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).

ActiveCaptain is not commercial. There is no cost. There are no
advertisements. It is designed to be a place where you can find
marinas, anchorages, and local knowledge visually on worldwide maps.
It should be fast and interactive...and fun.

We've loaded the initial database full of 8,000 marinas in the US.
Each entry holds 116 fields broken up into 5 sections and 49 groupings.
The database includes common things like phone number, lat/lon,
website, etc. but we also track things that aren't often documented -
are pets welcome, diesel price/date, internet access, slip price per
foot, and many other items. There is also an extensive capability for
reviewing and rating a facility. Anchorages and "local knowledge" are
much simpler and will be added next.

We need people to review the marine facilities in their area and make
additions, corrections, reviews, etc.

ActiveCaptain is all about community. The framework will allow others
to share their knowledge and experience. Adding the information you
know into this framework will help many others and end up helping
yourself when you cruise to an area that you are less familiar with.

==================================
Karen Siegel
Castine, Maine

I checked this out. It appears to be for real and there are easier ways to
harvest email addresses for the spammers.

It's these folks who appear to be solid:

http://www.activecenter.com/

It's one of those "Why are they doing this?" things. No ads or other source
of income. OTOH they already have the infrastructure to do it without much
investment so it could well be a nice hobby contribution.

There is way too much security for the purpose. You have to register, get
and email confirmation, click to confirm, etc. Maybe that's necessary now
to keep troublemakers out of their servers but the site is only going to
become useful if a LOT of people join and round out the very minimal
information that is currently there, most of which could be found in other
ways. The sign up procedure will keep a lot of people away. I certainly
would have never bothered with it if it wasn't people right in my backyard.

Worth a look and encouragement but I'm skeptical that it will ever take off
unless they make it more accessible and get more useful information into it
themselves.

--
Roger Long

"on_the_water" wrote in
oups.com:

www.activecaptain.com

Oh, sure, don't forget to "register" so you can be spammed to death.

This website isn't "free" as long as there is a registration of personal
information to fill out......no thanks.

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

"Roger Long" wrote in
:

Worth a look and encouragement but I'm skeptical that it will ever
take off unless they make it more accessible and get more useful
information into it themselves.

--
Roger Long



They won't even let you LOOK at the website data unless they harvest your
information, FIRST.....

Just reeks of spammers....

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

Larry wrote:
They won't even let you LOOK at the website data unless they harvest
your information, FIRST.....

Just reeks of spammers....


That's why I wouldn't have even bothered to take a look if it weren't for
the local interest.

This will probably doom the effort for it depends on the participation of
lots of people, many of whom will feel the same way.

Hopefully, they will be monitoring this group and take note.

--
Roger Long

Oh, sure, don't forget to "register" so you can be spammed to death.


That's not going to happen. I'm one of the people involved with it.
It's taken a year of effort to get it to release. We're cruisers
ourselves and we had the tools, desire, and interest in making this
available. 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).

If you sign up for the newsletter, you'll get an email from us if there
is something new to say. If you don't want any emails from us, don't
sign up for the newsletter. I don't like getting spam either. We will
never, ever sell, rent, or disclose email addresses or registered users
to anyone. Ever. We do have a privacy statement that talks about all
of these things. We take it seriously.

There really is no evil attempt to coerce anyone into anything. It's
really about doing something positive Something that we know is needed
after cruising up and down the ICW and Bahamas over many thousands of
nautical mile. Sure, if you use the site, you'll eventually learn
about our nautical charting software for mobile devices. But just like
the newsletter sign-up, there's no requirement to take part in it.

Jeffrey Siegel
President
Active Corporation

This will probably doom the effort for it depends on the participation of
lots of people, many of whom will feel the same way.

Hopefully, they will be monitoring this group and take note.


Consider the note taken.

The site has been up since Monday. We have 500 registered users who
have made about 3,500 edits already. That's after one work week with
almost no exposure. Our first real exposure is coming today with
www.panbo.com - and there are 40 people logged on right now entering
new data and viewing what is there. Power & Motoryacht magazine has a
mention of our site in it's February issue. Those are just starting to
come out.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the participation so far. Doomed?
Perhaps. I'd rather like to think that there is a friendly, helpful
community of boaters out there. After all, Roger, isn't that the way
life, er, boating, should be?

....Jeff

wrote:

The site has been up since Monday. We have 500 registered users who
have made about 3,500 edits already.

That's excellent. It sounds like you've found a need that people want to
fill. Still, are you sure you need such an extensive sign up process with
yet another password to keep track of? I wonder how many more people would
be contributing if it were easier.

BTW, you missed the marina where I keep my boat in Portland. I'll post some
information after I dig it out.

--
Roger Long

Still, are you sure you need such an extensive sign up process with
yet another password to keep track of?

I know, but seriously, it isn't really extensive. You need to enter an
email address, password, name you want to go by, first and last name,
and home port. There's a balance between making it easy for people who
should be on and making it hard for spammers. One of the things that
makes ActiveCaptain different is that you can change any of the 100 or
so items in each record of a facility. This also means that it is
possible for someone to go and make a lot of changes to a competing
facility to spoof it. For example, one marina could change that the
marina across the way has no slips, etc. We want to protect a little
against this.

(Changes made don't replace real data until they are verified by us -
this is a time consuming process with 4,000 edits so far - we're up to
date right now after some non-stop checking all week)


BTW, you missed the marina where I keep my boat in Portland. I'll post some
information after I dig it out.


As a registered user, you can add a new facility. We haven't missed
many - it could be that it isn't where you expect it to be. You can
search for an item by facility name - it might be that we have it
marked at a mailing address instead of its location on the water. If
you don't want to join, feel free to give me the name of the marina and
web-site address and I'll add it.

....Jeff

Larry wrote in
:

"Roger Long" wrote in
:

Worth a look and encouragement but I'm skeptical that it will ever
take off unless they make it more accessible and get more useful
information into it themselves.

--
Roger Long



They won't even let you LOOK at the website data unless they harvest
your information, FIRST.....

Just reeks of spammers....

Larry

Larry,

All they did was ask for your information in 4 screens instead of 1. They
only asked for a user name, password, first/last name, and e-mail address.
That's no different than any other site. However, I agree that it's
strange that they won't let you view it without registering. Normally the
above is limited to posting.

-- Geoff