"Dave" wrote in message
news
On 26 Jan 2007 12:20:10 -0800, said:

We also see a tremendous opportunity for having this data
available for some products we are working on (mobile phone software -
see www.panbo.com for today's posting - 1/26/07).

Well there's progress. You're at least admitting that you're doing this
for
commercial gain, rather than to foster some sense of "community."

Criminy, Dave -- you want to break his rice bowl? Everybody's gotta eat, and
it seems to me that the site is quite a project, even with the contributions
from volunteer labor.

wrote in news:1169842810.602320.153790
@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Jeffrey Siegel
President
Active Corporation



Ah, now I see....www.activemap.com

Here the fine print posted not-so-fine:

"Sign up at ActiveCaptain to automatically receive our newsletter about
mobile device products.
It's free and it's an excellent resource for boaters - content,
communications, community.

Copyright © 2007 Active Corporation - All Rights Reserved"

Now I see why it's so goddamned important you harvest our email addresses
and personal information.

According to Panbo:

"NOAA’s free chart policy strikes again! Maptech will no longer sell
Outdoor Navigator, the nifty PDA (both PocketPC and Palm) and Smartphone
charting program sort of shown above. The developer, Jeffrey Siegel, has
decided to go independent, largely because he can now freely access U.S.
raster charts and topo maps. Moreover, the program, to be called
activemap, will also be [[[FREE]]] (emphasis added). I don’t quite
understand the business plan, if there is one, but am quite sure that
Jeff and his team are up to something interesting. More as available."

I've never had a FREEWARE programmer send me promotional emails to make
sure I have his latest FREE product, so excuse me if I'm a little
suspicious of any CORPORATION who's main product is FREEWARE, when it
used to sell for big money. How does this corporation make any money,
giving away FREE software and FREE webpages and NOT spamming anyone who
signs up?? Are you independently wealthy and needing a tax deduction??



Larry
--
Democracy is when two wolves and a sheep vote on who's for dinner.
Liberty is when the sheep has his own gun.

Dave wrote in
news
Well there's progress. You're at least admitting that you're doing
this for commercial gain, rather than to foster some sense of
"community."



Not at all! Panbo's article says his activemap is FREE!

Larry
--
Democracy is when two wolves and a sheep vote on who's for dinner.
Liberty is when the sheep has his own gun.

Good point.

When I think about some of the stuff which goes on in this newsgroup due to
unrestricted access, I can see why you need some controls. People pretending
to be other people gets really old; expecially when it's yourself whose
header they are spoofing.

This does look like a very worthwhile effort.

I avoid marinas as much as possible, however. Sights not to miss and danger
spots would be a nice addition. There is a cliff on an island off Portland
where you can see about five different faces at least as realistic as the
late Old Man of the Mountain of NH although smaller. The slack tide
predictions for Hell Gate can be way, way off., Etc.

Maybe little exclamation marks on the charts for notes like these that
people want to add. Maybe another icon for sea stories people would like to
post (like being rolled by a 20 foot breaker off the Cuckholds, Southport
Island, Maine.)

--
Roger Long

On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 19:37:54 -0500, Larry wrote:

How does this corporation make any money,
giving away FREE software and FREE webpages and NOT spamming anyone who
signs up?? Are you independently wealthy and needing a tax deduction??

If the product is free, you have to sell more of it to make any money.

Maybe the profit is in shipping and handling?

Hi All,

We have developed an online marina database with some unique
capabilities based around content, communications, and community. It's
all about sharing knowledge among the community of marinas and boaters.
The database has free access for anyone. It's called ActiveCaptain
(www.activecaptain.com).
[...]

There exists a similar website: http://www.skipperguide.com
In difference, it is not focussing on facilities, but on all aspects
that may be interesting for cruising. The objective is to become a
online cruising guide, wrote by various people. This site is quite new,
at the moment mainly European waters are covered.

....and you don't have to register at all to use it

-Peter

I read with great interest an entry Ben Ellison made on Panbo
(electronics blog) in regards to activecaptain.com and gave it a try.
I am very impressed, and have become a quick fan and frequent
contributor.

I can see how active captain is going to quickly put an end to me
shelling out $100+ a season for updated marine facility guides which
contain mostly outdated information. (Ever try to go to a Restaurant
or West Marine location in a guide book, that is no longer there?).

I am a software company owner, to impress me is saying a lot. This web-
site is done very well in every respect. Especially in that it is very
easy to be a contributor. Click and grab a map to get to your area of
interest, zoom in, click on facilities that already exist, and see
recently updated information and reviews.

