The Hydrophilic Nomad's Cybercafe List Description

Peter Rutten, last updated 2000Jun14

Our intention is to create and maintain a wordwide list of cybercafes, internet cafes and other publicly accessible internet access points. Our primary interest is in places which are accessible for people living on boats.

The list and software to browse, annotate and maintain it will be made available on the internet.

All software and data collections published within this project is copyrighted and made available under the terms of the General Public License (GPL) of the Free Software Foundation (www.fsf.org). A copy of the GPL can be obtained at www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.html

Format of the List

In order to keep the cybercafe list independend of a users choice of platform and operating system we have decided to maintain the list in a free-format, ASCII-only text file. No national character sets are supported. Data is separated into database fields by keywords. Keywords occur only immediately after linebreaks, consist only of UPPER CASE CHARACTERS and are terminated by a colon. Linebreaks are coded by linefeed characters only. Browsing or filtering applications should tolerate CR characters.

<Parameters> put in angle brackets specified in the keyword descriptions below must be present on the line of the Keyword. All Keywords with mandatory parameters are one-parameter keywords. Parsers may ignore any information between the end of the mandatory parameter up to the next keyword.

[Data] put in square brackets may appear in the line of the keyword, in the following lines or both.

Mandatory entries for one dataset to be part of the list are STARTITEM:, ITEMID: and ENDITEM:, however such a dataset without any information on the site would be worthless. At least SITENAME: and ADDRESS: would be needed to make the enty usable.

Every datasetstarts with a STARTITEM: entry and ends on a ENDITEM: entry.

Keywords specified so far include

STARTITEM: <itemtype> Denotes start of one dataset. Only itemtype specified so far is CYCAFE for a CyberCafe entry. Further entries for other places of interest may be specified.
ITEMID:<itemid> Associates the dataset with a name for further references. Itemname is chosen by list maintainer. Itemnames are unique. Itemnames provided upon new entry of a dataset are discarded and replaced by the itemid chosen by the list maintainer.
SITENAME:[Free format Name of the site]
COUNTRY: <countryname> Country where site is located as ISO 2-CHAR-Country string. See here for a list of codes.
URL:<url> Denotes the URL of the Cybercafe.
WGS84:<coordinates> Provides GPS positioning coordinates in the WGS84 datum. Mandatory coordinate format is dd:mm.mm[NS]ddd:mm.mm[EW], e.g 53:35.92N009:59.90E for my place in Hamburg, Germany. This format is provided by most GPS units available today. The resolution (2 decimals on the minutes yield 18 m resolution) is adequate.
PORTS: [ Free format list of ports close by]
ADDRESS:[Address data] Free format street address data, line breaks may be replaced by commas.
DIRECTIONS:[Free format directions to the CyberCafe]
DESCRIPTION:[ Free format information worth knowing about the site]
PHONE: [Phone/Fax number of the site, free format]
BUSINESSHRS: [ Business hours]
SERVICES: [communication services available] Those services should be a blank separated list of services from the list below
PRICES: [ free format list of approx. prices for the services] Please use international currency symbols
LASTUPDATE: <Lastupdate> Last Update in format YYYY.MM.DD/HH:MMZ Datetime please in UTC as indicated by the trailing Z
MAINTAINER: [free format list of maintainers]
ENDITEM: Closes a database entry

Service keywords specified so far

The keywords to be mentioned under the SERVICES: and PRICES: fields include

PHONESEND	Outgoing Telephone Service available
PHONERECV	Incoming Telephone(calleable Phone) service available
FAXSEND	Outgoing Fax available
FAXRECV	Incoming Fax available
HTTP	Web Browsing on local PCs
TELNET	Telnet service on local PCs
FTPDOWN	FTP Download service to local PCs
FTPUP	FTP Upload from diskettes, CDs
CHAT	Internet relay chat on local PCs
POP3	Mail reception per POP3 to a local disc/diskette
CDMASTER	CD ROM Mastering from user data
ETH/HTTP	Browsing with your own PC
ETH/TELNET	Telnet via Ethernet
ETH/FTP	FTP via Ethernet
ETH/POP3	POP3 access thru Ethernet
ETH/SMTP	Mail sending thru Ethernet to local SMTP server

Example

STARTITEM: CYCAFE
ITEMID: CYCAFE.DE.HRO.01
COUNTRY: DE
WGS84: 54:05.23N012:08.06E
URL: http://www.surfinn.com/intern/standorte/rostock/
ADDRESS: Galeria Kaufhof,  Lange Str., 18055 Rostock
DIRECTIONS: Second floor of the Kaufhof department store,
located on intersection LangeStr / BreiteStr. close to the 
town port of Rostock. Also accessible from Warnemuende Port
via Tram to downtown Rostock
PORTS: Warnemuende Rostock
SERVICES: HTTP TELNET FTPDOWN
PRICES: HTTP,TELNET:3DEM/30min FTPDOWN:2DEM/MB
BUSINESSHRS: MO-FR:0900-2000 SA:0900-1800 SU:1300-1800
LASTUPDATE: 2000JUN13 0020Z
ENDITEM:

How to contribute

Add new (currently unlisted) Cybercafes

Prepare a mail with the contents like in the example above (except the ITEMID: line) and send it to cyberman@ipar.de with a
Subject containing the Word NEWSITE (all capitals).

Changes to listed Cybercafes

Get a up-to-date-list, modify the entry appropriately, add the new maintainer to the list, DON'T FORGET the LASTUPDATE: and mail it to cyberman@ipar.de with a Subject line containing the Word UPDATE (all capitals).

Removal of sites found inoperative

Send a mail to cyberman@ipar.de containing the word REMOVAL(all capitals) in the Subject. The mail must contain one line containing the ITEMID: entry of the site. Further explanatory text (i.e. house found destroyed by earthquake on 2000Jun14 by peter@ipar.de) is appreciated.

Additions and improvements to this project

Please feel free to suggest all improvements, i.e. extension to the keywords (=database colums), list of known services, spelling corrections and other clarifications to me. Also translations of this and other explanatory texts into additional languages are appreciated.
Please mail any such contributions to cyberman@ipar.de