About Boompa.com

What is the Project?

The Boompa Database Project is an initiative started by the founders of this site in co-operation with the boompa community to build an enterprise level vehicle database that will be freely distributed back to the community through a developer API feed under a Creative Commons license. The current target for completion of the API is late Summer 2006.

The Problem

As it stands there is not a reliable place to find information on vehicles down to a specific model level (The BMW 325ci Coupe vs. the BMW 325) on the Internet. While there is some coverage in the auto arena, the information is mostly held in closed commerical databases. Information for other vehicle types, from planes to boats are scant, or simply do not exist on the web. This means that the sharing of knowledge for vehicles, be it tweaking your ride, or what engine a 1967 Mustang had, lags behind information about other interests (movies, music, games...etc). On the tech side, it also means there is no starting step for developers to build new products that might help to spread knowledge. We wish to change that.

The Goal

Boompa wishes to build the world’s largest, most comprehensive and most accurate dataset about vehicles and their parts in the world. We believe such information should be region neutral and should be built by the people that actually drive, pilot and pedal the vehicles. We want to provide this collected data free to anyone who wishes to use it in a non-commerical fashion in whatever way they want under a CC license.

How you can help

Simply using this site means you are already helping. However, the most effective and direct way to pitch in is to add new vehicle models and designations directly through our add a vehicle form. You can also become a moderator and help us filter through new submissions to the DB. If you are interested in becoming a moderator, please contact Dave through a PM.

Wait a sec, what do you get out of this?

Hopefully full time jobs. Seriously, Boompa is only run by two guys in Berkeley who have taken a big risk quiting high paying jobs to work on a site that may or may not ever pay the bills. All we hope is that we can cover the site's cost and pay off our loans by making money through non-aggressive advertising or by offering commerical licenses of the boompa DB to other businesses. We promise to always offer the DB free under a CC license to anyone who wishes to use it in a non-commercial way in the hope that it spawns some cool projects.

Why can't you just make the data available now?

Put simply, there's not much to provide at this point. The site is still growing and we'd rather spend our first couple months up adding new features to the site while the database builds and becomes relevant. The hope is that by late Summer we'll have a decent structure for devilery and will have figured out all the necessary precautions we'll need to take with moderation so we're providing as clean and valuable data as possible to potential developers and site authors.