2 is? The adverts at the top of the pages can't bring in much revenue (or any at all as they all seem to be charitable), and yet the service seems so big and complex with vast servers and a full time staff.
Who pays for it all?
Is it from Douglas Adam's private fortune or what?

Yeeps. Open my big fat yap once and people start asking questions they actually want real ANSWERS to.

Okay, well, here's the story as far as I know it. These are all wild guesses, so I could be really, really wrong.

h2g2 gets revenue from clickthroughs on ad banners, yes, but from what I've gleaned from paying attention over here: http://www.tdv.com/ is that TDV has a few partners that are helping finance this wild, happy experiment. As far as the DNA-guy financing everything personally, I'm fairly certain that TDV is self-sufficient of him, regardless of the fact that he is a founding partner and "Chief Fantasist" of the company. He's an executive, not the bankroll.

Again, these are suppositions. Dunno for sure. As for the future, though, h2g2 will pay its own way through (probably) charging (a pittance!! Really!) for the mobile service, and through advertising tie-ins and click-through revenue. That's really hazy, as far as I know, so don't you dare quote me on that.

Also, finally, TDV is a rather multifaceted company, of which h2g2 is one arm of the octupus, if you get my drift. Check out their website to get an idea of what else they're up to, although they are appropriately mysterious when they need to be.

Anything else? Did I make sense?

If I may (mis)quote from the blurb you get if you hit the 'Don't Panic' button, "you don't need to make money to make money, welcome to the wonderful world of internet start-ups". I suspect that the theory is that we all contribute lots of really worthwhile stuff and then the project will be floated and become the next e-digital.

Either that or we'll all get so sick of the download times that we'll start going elsewhere - how about spontaneously organising ourselves into an unofficial "guide" at homestead and retaining copyright over our own stuff? We could all choose our own banners AND enjoy the revenue thereof too.

A good idea, blighted only by the small fact that no-one has ever heard of the "digruntled guide researcher's guide to the galaxy" and the site wouldn't get any traffic. (Actually I had the joy recently of receiving an email from someone who had been directed to one of my entries by the google search engine. Oh happy days!)

Hands up who thinks we should all get shares in tdv every time one of our entries is approved?

Me. Surprisingly. Stranger things have happened.

I'd say no to the revenue, just so long as we could all share in the rights to the entries, at least our own.

Shares would be nice... but it's quite cool just being able to say that you were a co-author of the Hitchiker's guide to the galaxy.

- Njan.

You are so very right.