 Poster: A snowHead
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Hello fellow SnowHeads!
As an avid skier and computer geek and have tried to tie the two passions together. My partner and I have put together (among other things) a Snow Report service. It is in its infancy and we are wondering whether this is something other skiers/riders would find useful.
We put together a map-driven service to help skiers/riders locate hills with recent snow. At this time, click on the snowflake icon and an information dialog pops up with the resort info. Hovering over a hill gives you the hill name and any recent snow listings. From there, you can subscribe to have that content pushed to your cellular phone (via SMS), if you are a registered user. Also, you can get driving directions to that hill. There will be additional mapping and location-based features and preferences coming soon, provided there is interest. We have only tested our SMS in Western Canada, so US users may not receive messages. Keep in mind that at this time we don't charge for sending messages, but your cellular provider might ding you...check before you sign up for feeds from us.
Also, we have a textual listing of conditions for more resorts. This is a listing of all the resorts we would add to the map...if people are interested. I have to manually locate all the hills, which takes time.
This is not meant to be a blatant plug for our site, rather we are interested in real skier/rider feedback. Is this something that folks would find useful? Should we continue developing the service (we have lots of cool extensions in mind)?
Please check out the site below (click on "Snow Reports" off the main page) and let me know what you think. Thanks in advance for your input!
http://www.whereinfo.com
Cheers,
Loco-snowman
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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loco-snowman, Welcome to Snowheads. I had a quick look and thought it seemed a good idea as long as you were looking in Canada West coast. No hard resort info though like no of runs/verticle m is resort easy/middling/difficult in general wetc, which would make it much more useful for Europeans planning a trip. Good luck.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Thanks for the feedback and encouragement easiski!
We do have that sort of info and would likely include it in a 'detailed' report. that would link off the info bubble. You can pan around the map to see W. US resorts too. The rest of North America would be added next season, provided we continue on with the idea.
BTW, Mozilla displays the map very quickly, IE...a little slower.
Cheers,
loco-snowman
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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loco-snowman, another welcome to snowHeads. Hang around a bit and you'll find we tend to be centering on the European Resorts but your site looks good. I use Mozilla Firefox and had no trouble on a broadband connection. Always nice to see a new snow sports site.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Thanks. We can gain access to European snow conditions as well. Now, locating the hills may be more challenging!
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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What's unique about your service that I can't get from the Canadian Met office, resort websites etc.? What people tend to want are accurate forecasts from farther out which only meteorologists can actually provide I'd have thought travel directions are a waste of time unless you have a better product than Via michelin or equivalent.
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Thanks fatbob. We are trying to put together a service that is a consolidation of a variety of readily available services. Hopefully, to reduce the amount of hopping around to various sites. We intend on providing a portal of sorts for skiing and riding conditions. As for uniqueness (good point), mapping (for a quick visual comparison for resorts in your region with snow) and cell-based updates (for when you are not at the computer) seem to be 'unpaired' from what I have seen.
You are absolutely right: detailed forecasts are 'golden eggs' to us skiers and boarders. However, they are tough to find/provide. Environment Canada stations (not sure about US and Europe) are rarely in close proximity to the resorts, so that information is typically provided from resort weather stations and staff. I guess if you want that kind of detailed info. you might already have a hill or two in mind and would simply visit their site for the most detailed info. We tried to accommodate this by providing the link to the resort website. Thanks for the input and I will spend a little more time seeing what we can do on the forecasting front. Right now that info is only a couple clicks away.
Driving directions are driven (no pun intended!) by Google Local, so the service is solid for North America. Coverage in Europe is sparse to say the least. I will have a closer look at the Via Michelin site to see if there is a means to leverage it. Thanks for the pointer!
All feedback is good, as we are toying with whether to continue developing this or not. The site is far from finished and we just have a skeleton to show some of the core offerings. Do you see any value in the service? What about the SMS updates? Thanks again.
Cheers,
loco-snowman
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