I got this mail in from a reader who’s planning a camper van trip across the UK. He’s got an app enquiry:
My family and I are taking a road trip around the UK before heading overseas and I’m trying to find a route planner that includes Points of Interest and Camp Sites (for a camper van). I have found lots of route planners but nothing that contains everything inside one app. Are you aware of anything that does it all in one? I have the AA route planner and there a whole heap of apps that show campsites but I’m struggling to find a single source of info for everything.
Any ideas?
Right then what do you reckon? Is all-in-one too much to ask for?
This very reasonable question is fascinating for the more general questions that it raises: One could have made the same sort of enquiry about almost any subject for which answers and data reside on the internet. Surely the holy grail for for content providers offering web-based information and app services, is to be able to provide easily accessible, fully comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date information, based on enquirers’ chosen filtering criteria. We’re a long way from achieving that, and not just in the field of campervan touring! Fragmentation, error and incompleteness are all part of the fall-out from normal commerce as we know it. The free market, advertising power etc are wonderful for the variety they create for us (compared with what would be available in a ‘command’ economy), but anyone with the motivation and resources that would be required to pull all info into one place, will be doing well to gain the co-operation of all vendors and information sources.
Agreed, Richard — this is the challenge. There’s also the issue of quality — how do you determine the points of interest that are likely to be useful to me vs you.