BoatBanter.com - Marina Information

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Marina Information

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

Marina Information

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

Marina Information

"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.

Marina Information

"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.

Marina Information

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

Marina Information

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

Marina Information

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.

You can view all of the markers on the maps and satellite images
withouth registering. You can see the name, address, phone number, and
average rating of each marina without registering. It's sort of easy
to check it out and see that. If you want to access and change the
large amount of details for a facility, you need to register.

Enjoy!

....Jeff

Marina Information

I know of Jeff Siegel from his many postings on the http://
lists.samurai.com/mailman/listinfo/trawlers-and-trawlering. (How do I
make that a link?) Jeff seems to be very helpful and a straight
shooter. But for much more on this subject see the current posting on
Panbo.com the very respected marine electronics blog. He explains
their business plan and how they intend to keep this service free. I
really trust they are not doing this to harvest personal information.

Rod

On Jan 26, 7:16 pm, wrote:
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. You can view all of the markers on the maps and satellite images
withouth registering. You can see the name, address, phone number, and
average rating of each marina without registering. It's sort of easy
to check it out and see that. If you want to access and change the
large amount of details for a facility, you need to register.

Enjoy!

...Jeff

Marina Information

It's common to launch a site without ads, build up the user base, and
then if it's successful enough eventually put ads on it to monetize
it. I don't know the website owners but I totally support that
business model. It's how many hobbyist websites turned into careers.
More power to them if they can make a living off an ad driven site
while offering a great service to users for free!

The concerns of using a niche marine site to harvest email addresses
is unfounded, the volume just isn't there. You just don't put the time
into building a quality site like they did unless you're really
passionate about offering a great resource to the boating community.

Todd

--
http://sailsugata.com
http://gearandboats.com

On Jan 26, 8:53 am, Larry wrote:
"on_the_water" wrote groups.com:

www.activecaptain.comOh, 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.

Marina Information

Sounds to me like this larry fellow is what we in the technology
business call a "FUD Slinger"
Fear, Uncertainity, and Doubt.
As a boater and a Marine electronics professional, I think this site
is a great idea and I look forward to using it.
Istaboa
Be Kind...

On Jan 29, 3:33 pm, "thuss" wrote:
It's common to launch a site without ads, build up the user base, and
then if it's successful enough eventually put ads on it to monetize
it. I don't know the website owners but I totally support that
business model. It's how many hobbyist websites turned into careers.
More power to them if they can make a living off an ad driven site
while offering a great service to users for free!

The concerns of using a niche marine site to harvest email addresses
is unfounded, the volume just isn't there. You just don't put the time
into building a quality site like they did unless you're really
passionate about offering a great resource to the boating community.

Todd

--http://sailsugata.comhttp://gearandboats.com

On Jan 26, 8:53 am, Larry wrote:

"on_the_water" wrote groups.com:

www.activecaptain.comOh, 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.- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text -

Marina Information

Istaboa

Be Kind...

On Jan 30, 8:40 am, Larry wrote:
wrote in news:1170165701.215778.250470
@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com:

Marine electronics professionalYou can hook up cables? Wow!

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

Marina Information

On Jan 30, 8:40 am, Larry wrote:
wrote in news:1170165701.215778.250470
@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com:

Marine electronics professional

You can hook up cables? Wow!

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

Aw heck Larry... I'm not that smart... probably not as smart as you.
But, I do own a company that employs a lot of very talented people.
Thanks to them - after 23 years - I am able to be anchored at Bakers
Bay in the Abacos replying to your rhetoric.

Istaboa

Be Kind...

Marina Information

wrote in message
oups.com...
Sounds to me like this larry fellow is what we in the technology
business call a "FUD Slinger"
Fear, Uncertainity, and Doubt.
As a boater and a Marine electronics professional, I think this site
is a great idea and I look forward to using it.
Istaboa
Be Kind...