Want to enter your own information, it is really simple. See a
mistake someone else made, that is simple to fix as well. Suddenly we
are all editors of an on-line pilot guide. Want to know the price of
fuel, if we are an active community about this, the price of fuel
would be updated within days of it changing. Maybe they should put the
buoy's there as well, or at least create a category of contribution
that lets us captains post "warnings" where buoys, or other map
information is know to be wrong. I think I am going to suggest to the
authors that they create a category for "notice to mariners", and
maybe people in each local community could take responsibility for
reading and posting them in active captain so we can have them appear
in on active captains view of google earth! Then, in addition to
saving money updating our marina guide books, we can both save money
getting less frequent updates to our navigation software, and have a
way to double check quickly how out of date our navigation software is
for an approach to a new marina.

Some things I like about active captain:
- When other people make an entry that is wrong, you can change it
(that's YOU who are reading my google post right now!), everyone is an
editor and the accuracy and relevance of the information goes way up!
The marina owners are going to hate this ... ask Microsoft, who is
unhappy with their Wikipedia entry, and cannot get their view of
themselves into the Wiki database to stick, because the community
controls it. Likewise if a Marina or local restaurant provides high
prices or poor service, it will be on-line for all to see, if they
improve things, the same.

- Once you create a review, you can edit it (text and all) without
creating a new entry. Ever diss someone and come to regret it later
(Larry ?), or make a review and then find on a repeat visit things
have improved, and you want to change your original review (text &
all). I don't know about you, but I feel comfortable making a negative
entry, for example one I made for Danford's in Port Jefferson, knowing
that if on repeat visits I don't experience the same problems and/or
other review writers tell me my experience was abnormal, I can update
my review to be positive again. In a marine guide, you are very
unlikely to read a bad review, and that really doesn't help the reader
to distinguish between what I will really experience in a marina by
reading the guide book.

- Reviews carry a rating on the captain who made the entry. The rating
seems to vary on how much you contribute that turns out to be
accurate / accepted into the database. This gives more weight to the
active members, and kind of forces the marina owners to just fix
what's wrong rather then attempt to post good reviews of themselves.

Security - I read someone is afraid their email addresses will be
"harvested". This is unfounded. Give me a break, some of the many
vendors you pay for service, buy parts, magazine etc. have contributed
your email address and personal information to huge corporate
databases to the point anyone in the marine business can pay a tiny
amount of money to get your email address cross referenced to non-
marine sources and census data. I believe, for less than $1000 I could
get the email address of everyone who owns a boat along with the age
of your boat, how many kids you have, your kids ages, your income,
etc. etc. Registering with this service is hardly a risk in any way,
contrary to an author who suggested creating a temporary msn or yahoo
email address, I wouldn't bother.

Support - I have been very happy with the support I received over the
last two weeks. Granted virtually nobody needs to get support,
everything is pretty self explanatory, but as I tried to push the
limits of the web-site I found some inconsequential things (e.g. in an
anchorage suppose to be depth, or a comment), I got responses the same
or next day. This is far above the call of duty.

Enhance your marine experience, save a tree, and get honest
information about your destination, and go to www.activecaptain.com
and be an editor to what has unarguably established itself in two
short weeks, the ultimate on-line marine guide that is open to all of
us being the editors!

And ... if you had a good experience at Danford's in Port Jefferson,
post a review, if my comments are not supportable by the experience of
others, I will revisit it.

b393capt,

Thanks for hitting the nail on the head. We came up with this idea
after years of frustration with the current boating guides. What we
found is that we only went to guide books when we couldn't get
information from other boaters. They (other boaters) were the ones
who
told us what marinas to avoid (never see that in the guide books) and
what not to miss (have never been steered wrong).


In our last cruise south we made extensive use of online weather and
it was great to have current information any time we wanted it. We
started talking about how this could be done for marinas, anchorages,
local knowledge, etc. What we always came back to was the desire to
be able to "talk" to boaters who had been there and done that before.
Out of that came ActiveCaptain.


We have had several marina operators call concerned that "anyone"
could write about them. This only served to make me realize that
maybe we were on the right track to having information shared.


Yes, you're much more likely to get honest reviews - the printed
guides are clearly afraid to print anything negative about marinas.
I
see you're not out of line complaining about Danford's in Port
Jefferson. Already there is another review confirming your suspicion
that they have a service problem. You're not going to get these
honest
surveys anywhere else.


Your Notice To Mariners idea is great, does anyone else here agree?


Karen
===================================
Content, Communication, Community
www.activecaptain.com