Agreed. Some folks have nothing better to do than feed their paranoia that
someone, somewhere, might be doing something. I think the website's a fine
idea. If it takes off, great. But I could really care less what motivates
them. If they put good stuff online and they expect to make a buck in the
process, well, good for them.

Marina Information

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.

Marina Information

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

Marina Information

On Feb 3, 2:46 pm, "on_the_water" wrote:
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, Communitywww.activecaptain.com

Yes I agree about the notice to Mariners... And yes as a cruiser I
really appreciate what you are doing and I have already added a lot of
info pertaining to my part of the world. Tennessee River and TennTom
waterway area.
I was thinking- if this thing takes off as I expect it to . How long
will you keep the reviews and other info that will change?
On our way home I intend to review all the Marinas we stay at along
our way.
If there is anything other than this I can do to help your cause... I
would be happy to.
I am in the Computer business as well as the Marine Electronics biz.
Thanks again and good luck.
Bob

Be kind...

Marina Information

How long will you keep the reviews and other info that will change?

I don't intend to take it down. The way that the reviews/ratings work
is that they are sorted in order of when they were put up (newest one
first). That way, older reviews get put to the bottom. They are
displayed 5 at a time so if there are a lot of them, you'll just stop
getting new pages when you've had enough. You can update your own
review at any time to make changes, provide additional info, etc. If
you make a change to your own review, that will put it at the top
again since we consider the data to be new.

On our way home I intend to review all the Marinas we stay at along
our way.

We're about to take off from New Bern, NC en route to the Bahamas and
eventually back home to Maine. I'll most certainly be writing reviews
of every marina (and anchorage) that we stay in. The anchorages
database is just about to go live on the site. We anchor out more
than we go to marinas and I look forward to finding some nice places
to anchor that I didn't know about...

....Jeff

=================================
Content, Communications, Community
www.activecaptain.com

Marina Information

On Jan 26, 8:53 am, Larry wrote:

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.

I signed in and haven't been bombarded with SPAM or anything like
that.

I'm glad that Jeff and Karen Siegel are putting their energy and
smarts into a web service like this, as it's a great idea. There are a
few efforts afoot to be the Wikipedia of cruising guides, and I
compliment them on their take, and wish them all success. It's going
to happen sooner or later.

Aaron Tinling
navagear.com - the gear and gadgets blog for cruisers
s/v Sweet Destiny

Marina Information

Active Captain has added a new feature to allow us to enter
anchorages, not just marina's, and it works well.

I had earlier created a marina in the middle of San Francisco Bay and
another in Long Island Sound, to mark two favorite anchorage areas.
Certainly not what the authors intended, but I felt they were just as
important as entering information on marina's. The latest update of
the software allows you to enter anchorages now, and it does it quite
well in that it has a meaningful rating system incorporated, beyond
the 1-5 star rating system for Marina's. I have since converted those
two marina's to "anchorages", here is a copy of what I wrote for the
one on Long Island

**** screen capture ****
(5 stars) You Gotta Love This Anchorage, 2007-02-13
Captain: b393capt, Huntington, NY (690)

Great View, no waves, some wind, 360 Degree View, 300 of which is a
tree line in almost all directions. Numerous moorings around, but
still pleanty of space to anchor. Local's often swim off the backs of
their boats.

Individual ratings given:
5: Overall rating (excellent)
4: Current protection (good)
3: Holding (average)
3: Wind protection (average)
5: Wake protection (excellent)
5: Scenery quality (excellent)
1: Shopping facilities (poor)

Prev [Page 1 of 1] Next
*** screen capture ends ****

... could probably use a zero (0) rating in additoin to 1 thru 5, as in
this case there just are not shopping facilities, but otherwise this
rating system gets right to the point. I image when they add the cell
phone support, I could create a query that would allow me to filter
those ratings that matter for me when I travel with my daughter
(shopping = 4) vs when I want to find someplace overnight or deal
with a storm (protection =4), or someplace to find read a book or
find inspiration (scnery = 5) or persperation (Holding 2)

Check it out.
b393capt